Sweden & Norway expedition advice please.

Iam in the first stages of planning a trip across Sweden and Norway in autum next year with a mate, me in my truck and him in his Rangerover Bobtail.
When i say first stages iam just considering a route, distance, time ect. Does anyone have any advice on how i to go about planning such a route in terms of the best terrian to cover and time taken? Also advice on points of interest ect.
Looking to camp for the entire trip and do about 8-10 hours driving a day for 10 days.
Doesnt have to be a circular route just needs a ferry terminal at each end.
Also advice on what to take and best tyres to use ect.
Advice on vehicle prep/spares to take.
I know its a long list but any advice would be great.

Tough? Sounds like fun to me. I think you should join us mate, once in a lifetime.
Forgot to mention anyone whos interested is welcome to join us the bigger the convoy the better.

As for tyres, dont get mud terrain as they are not too good on snow and ice. Best to get A/T's with a decent set of snow chains. Give her a damn good service before you go and possibly change oil to a slightly thinner grade for the extreme cold. Take as many common spare parts as you can, I know from experience, Sweden and Norway are very expensive for anything as there cost of living is more than double ours

i was gonna stick a set BFGoodrich ATs on. As for oil iam already running castrol 0/30w, its like water.

as a note there IS a ferry that used to run between norway and er somewhere up north, they stopped it because of not enough people using it last year but i duno if its been reinstated or not

Join a good recovery agency that will cover you abroad. Just in case.

Damn good idea mate.
Keep the ideas coming....

Hi

Which month are you planning to go and where? Are you thinking of offroading/play sites/greenlaning or just enjoying the scenery and the country?
Area, possible offroading and the month will predict what kind of boots you want to wear. Offroading is mainly either strictly private or organised through clubs here I'm afraid.

We normally drive SUVs and trucks with spiked special, highly siped winter tyres like these ones http://www.nokiantyres.no/ during winter, but in autumn you shouldn't need to be afraid of that for most areas. I live in Mid-Norway and have grown up in the southern parts, been around pretty much all of Norway and parts of Sweden and Finland due to outdoor activities mainly scuba-diving but also al lot of hiking, hunting and sailing so I'll be happy to give you some advice.

I would recommend the part coast from Aalesund and north, especially Lofoten and Vesteraalen. Mountain areas of Dovre and Hardangervidda. All these places are very nice to see by car. Southern parts of Norway, and west coast of Sweden is very nice, but different, and it does much better in summer and by boat. I would recommend cities like Stockholm, Bergen, Aalesund, Trondheim, Tromsø if you guys would are interested in coffee-drinking, people-watching and architecture apart from driving in mud.

BUT- it seems hard to get here by car. I haven't found any ferries between Norway or Sweden and England/Scotland. Those days seem to be gone :-(

Erik

I am sure there is a ferry that runs from folkestone to Sweden

This company does a crossing from newcastle to holland....and then holland up to oslo...

http://www.dfdsseaways.co.uk/ferry_crossings/gateway_to_scandinavia/gateway_to_scandinavia

Cheers for the ferry info chaps, just need to start putting the ferry ports with an interesting route.
MrWolf when i have put together the first draft of a route would you mind having a look and giving me your thoughts.
Also anyone know a cheap sauce of maps for the two countries? )apart from google)

I'm happy to help with a route, no problem. For roadmaps I'd choose the Garmin City Navigator or what fits in the TomTom units. Most of it can be downloaded as a torrents and fettled to work with a keygens if your into that kind of stuff...

The topographical maps for the entire Norway for the garmin platform is actually available for free and can be downloaded as torrents and installed to a SDcard through the garmin mapsource software. Just search any browser for " garmin norway topo pro torrent"

For paper charts I normally use the NAF (Norwegian Auto Union) map book, but that's only for Norwegian readers I'm afraid. Overview roadmaps are available through amazone, some of them in English.

If you are a bit creative regarding language you should be able to operate this great map planning tool for Sweden, Norway and Finland: http://kart.gulesider.no/ :-)

Norwegian and English actually has a lot in common and should be partly understandable, easier for the Scottish as there are a lot of connections between Scotland and Norway going all the way back to the vikings.

Happy planning!

Erik

Wow, loads of info here. Thanks also to you Erik. Local knowledge counts for a lot.

I did a cross europe dash in my former life in an Italian car club, across to italy, then up and across to Croatia. It got tiring in parts, mainly due to the jollys in the evening when we should've been getting sleep for the next day, but also because we were doing silly Kph once we got on suitable roads (ie, outside the UK)...

It is a great idea, but I will echo Rob's post, that if others want to join in the more the merrier.

cheers, Joe (the mate with the bobtailed RangeRover)

You could do Felixstow to Esbjerg (Denmark) short road trip then to Frederikshavn to Gothenburg (Sweden) or a little further north from Hirtshals to Kristiansand (Norway) either would be a lot less road miles than going to Holland :wink:

First leg info ...... http://www.dfdsseaways.co.uk/Ferry_Cros ... 2AodAmdczw
Second leg option 1 .... http://www.directferries.co.uk/frederik ... _ferry.htm
Second leg option 2..... http://www.directferries.co.uk/hirtshal ... _ferry.htm

Those are the short sea journey option but there are loads of ferries out of Denish ports to most parts of Scandinavia

Or you could do ferry Felixstow to Esbjerg (Denmark)(as above) then use E20 to Copenhagen,then keep on E20 until doing a right onto E4 that way you can be mega cool & stop in Kronenberg for a really

photo opertunity :wink:

I think scandy major roads are covered in on of my map books will check & post ISBN if they are