Day: July 2, 2023

Norway – leaving London for Harwich 16th June

Note: On this trip I recorded my thoughts on a Dictaphone and these are transcriptions. They have a different feel to writing. Its an experiment.

16th of June. From my cabin on the Stenna ship to Hook of Holland. Well, it seems that the last couple of trips, we’ve had a kind of disaster in the first 100 miles of getting from home to the ferry even last year, it was a motorbike malfunctioned in a very strange way. This time, leaving London, the traffic was so, so heavy at every point, and there were some brief moments of respite when you can actually go to proper speed but, but very quickly, you’d end up just in queued traffic again, whether it was accidents, or just the volume of traffic. Maybe Friday evening, leaving London wasn’t the best timing. But that was more than that. So having got the three quarters of the way to here, I just stopped for petrol, which I needed. And when I got off the bike, I could see that the bag that I’d put all this food in: the delicious apricot tart that my partner lovingly made and freshly made loaf of sourdough bread and the beautiful cheese and the bottle of water in a really nice bag just dropped off the bike at some point. Got no idea when. And it was really all the effort that had gone into making that little, that little feast. Really, really sad.

I arrived via the crowded A12 much later than I normally would.

So arriving at Harwich there’s usually other people on bikes. And that always actually really nice people that you chat to. Bikers on mass I kind of have a kind of aversion to but when you actually meet individual people, you know, they’re just nice people interested in travel and all ages. So in the cabin, I’ve eaten my snack, my dinner which is from Morrison’s in Harwich. With a little bit of some Italian beer. And I’m seeing whether I’ve got the energy to get out of the cabin to find someplace with a signal for the phone just to send a text back to my partner. I’ve been frantically charging everything.

Norway 2023 Route Summary

My aim was to visit the Arctic Circle relatively directly and then journey back to the south, where the ferry arrives and leaves from, in a slightly more relaxed way, down the west coast through tunnels and many short ferry trips.

The trip was 2,812 miles in total. I went out through Holland close to the north coast, which I thought might be more scenic (it wasn’t) and came back a more direct (though much busier) way. The main ferries were Stenna’s line from my old favourite Harwich to Hook of Holland and the new HNL, Holland Norway Line from the port of Emden just over the border into Germany to Kristiansand at the southern tip of Norway. Both are overnight journeys. Stenna cost £360 and HNL £714. I’m really supportive of a new venture in this complicated and costly sector. HNL’s offices at Emden were a series of tents.

This is looking down from the boat when everyone had boarded and the customs and other people were packing up and going home. But Stenna have a much more oiled operation and their boat and the cabins are noticeably nicer. HNL kindly changed my cabin when I complained that I was just under the performers on the sundeck.