Two days to go!

Provisions are being collected together, whilst Helga waits patiently to get on her way!

A little bit of background:-

Incredibly, a whole decade has  already passed since we made our first circuit of the Baltic Sea. Back then, in 2007, it was planned as the maiden trip for our newly converted ex-RAF Land Rover Defender ambulance, which we named the "Liberator". On that occasion, we followed a clockwise route, starting with the DFDS ferry crossing from Harwich to Esbjerg, in Denmark, and then passing through Sweden, Finland, Russia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Poland and Germany, before returning to Denmark and back via the same ferry route to Harwich. The whole route, including a few days in St Petersburg and the excursion into Belarus, took us just 6 weeks.

The "Liberator" has now moved on to new owners and new adventures and we have become the owners of "Helga", a 1996 Hymer B544 motorhome. Helga is a little bit wider, a little bit longer and considerably more comfortable.  But on the downside, she is nowhere near as rugged, and being front wheel drive, with most of her weight over the rear axle, she needs to be handled rather more carefully, especially on wet grass! However, we are now into our fourth season of ownership and she has already taken us on some adventurous excursions, including the Shetland Islands and some quite challenging areas of Southern France, so we are reasonably confident that she will take the Baltic trip in her stride.

For this 2017 expedition, we are allowing ourselves an extra week and going around in the anti-clockwise direction. We will not be venturing into Belarus or Russia either, so we should have a little more time to enjoy the Baltic scenery.  As DFDS no longer operate the Harwich to Esbjerg route, we will be going from Hull to Rotterdam, which will also add a small part of the Netherlands into the trip.

Postscript:
Actually it was a rather larger chunk of the Netherlands than I had realised.  It took us most of a day to get across it. When we did eventually cross into Germany we were much farther south than I had imagined, and the journey back up to the Baltic Coast seemed to take forever! By gradually withdrawing all their passenger ferry routes, DFDS have not made visiting the Baltic (or Scandinavia), from the UK, at all easy.   Rant over.


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