Tuesday 26 April 2011

Copenhagen in a Motorhome

 Day 1:

Copenhagen was a pleasant city but possibly unfairly skewed by the amount of capital cities we've visited up to now. We visited when the central motorhome parking area (City Camp) was closed as we are out of season, so the only option for us was to Wild Camp - not to worry, we've not stayed on a site yet in just over two weeks of Denmark! Taking advice, we stayed just outside of Bondby Strand Station in the parking area for wetland area which provided us with a magnificent sunset, used previously by our friends Ryan and Mel (GPS 55.61605, 12.42269).

The Station itself looked a bit questionable on an evening (but our van was safe during the day) and a 2 zone 10 trip card was 140 DKK and is valid for two people, just get it validated twice on the platform before boarding. and is available from the Shop (don't use the automated ticket machines).

The city itself was pleasent enough - although they must have known we were coming and decided to dig half of it up and cover the rest with scaffolding - I'm sure it will look lovely for summer if you're planning a visit! The street food was particually interesting and very cheap comapred to some of the prices we've seen elsewhere in Denmark - unusual for a capital city.

The star attraction, the 'Little Mermaid' lived upto her name. Well, in as far as little anyway. "Is that it?" the crowds of tourists said to each other as the tour guide tried to give them some hype, thankfully it wasn't far from our stop.

We spent the rest of the day on foot, visiting the Kings Gardens and Rosenborg Castle and then into the main pedestrianised area of the town. We attempted to vist the Carlsberg Museam, an art gallery, but either it is un-airconditioned as it was broken as the tempreature inside was searing. Instead we visited the Carlsberg Brewery, we must have slipped in the back way (Up Vestre Kirkegards Alle and over teh Carlsberg Viaduct if you want to know) as we didn't see where you paid until we were on the way out! I agree with sentiments that outside (Gamle Carlsberg Vej and potentially the aforementioned street) both make excellent city centre wild camping spots with no parking restrictions and indeed a couple of vans were making use of the situation - long may it continue.

If seeing magnificent buildings is your thing - go to Rome, Budapest or London. If you like Shops, Gardens and Cafe Culture then Copenhangen might be up your street and is certainly a good place to get acustomed to Capital Sightseeing if you are planning a European Trip, by the time you get to the proper ones you'll be well healed.


 Day 2: Following our own advice we moved our van further into the centre and parked up outside the Carlsberg Brewery, free Wifi also, thanks guys! Day 2 is always a bit easier once you've got your bearings and we set about visiting some of the things that we had missed.


First on the list was the Museum of the Danish Resistance which tells the extraordinary role of Denmark during WW2. As someone who was dragged round Eden Camp as kid, the format was easy to digest and free to get in to boot! 

Some questionable design gallery's followed but the view from the top of 'The Round Tower' observatory was excellent and the stone spiral ramp to the top made a change from the flights of stairs that usually greet us on a capital city accent, entrance was reasonable at 25DKK each. 

We decided to spend our remaining currency on a delicious rye bread sandwich and a Danish Pastry before retring to the botanical gardens to watch Turtles swim freely in the lake and a Heron catch fish from the shore - not something we expected, but rewarding none the less.

Would it be wrong to say one of the highlights was seeing a Black Audi A8 with the number plate 'SOPHIE' drive past? (In Denmark you can have whatever you want on a licence plate, but because of the 50mph speed limits they don't seem very popular.

Would I recommend Copenhagen for a city break? Possibly not, but seen as we were passing through it was a worthwhile visit. Tomorrow we stock up and fill up before passing on to another expensive Scandinavian country. The question is, will we get the bridge toll for 40 or 80 euro in our 5.99M van? (cut off being 6m!)


Frederiksborg

Frederiskborg
Helsingør

Helingsor was a great little place and we parked on the harbour with a view of the magnificant castle at one side and a view unbstructed all the way to Sweden on the other and were unbothered for the time we spent there. The sun was scorching and made photography difficult, but we managed a few shots non the less.

Helsingør
The following day we chased a couple more Castles on our way Copehangen, firstly Fredensborg which had a large open garden which we spend an hour or more walking round - one of the more rewarding Castles (or Slots) we have been to. The second Castle of the day was Frederiksborg which also had impressive grounds - so we decided on a wander around. It puts places like Castle Howard, Clumber Park and Chatsworth House to shame that all of these places were just as, if not better, kept and free to enter.

We didn't go inside but if we had wanted to it would have been around £5 each, as it was such a nice day we decided to stick to the grounds and make the most of the sun!





Sunday 24 April 2011

Wi-Fi Access in Europe

Wifi Access in Europe - A Quick Basic Guide

By far the easiest and cheapest way to pick up internet when travelling abroad in a motorhome is through the use of Wifi. It is becoming more common for towns to provide free Wi-FI access as do many cafe’s, bars and of course campsites. Then there is also unsecured networks left open by uninformed or just plain generous users! 

It is wise to treat all unsecured networks with caution and be sensitive over what information you pass over them, such as banking information and so forth. If you want to be ultra careful, setup a separate e-mail account with a generic name and unique password to send and receive e-mail from.

The main thing to facilitate you gaining access to Wi-Fi is through improving your Wi-Fi antenna over an above the one that comes built into your laptop. There are a number of reasons for this - firstly your built in WiFi antenna was only really designed to work in an office or home environment and was never meant to span large distances. Its antenna is likely just a bit of copper wire running around the internals and if you're using your device inside your motorhome or caravan, you then have the insulation materials to contend with. 

When this blog post was originally authored April 2011 we went on to recommend some products which were the best that were available at the time. Many of these are now difficult to source or are out of date, but in 2012 we setup a business specifically focussed to supplying the communication needs of fellow Motorhomers - Motorhome WiFi.

The products now listed below are a selection of products available on our website and each of them have been tested and used extensively by us. The first two are USB based devices, suitable for laptops and further down there is our iBoost system which will work with multiple devices (including iPads, tablets and phones) simultaneously. 

Motorhome WiFI High Power Omni  (Omni-Directional - Upto 1km range) - £89.99

The first device is a Omni-Directional antenna which means that doesn't have a ‘best’ side, it picks up signals from all around. This is the easiest thing to use because it doesn't require any manual fine tuning in order to gain an improve a signal. The antenna is fully weatherproof and attaches ideally to the side of the vehicle using 4 strong suction cups and should be mounted so that as much of the white antenna mast clears the roof-line of the vehicle.

The antenna is fully weatherproof and comes equipt with 5m of USB cable 




The below is a screenshot taken from Net Stumbler, I have clicked on the 'Encryption' column heading to sort the networks into encrypted and unencrypted (highlighted with a green box). In simple terms, you want to adjust your antenna until one of these shows a steady green and then close the application and then attempt to connect to it using Windows as per usual. 
Net Stumbler - Click to Enlarge
If you a using Windows 7 you will be better off downloading a program called inSSIDer (click) which while slightly more graphics heavy performs the same task as Net Stumbler.

What about iPads and Tablets?

Motorhome WiFi iBoost System (Directional - Upto 1.5km range) - £159.99
Available from: Motorhome WiFi - iBoost System

The #1 question we was always asked was 'does it work with an iPad?' The answer was always 'no', until we came up with the iBoost kit. The system uses a powerful active directional antenna and an internal router inside your van to re-broadcast the signal to all of your devices. It's a booster and a repeater at the same time, which is great if you find yourself on a campsite with a strict one device per connection rule!


Out First Prototype System:

Left is one of the first antennas we sold when we started the business Motorhome WiFi. Because the antenna was originally designed to be pole mounted and fixed, we modified the unit to allow you to maximise the adjustment in a free-standing environment or with a suction mount. I fitted a custom made bracket into the base, the same size thread as you find in the bottom of a digital camera. 







Our Long Distance WiFi Record - 18km!
We were able to connect to Wifi in Corfu from mainland Greece - a distance of 18km over water!
Any questions or comments please feel free to contact us via the form on the About Us page!

Saturday 23 April 2011

Kalundborg & Roskilde

Roskilde
Kalundborg
Yesterday we visited Kalundborg which our guidebook raved about, but in reality wasn't all that special. The castle (the smaller of the two pictured) was impressive, however the whole town was dead. Not even a car moved as we wandered around, it was like being on the set of 28 days later! We drove up to Havnebyen, a thin strip of land with a ferry terminal and an army base to spend the night.


Today we stopped briefly in Holbeck and explored two bike shops, the decision is between a Trek and a Giant bikes. The guy from the Trek shop told us of his camper van trip to Iran and we exchanged details, one for the future I think - lets get this trip out the way first! It seems insurance for far out countries is much easier to attain in continental europe then at home.

Tonight we're parked up at the Marina in Roskilde, having explored the town and the Cathedral - a world heritage site and had some tea, we're going to take it easy and have an early night!

Updated with my BlackBerry® wireless device

Roskilde
    

Thursday 21 April 2011

Svendborg & Odense

Svendborg
Not a great deal to report, we've had a rest day in Svendborg in a carpark near the beach. We walked into Svendborg yesterday and enjoyed a small beer each, I say enjoyed - we practically savoured every last drop at £6.50 for the two!

Today we've made our way to Odense, which is a funny city which has clearly had a lot of money spent recently on creating some large civic spaces and parks which we took advantage of. The city itself was nothing special and with a large number of 'down and outs' on the streets unlike anywhere else we've seen in Denmark so far.

Tonight we've made our way to the Marina at Kerteminde to go and watch the Sunset before we pass over the bridge tomorrow to Zealand.


Svendborg

Svendborg
Odense

Odense

Tuesday 19 April 2011

Faaborg, Svendborg & Island of Langland

Egeskov Slot
 Yesterday we tried to visit Egeskov Slot which is one of Denmark's most impressive castles, we arrived to an empty carpark and a sign saying "closed until 30th April". I knew we were out of season, but with an entrance fee of over £35 I don't think we'd have gone anyway. They did have Mini Golf  though...what is it with the Danes and Mini Golf, it's everywhere!

We seem to be doing pretty well with our Wild Camping spots here in Denmark, with another spot last night in a grassy car park overlooking the sea with nobody but wildlife for company. It seems that the Danes are pretty screwed on with their "No Camping" signs on many of the sea front car parks, so wild camping spots take a little more effort to find - which makes them all the more rewarding.

The weather has been very hot, about 25c today at it's peak. We visited the town of Svendborg and were reminded of why we bought a 6m van as we parked right in the centre with ease. We passed a bike shop and eyed up a couple of Trek mountain bikes at a price, according to Google, not too dissimilar to what they would be at home in the UK. The challange will be the rack. "For you, for free!" exclaimed the man in the shop, pointing to a cheap towbar clamp cycle carrier. I can see that coming off in one, bikes and all, while parked up somewhere exploring.

So we followed some directions from the english speaking assistant to a motorhome dealer, which turned out in fact to be a caravan dealer. "No motorhomes in Denmark, very expensive, half the price in Germany!". We already knew, the 2008 McLouis we saw for sale at the side of the road was nearly £45,000 equiverlant. So, we've e-mailed every Fiamma, Thule / Omnistore dealer we can find to see if we can get a rack for our van. We live in hope.

We left Svendborg and travelled to Langeland and to Tranekær Slot to walk around the large rounds of this impressive, but privatly owned, castle. Tonight we're back on Funen, another wild camping spot overlooking the sea which is pretty quiet (now the youth club has closed!).

Another thing we're confused by is the price of diesel which seems to fluxtuate on an almost hourly basis. If you pass a fuel station and come back the same way, the price will have changed without fail. Today we saw an automated station selling fuel for 9.7DKK (£1.14/litre) but it wanted a 2.75% fee for using our MasterCard. Instead we opted for a station up the road, which was selling fuel at 10.1DKK without the fee (£1.18/litre) and is the cheapest fuel we've seen so far in Denmark (or Europe this trip for that matter). A quick calculation showed that our van's trip is wildly inaccurate, reporting 26MPG as the actual figure is closer to 31MPG over the last 400 miles. These 50mph speedlimits are good for something, at least!




Sunday 17 April 2011

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Denmark - Vejle & Legoland

We started off the day by having a 2 mile walk around the central park in which we stayed overnight wild camping in Aarhus, sorry to say that we were lapped a couple of times by some marathon runners who were training for an event (there were some signs, but my Danish is still a bit rusty). Stopping off the Vejle, we noticed that the landscape is changing as we approach Little Belt Bridge onto the next Island of Jutland, no longer are the villages old and quaint but now contain large civic spaces, supermarkets and familiar shops (most at eye watering prices). Sophie spotted the digital camera she bought for £50 before we left for £160 in a Camera Shop, for example!

However the real destination for today was... Lego land! Ok, so we're a bit old for Lego but my parents loft is packed full of my childhood Lego models and having never visited the one in Windsor (and who would at £40 each!?) we decided to see the original thing here in Denmark. How much? Little tip, half an hour before the rides stop (6pm on a weekend) the park is actually free to get in - something which even the guy on the ticket office was unaware of.

The park and the shop are actually open right until 8pm so if you get in and want to go on a 'decent' ride make your way to the roller coaster, I actually managed to get Sophie on the log flume I was actually surprised at how small the park was (but I guess it would be huge if you were 5). It was good fun photographing the models made from the colourful bricks - on request a large selection are available here!


 

 



Denmark - Aarhus

I've been playing with some HDR photos!
Despite looking a bit rough around the edges, Aarhus was a really nice metropolitan young feeling city which has obviously received some investment in recent years, which is still ongoing as the port / marina was undergoing some heavy groundworks. I can imagine that on an summers evening the bars and restaurants will be jammed packed. I'd like to come back one day.

It was quite a change from the oldy worldly touristy (and may I say slightly faux) Denmark we've seen on some of the tourist routes, the most notable being the 'Daisy Route' which we've picked up here and there. When we've strayed off the beaten track we've passed through villages which aren't so picture postcard and look like they could wel belong in Bulgaria (we'll confirm that either way when we get there!). We were suprised to see some designated motorhome parking on the Marina, but the signs were conflicting (one mentioned a fine of 590DKK - about £70) so rather than risk it we went for a wild spot in a local park.

Before existing Denmark we'll be updating our Country Guide as well as posting a summary of our trip and a map of our route, but our blog will remain 'as it happens' for those following our European tour.

Saturday 16 April 2011

Hirtshals, Skagen and Grena

I must admit to being a bit lazy so far this trip and we have been following some of the wild camping sites picked out by Ryan and Mel from Do Your Dream (see the links section) but we'll be on our own when we cross into Sweden. 


Tonight we are wild camped (see included photo) overlooking the harbour having cooked a huge pan of chilli and making inroads into my German beer stock before Norway (just 5 litres allowed). 


Here is some of our backlog of photos, firstly from Hirtshals were we spent a night overlooking the beach and enjoyed a wonderful sunset. The beaches here in Denmark are first class and deserted this time of year.

 











Then on to Skagen, Sophie put her wellies (that I swore she wouldn't wear) to good use by wading out to sea to put one foot in each as the lapped mysteriously over each other at Denmarks most northern point. The sky was blue and sun was belting down you could have forgiven for thinking it was August if not for the cold wind coming off the sea. 

 

 














Today we travelled south to Gammel Estrup an impressive moated castle which also doubles as a museum of farming and agriculture and home to at least 100 tractors. Free to get in out of season, we had the place to ourselves and are of the opinion that Danish children must be very well behaved as nothing was roped off or out of bounds! 


 

(To anyone wondering, this post replaced the one posted by my Blackberry last night!)