UKC

I'm thinking about Lofoten for this summer's trip.

What's the best plan for travel these days? I'd anticipate about 3 weeks.

Ferry and then drive the van up?

Ta!

In reply to jezb1:

Only if you drive through Sweden (2 hard days of driving), not Norway.

In reply to jezb1:




What Ferry? Newcastle to Bergen no longer runs. Not sure about the Harwich to Esbjerg boat, if it doesn't run then the next best is Harwich to Hook of Holand which is a hell of a long drive. Fly drive will be far cheaper.

In reply to jezb1:

If you drive via the Netherlands and go up through Norway, you could incorporate day trips to, Ekne, Flatanger and Stetind during the first week. Then take the shorter, drive back south via Sweden.

That depends on how much climbing you want to do in Lofoten or the weather on the way up making it worth while.

The easiest and fastest is fly to Harstad and rent a car there. Although scutterbutt from the girls in Kabelvåg is that Wiederøe are doing reasonably priced flights from Oslo to Svolvær (via Bodø). That's a Norwegian perception of reasonable however.

In reply to OwenM:

Ferry to Europe, I know the bergan one no longer runs.

In reply to GarethSL:

Cheers for the info

In reply to jezb1:
We flew to Oslo then to Bodo then drove to the islands, still a long drive tho.
If you can stay in fishermans huts too, camping was a bit of a nause on wet days.

In reply to jezb1:

Fly to northern Sweden and rent a car there has been done and said to be way cheaper than via Norway. Either that or make friends with a Finn or Swede who is driving up and a ride with them which is how my mates did when I was the Finn(ish resident).

In reply to jezb1:
I drove to Lofoten in the summer of 2015. We sailed Harwich to Hook of Holland and camped that evening. As far as I know that's still the nearest you can get a ferry. From there we drove to Hirtshals on the northern tip of Denmark - a full days driving, all on motorways but about 10-12 hours. Next morning a ferry to Langesund (cheapest and near enough shortest crossing to Norway) plus a lot more driving that day. Then about another 2 days driving to Lofoten, Norwegian speed limits are tediously slow and the fines enormous. Oh, and its also a hell of a long way! We stopped off at other places in each direction but only that were en-route anyway and we still clocked up 6,000 miles for the round trip.

Given that the Harwich ferry leave in the morning you'd have to drive down the day before so you're looking at about 5-6 days travelling in each direction. That doesn't leave long on Lofoten if you've only got 3 weeks.
We had 7 weeks away so it was worth the drive and way cheaper than flying + hiring a car for that long but for 3 weeks flying makes more sense.

If you are only intent on climbing on Lofoten you could probably get away without a car if the cost of hire is too high. There are a couple of semi wild camping areas each within walking distance of most of the crags and as ever in remote places, hitching is vey easy. There's hundreds of climbers driving about between the crags every day, have your rope visible and you won't have any trouble with lifts.

In reply to jezb1:

Went last summer - 4 day's fairly leisurely driving from Calais. Probably quickest to go up to Denmark, cross the bridges, then over to the Swedish east coast, up this, then across to just north of Mo-I-Rana, then take a ferry from Skutvik to Svolvaer. We came back via Stetind and Bohuslan - both well worth a visit.