Road trip in a motorhome: Exploring beautiful Norway

The motorhome is built by a company called Adria on a Fiat Ducato chassis and comes with a 2.3L diesel engine making 140 HP.

BHPian 14000rpm recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

Circa 2022

Covid ensured we had no holidays in '20 & '21. Work from home made life at home frustrating and we badly needed a Holiday. As soon as restrictions started to loosen up, we had to get out. Where do we go?

Restrictions were loosening up but then, paranoia was still around. Couldn't imagine going to crowded destinations. We kept striking out destination after destination and were soon left with the one destination we both agreed on - Norway!

We enjoy being in nature and going on hikes in the Mountains. If it is Norway, as we figured from our 2017 road trip, it had to be in a Motorhome!

We always leave our 5 yr old (at the time of this travel) dog, a Labrador, in a pet hotel whenever we go on holidays. This time around, since we had the space, we took him along too.

Our daughter, 6 yr old at the time of travel, needed a lot of her toys and books with her. Motorhome had room for that too.

Everybody got what they wanted and off we went to Norway.

Some teaser shots for those in a Hurry.

The place...

The Route…

...and the ride

TLDR folk can click here for a quick overview of the route and destinations.

Now that you've gone past 1st post, stick around for the full story.

The planning

Being completely bogged down at work, planning was always a moving task with no definite deadline untill we applied for vacation. Even then, we had the "aaraam se karenge" attitude till it was so close to planned vacation dates that we had literally no choice but to book whatever was available. Got lucky with getting a rental motorhome with my choice of floorplan for 4 pax.

Job 1- check.

The ferry to Stockholm, however, was a tricky one. Eventually we found one leaving from Turku, a city 120kms west of Helsinki, but had odd return dates that didn't suit us. Checked around for other means to cross the Gulf of Bothnia and get back to Finland and a different option worked out - take the ferry from Umeå in Sweden to Vaasa in Finland which is about 420kms North west of Helsinki. Booked these ferries and we were good to go.

Job 2 - Check.

The only other thing left to do was plan the route from Stockholm to POIs in Norway to Umeå. Got lazy again and chose to go to pretty much the same places we had gone to before with a few changes. So, if you've seen my 2017 Norway travelogue, you'll see some similarities.

Day of departure soon came up, went to the rental pick up place, inspected the vehicle, learned the tech bits, picked up groceries, picked up bedding and a few more bits and bobs and bicycles from home along with family and hit the road.

90 mins of driving later, we reached the port, checked in and lined up for vehicle boarding.

Boarded the Viking Grace soon after.

The vessel we boarded was a new one with modern interiors compared to many other tired-looking vessels I've boarded before.

Used the SPA and unwound myself.

Chilled out after a sumptuous buffet dinner.

This, by the way, is 11 in the night in Summer.

This ferry is shorter in duration than the Helsinki-Stockholm route and reached at 8:30am. Hit the road soon after to dash towards Norway.

Planned to drive till Drammen which is a city west of Oslo.

Made a brief stop at McDonald's for breakfast.

And stopped for lunch at Lake Värnen near Karlstad. Daughter stretched her legs and so did Bongo, our Labrador. In the meantime, started looking for a place to stay for the night near Drammen, Norway. Why Drammen? We were targeting an ETA of around 6 pm which is good enough for dinner and put the little one to sleep by 8pm and this place is where we'd be based on our pace.

Where to park and sleep? Going from previous motorhome experience in Norway, I was positive I'd find someplace but where exactly?

Thankfully I had learnt of an app called Park4night which, as they define it, is a motorhome overnight parking app where one can search for parking spots and look for what others have said about the spot, if it has toilets or not, noise, etc.

We reached Drammen as planned and called it a night.

Woke up well rested. Daughter got into her creative best and started drawing about the day that went by.

In the meantime, Bongo needed his playtime as well.

Freshened up, had breakfast and hit the road to our 1st POI- Låtefossen waterfalls.

Passed many beautiful locations but we soon hit an odd traffic jam. It was not expected on this road

Quickly turned around the behemoth where I could and went back to a lake we had passed by and took our lunch break.

Soon we got back to the road and lined up in the same traffic jam which was mainly due to the road, some 3 kms or so, made one way due to a construction project. There was a lead vehicle that was leading the convoys in each direction while the other side waited.

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