From Time Out.


A very real and useful option - top left to bottom right on the North Sea.  Is there a case for a bottom left to top right service? I recall making businss trips from Harwich to Oslo, back from Gothenburg, and also trip from Newcastle to Bergen.   The Harwich to Esbjerg service is no more - the most northerly you'll get on the mainland now is in the Netherlands.    Is there a case for a Harwich to Hirshals and / or Kristiansand service?

 
If there was a convenient port in the south of England, add a call there and they'll have reinvented Motorrail to Scotland.

Mark

 
As someone who used the former routes to Sweden and Denmark on three occasions between 1979 and 1988, I miss this as a means of getting to Scandinavia. I guess that cheaper air fares killed these services, as they were not cheap. Back in those days, Sweden advertised itself as a place to take your car and family for a holiday, taking advantage of uncrowded roads, rural and coastal areas. There was also a scheme whereby you could buy a pass (Bilturlogi pass) that gave discounts on B&B accommodation throughout the country listed in the accompanying booklet. Now it's much cheaper to take a cheap flight and pick up a hire car.

There is still a freight ferry between Immingham and Brevik in Norway, but to quote DFDS's website


Ridiculous, isn't it? Are they worried we might get a Viking invasion?

 

I looked that up (isn't the Internet wonderful) and find that from Immingham DFDS are running to
Brevik (2 journeys per week))
Cuxhaven (5)
Esbjerg (6)
Fredrikstad (1)
Gothenburg (6)
Rotterdam (6)
Zeebrugge (1)
A couple of those journeys are "subject to traffic levels"

I suspect the 80/20 rule applies - 20% of the booking hassle is for 80% of the business income  (freight traffic) and that 80% of the hassle of booking would be for 20% more business (passenger cars and food passengers), and the "Can't do that at Immingham is rather convenient".   And if the ship is close to full on the bread and butter business, why worry about the hastleish icing on the cake?   Called the "free market economy"

Viking invasion?  Perhaps you never met the Norwegians coming across from Stavanger to Newcastle, getting drunk ad going home on the Color line ship I once had the pleasure of using!

 

This is a true story. On one of our family holidays, courtesy of a friend who owned a narrowboat on the Kennet & Avon Canal, we moored somewhere and at about 9:30am went to stroll into the village for fresh bread and milk.  There on the towpath in front of us, next to his narrowboat, was the most inebriated Swede I have ever seen - trying to drive his boat's anchor into the towpath. Image not available to guests

 

My bet is that HM Government is not prepared to pay for full Border (Immigration) Force presence at Immingham, so DFDS are only allowed to carry bona fidei lorry drivers on their ships.

As to the inebriated Scandinavian stories, on my first trip to Norway (the 1979 one) I was surprised (or perhaps, not surprised) to see drunk Norwegians spark out asleep on the streets of Oslo, in the middle of the day and clearly from their clothes not down-and-outs.

On my second trip, in 1985 and using my Bilturlogi pass, I stayed for a night in one of the weirdest hotels ever in Sweden near Lake Vattern. Almost the entire interior was painted light green, and the only on-site staff was what I assume was a night porter who was dressed like an extra from The Addams Family. The only other guests were the members of a Canadian international motorcycle racing team who were in Sweden to get their bikes set up for the coming season at the Husquvarna factory. They told me that they did this every year. They said they used to bring a bottle of Canadian Whiskey to give to each mechanic as a thank you present, but after seeing the way that many of them simply took the tops of their bottles and glugged it down like Coca Cola, thought that perhaps something else might be better.

To be fair, I think from more recent visits that a rather less restrictive regime for alcohol in recent years has meant that many Scandinavians' relationship with it has become less problematic.

 

Agreed. Image not available to guests

 

Another true story here, following from the quote about private passengers not being permitted to be carried through Immingham.

About 20 years ago now I was cycling along the Lincolnshire coast and chose to cycle on the sea wall (which is a wide bund built up to stop the flat agricultural land from flooding) for a few miles southwards towards Immingham. It was wonderfully peaceful, and after a while I could see Immingham approaching in the distance. I expected at some point that a lane or track would reach the sea wall which I could escape down but none did, and I eventually arrived by the landing slip at Immingham just after the last of a series of HGVs had driven off a ship. I turned right and cycled towards the customs post, and a very surprised customs officer stepped out and asked "Where the hell have you just come from?" I explained, and fortunately he believed me and let me through, which was just as well as I onviously didn't have a passport on me!

 

There is (or was) a narrowboat hire fleet called Viking Afloat. On more than one occasion we saw their distinctive yellow craft being crewed by holidaymakers of clearly Scandinavian origin. I have no difficulty at all believing your account...

 

Ah yes ... mind you, it was the Black Prince fleet, which seems to have an on/off throttle with nothing in between and they were either stopped at the least convenient point, or going a long creating a magnificent wave ...

 

Thanks for that topical update, Richard. Image not available to guests

Our own family experience, some 15 years ago, after mooring somewhere on the southern towpath of the Kennet & Avon Canal, was really very funny. Having enjoyed our own breakfast, we decided to stroll down into the nearest village (they used to have shops, then) to buy some fresh bread and milk.

There on the towpath, rolling around on his back, wielding the anchor, was the clearly inebriated Swede. I rather think we got his connections to Sweden from the nomenclature on his narrowboat and his own jovial exclamations.  He was clearly 'out of it', but quite inoffensive.

CfN. Image not available to guests