Route During Week One

Nick in particular has spent ages preparing for this trip. It'll be a very different and in many ways a more challenging trip in Rocky than in Lionel but we're working on the basis that we can rest when we're dead and we're up for the test!

That doesn't mean that we're feeling entirely enthusiastic when the alarm goes off at 5.15 a.m. on the day of departure. Janette has always been a morning person but that seems to have gone by the wayside in recent years!

We set off for Dover in good time, always wary of the vagaries of the M25 but today she is kind to us and we arrive with enough time to find a cafe for a quick coffee before checking in.

The channel crossing is uneventful and although we aren't accompanied by the dogs this time, we do have Ferdie with us - a present from one of our girls, he travelled to France, Spain, Portugal and Morocco with us and he says 'so far so good'.

The main attraction for us on this trip is Iceland where we'll put Rocky though his off-road paces on the F-roads; these are gravel roads reserved for four wheel drive vehicles only and will enable us to really get off the beaten track and see Iceland's wild and remote interior. Our hopes are high.

To reach Iceland we have to travel to Hirtshals in northern Denmark to catch the ferry via the Faroe Islands. As time is relatvely limited for us on this adventure, we won't be able to savour the countries we'll be passing through which is a shame but we will linger for a while in Denmark both on the outward and on the return journeys.

Whilst on the ferry to Calais we hatch a plan. Our friends Jo and Dave are on their way back from a motorhoming holiday in the Netherlands and we decide to intercept them if we can as a surprise.

We know from their messages to us that they're somewhere in the Zeeland area of the Netherlands. It'll be a slight detour for us, but a bit of fun.

We enlist the help of their daughter Grace who tracks them and us on her phone and guides us in.

We get close to where they've stopped and have a bit of time to spare as they seem to have headed off on a bike ride. We decide to stop off for lunch in a randomly chosen little town, Sas van Gent, which proves to be delightful. It's on the banks of the Ghent-Terneuzen Canal and there's a lot of maritime activity. It's good to see a river still busy with commercial traffic saving lorry loads of goods from clogging up the roads.

There is a nice camping place here and we agree that this is an ideal destination to return to in Lionel for a long weekend sometime.

Grace spends the majority of her day monitoring the movements of us and her parents and skillfully manages to guide us to the exact spot where they have parked their motorhome, Denzil.

We buy an ice cream at the yacht club and settle down to wait for Jo and Dave in a concealed spot. When they return, we creep up on them.

Their reaction is satisfying! We have Grace on the phone to witness the moment!

Neither of us has booked a campsite for the night, but luckily we find somewhere locally that although full, allows us to stay in their car park which is nicer than it sounds!

The next day we visit Veere which is a picturesque little town with a traditional windmill, small harbour and numerous shops and restaurants, although clearly now it is set up for tourists.

No matter, we are delighted to see our first windmill!

And even more delighted later in the day to see one actually working!

We find a campsite this evening in a little town called Ootmarsum. The campsite is pleasant enough but a bit lacking in soul and extortionately expensive by UK standards. We use lots of their electricity and have super-long showers to get our money's worth!

We do however meet a lovely couple in the next pitch to us. They are both from the Netherlands but now live in North Yorkshire and we really enjoy chatting with them.

Disaster strikes when we discover that we have no wine! Janette is dispatched on foot to Lidl while Nick sets up camp; Janette returns with Lidl's finest offerings and a crisis is averted!

We discover that there is a market on in town - the Summer Market or Siepelmarket - the next day, we decide to go and it's buzzing!

There are many craftspeople there demonstrating traditional crafts such as clog making and lace making; we can even confirm that Dutch people do wear clogs, we saw several - who knew!

We decide from here to head for Hamburg, a city we have both visited before. Janette has particularly fond memories of visiting friends there in her twenties. Nick finds a lovely woodland campsite about half an hour from the city and we pitch camp.

We've already alluded to the fun Nick has had making adaptions to Rocky; he's spent hours online and even more hours out in the garage tinkering about - it's kept him out of trouble mostly - but everything is working just fine!

He's fitted a second 12v battery that can be charged from either 240v mains, Rocky's engine, or a solar panel that he's fitted to the bonnet. This battery runs the fridge and charges laptops, cameras, torches, phones etc.

There's a sliding frame that holds six Euro boxes that interlock and stack - and can be pulled in and out for easy access like a drawer. The boxes have been carefully packed by Janette with all necessary kitchen and cooking equipment, along with food essentials.

Water is supplied from a 40 litre water tank with a small 12v electric pump.

Nick has even fitted a small water tap and switch in the kitchen unit which is supplied from the onboard water tank......the kettle isn't as small as it looks in the photo!

The fridge/freezer has a capacity of 60 litres and slides out on rails for easy access. It can be powered by either the 12v secondary battery or 240v mains supply.

A fold down double gas hob provides the cooking facility - along with a gas BBQ that can be plugged into the onboard gas supply.

Resulting in some rather delicious feasts!

The weather isn't great for our visit to Hamburg but it is a lovely city with many waterways and historic buildings that have been sensitively restored and rebuilt following the devastation wrought upon the city during WW2

The Speicherstadt, literally meaning City of Warehouses, is the largest warehouse district in the world. The buildings were built between 1883 and 1927 and rest upon timber-pile foundations. Janette quite fancies an apartment there - dream on!

Next we visit the remains of the church of St. Nikolai. This was bombed by allied forces as part of operation Gomorrah in 1943. The ruins house a WW2 memorial and museum, it is the fifth tallest church spire in the world. You can take a lift to very near the top of the spire and the far-reaching views are well worth it.

The museum tells the story of the bombing of Hamburg - over the course of seven days ten thousand tons of bombs were dropped on the city and an estimated forty thousand German civilians were killed.

Next stop Denmark, a first for Janette although Nick has visited Copenhagen before.

We stop for the night just across the border in a place called Krusa. We read about a WW2 prison camp nearby and the next day we go to visit.

Froslev was built in 1944 to house Danish prisoners of the nazis. The Danes persuaded the Germans to allow them to build this camp so that they could prevent as many Danish prisoners as possible from being sent to concentration camps.

This camp is one of Europe's best preserved WW2 internment camps. A total of about twelve thousand Danes were held prisoner here in the nine months that it was operational; about sixteen hundred of these were deported to German concentration camps where about two hundred and thirty of them died.

After our sobering visit to Froslev we visit Aabenraa which is a pretty little town but not much is going on as the shops close on Saturday afternoon! We have lunch and a wander about and then head off.

Next day we decide to visit Aarhus but on the way we make a weird stop off - we see a shop from the motorway with crowds of people there, it's billed as a Hunting and Outdoor Shop and having visited it it's a wonder that there's any wildlife left alive in this part of Denmark.

There is every imaginable hunting gun on sale and all kinds of hunting accessories, all at sky high prices.

Nick quite fancies a jacket only to discover that it costs £1,146.00!! He leaves it on the hanger!

Aarhus is Denmark's second city, it has an attractive historic centre and a big working harbour that can accommodate the largest ships in the world.

When we are there two enormous cruise ships are docked with a queue of coaches waiting to take the many hundreds of passengers on a day tour.

We need to keep heading north and we find a campsite in a place called Hobro. The campsite is very peaceful set on a hill overlooking the lake and the town. We won't have time to linger here as we need to be in Hirtshals tomorrow night packed, stocked up and fully fuelled ready to catch the ferry the next day and we want to visit Aalborg en route.

As we travel, we chat about our first impressions of Denmark - and Nick takes the opportunity to test out his drone. Rocky’s solar panel proves to provide the perfect launch pad!

Denmark is pretty flat, the landscape so far is not dissimilar to Cambridgeshire or East Anglia. We had imagined there’d be wild, untamed areas but it’s been mainly agricultural so far.

The towns and villages are very clean and orderly. Mostly it’s low-level construction with a few tower blocks in the bigger towns. Apart from the fact that the roads don’t have potholes or traffic jams, it’s quite similar to the UK in many ways!

Our next stop is Aalborg. It's our favourite place in Denmark so far. We were blessed with lovely weather and of course that makes a difference but the whole town has a very relaxed vibe about it and has some really beautiful historic buildings.

The Merchant's House was built by the wealthy businessman Jens Bang in 1623. The street which this house sits on was once a waterway and Jens Bang had his own merchant navy to work in his business of trading herring, salt, cloth and grain.

We of course visited the obligatory cathedral, Janette does love a church! Built in 1749 Budolfi Church is the Cathedral Church for the Lutherian Diocese of Aalborg. The organ is being played as we wander around which really adds to the atmosphere. A highlight of the church is the frescoes in the foyer painted around 1500 and still vivid!

… and now we’ve arrived at Hirtshals campsite and set up for our final night before heading to the ferry early tomorrow. The campsite is busy, full of people like us heading to Iceland and it's the first time we've seen other overland vehicles in any numbers.

We haven’t had time on this leg of our trip to meander along and really get a feel for Denmark as we did in Spain on the way to Morocco. We will have more time on the return trip when we plan to explore the west coast….. from what we’ve read we have high hopes!

For now, we're looking forward to a complete rest on the two-day journey to Iceland, the boat has a hot tub, a swimming pool and cinema and more, it'll feel like a cruise!