Many of us dream of a road-trip to Norway. With its magnificent scenery, peaceful culture and off grid camping, it is so alluring. Yet with no direct ferries from the UK, how do we reach Norway from the UK by motorhome? In this blog we share our route to Kristiansand in Norway’s south, on what would be our second epic road-trip to Scandinavia.

Norway is the land of fjords, mountains and glaciers that take your breath away. Planning an epic adventure with your motorhome here is just like a dream coming true. Of course, many have gone before us over the years. Our first trip in 2019 was indeed epic, and over 7 weeks we toured up from the north in Tromsø to Olden in Justelsdalsbreen in the mid south.

Roll forward to 2025 and it was time to “finish off Norway” by exploring the region south of the Oslo-Bergen line.

There are, of course plenty of options for crossing into Norway. However with Schengen days at a premium for UK citizens and other 3rd Nation countries, finding the easiest and quickest entry point is important.

So for our return to Norway, we explored the quickest route to reach Hirtshals where we would pick up a ferry to Kristiansand. This is a popular ferry crossing that takes a mere 3.5 hours, so is a popular destination for visitors.

Tying up ferries in advance can be a bit daunting if you’ve not done the route before, so we hope that our experiences and the video we’ve pulled together, might help you both plan and navigate a route to Norway.

Our route across from England

Check out our video capturing our experiences as we travel to Hirtshals. Click on the image below to access it.

Having already booked up our sailing from Hirtshals, we were able to work back and decide on when we should leave the UK. With over 1000km (around 750 miles) we decided to allow three full days of driving. We are not travellers that enjoy driving long distances each day, although sometimes it serves a purpose. We also had ourselves a spare window on the day of our ferry departure, if we needed a bit more wiggle room, in case of unseen events.

So, we had two options for leaving the UK. Firstly we could do the English Channel route taking either the Eurotunnel or via ferry from Dover to Calais. There is one other option to consider, which was our chosen route, and for us, by far the better option.

Stena Lines sail from Harwich in Essex over to the Hook of Holland, a crossing that takes 7hrs. Our sailing cost us £445 return for a 7.5m motorhome and two adults. The price also included an upgrade to the Stena Plus Lounge at £25 per person, per sailing. So you could choose to save yourself £100 on the cost of the sailing price with standard seating. Plus if you have a Tesco Clubcard, then you can use your points towards the cost of the ferry. We didn’t on this crossing, although we did use them for our Ireland to Pembroke crossing in the spring and saved a lot of money. In fact we only had to pay £50.

We stayed at Kahana, a great Caravan and Motorhome Club CL in Bradfield near Manningtree, which left us with just a 20 minute journey to the ferry port at Harwich for our 9am sailing. The whole embarkation and disembarkation process was one of the simplest and least stressful of all the ferries we have taken in our full time life on the road. And the ferry itself? Well it was incredible. Although the public space is only one deck, it is huge and offers more than enough seating options. The staff are incredibly well selected and the food was significantly above the basic standard you normally get on ferries. A relaxing sailing across to the Hook of Holland saved us not only miles of travel from Calais, it also saved us time too. We reckon a good half a day, if not more. For us, this was an excellent route to take and one we would do again in a heart-beat.

TOP TIP; take the Harwich ferry and save yourself some time.

Hoek van Holland to Herzlake 3.5hrs and 300km

We arrived in Holland at 1730 giving us a good three hours worth of travelling under our belt. We hadn’t accounted for this when we booked our Hirtshals ferry. Given we had had 7 hours resting, we were happy to commit to splitting the driving and getting through The Netherlands for our first overnighter. I had found a Stellplatz just 40 minutes across from the border and so we headed for that.

The journey was predominantly on Dutch motorways, which I had before time just checked to make sure that they neither tolls nor taking us through LEZ areas. There are two en route; Rotterdam and Utrecht although the motorways bypassed the city areas where the zones are applicable. So we were good to go.

TOP TIP Sunday is a really good day to travel in The Netherlands and Germany particularly as lorries are not allowed to travel. You will see loads of parking areas full to the brim with lorries waiting for their Monday morning release date. There’s no doubt that it saved some stress and perhaps some time as well. We have had experience, in Germany particularly with the inside lane just being wall to wall lorries and it doesn’t make for a comfortable journey.

As we crossed the Dutch/German border, we had quite a slow moving traffic moment. When we realised it was a temporary German immigration border, we understood why. We simply drove by slowly as they kept a look out for illegal immigrants coming into the country. Once it was passed, the traffic moved freely again.

Herzlake is a lovely town and the free Aire is part of the Sport’s Complex. There must be a good 20 spaces and there are services here too. It was busy when we arrived, although we understand that it is part of the Pentecost holiday fortnight, which is perhaps part of the reason.

Herzlake to Flensburg via Wischhafen Ferry 350km

Travelling on a weekday in Germany is certainly very different than over a weekend, a Sunday particularly. Leaving the Aire early doors, the lorries were already back to back, thankfully going in the opposite direction. Anyway we had a long day ahead of us to reach the Danish border.

In 2019 we stumbled upon the Wischhafen Ferry which crosses the busy Elbe river. The alternative is to travel around Hamburg, which is notoriously busy, with roadworks and traffic jams. Whilst it might save an hour driving time, the stress would increase potentially on that route. And when you have the chance to take a cheap ferry as part of your journey, it makes total sense to us. It also breaks up the driving and gives you both a rest. So it’s a win-win every time.

Now a word of caution. There can be big queues for this popular roll on roll off ferry. Last time, we stayed overnight at one of the cheap parking areas and took an early morning sailing, so we didn’t encounter any queues. This time around, we had a good hour’s waiting time. However, it was at lunchtime, so we made use of our time well and the hour passed by very quickly.

There are four ferries operating the river and so in an hour, two ferries clear the queues pretty quickly. Depending upon the number of lorries crossing, the ferry can take around 30-40 vehicles, so waiting time never feels too long. This trip it cost us €32 for a 7.5m motorhome and 2 people. It’s a €10 increase on 6 years ago, which isn’t too bad in the scheme of things.

Embarkation is easy and without issues for motorhomes and you can either stay in your van or go up on deck. It takes about 20 minutes to cross the Elbe and is a really pleasant way to break up the journey north into Germany. We did a video of our crossing in 2019, which you can watch here.

Our onward journey took us straight up to Flensburg which is just a couple of miles from the Danish border. It does look like a nice city, on paper, although after over 5 hours on the road, we were tired and just want to rest and not explore. However, the Stellplatz we had chosen at the Citti Park, was absolutely rammed and so we, together with many others, resorted to parking on the roadside. We were able, however to avail ourselves of their services the next morning, which was helpful.

Flensburg to Brønderslev, Denmark 320km

It was a delight to cross the border into Denmark and we had forgotten how very peaceful, calming and beautiful the country is. We had 3 weeks touring around Denmark in 2019. Such was our love for the country and its diversity, that we vowed we would return. However, this trip, we were just blasting through.

TOP TIP; if you can make time to explore Denmark and its beautiful rolling countryside that reminds you of home, then please try to build it in. There is a temptation to drive through it en route to a Norway ferry, as we did on this trip, although it really does deserve a little more investment of our time.

In what seemed like a really easy and quick journey, taking the back road Route 13, we arrived at our free Aire in the small commune of Brønderslev. Not only was there bags of space, they had services as well, which was an added bonus. We had been recommended to come here because of the Rhododendron Park, which is just a five minute walk away. Even at the beginning of June, there were still plenty of blooms flourishing in the park. It was a much needed stretch of the legs after a few days sitting.

Anyway, THE most important factor of arriving in Brønderslev is that we had arrived a whole day and a half ahead of schedule. In fact if you look at it more scientifically, we had arrived by lunchtime on Tuesday and didn’t sail until lunchtime on Thursday, so you could argue that we had 48hrs to spare. We were delighted with our progress.

I had always thought that you needed to allow up to 5 days to cross Europe up to Hirtshals, whether for the Iceland ferry or the Norwegian crossing. We have proved that is not the case. We did it (minus the 30 minutes to the port) in less than three days.

With time to spare, don’t miss these

If you can build in time to check out these two fine examples of Danish delights then we don’t think you would be disappointed. We hopped on over to Løkken, just 20 minutes drive away where there is a campsite and camper parking site. For 250DK (£28) you can stay in the grassy campsite. Alternatively you can park on gravel in the camper area for just 150 (£17). You can pay 50DK (£5.50) for EHU if you wish and services are also extra. However it suited us for a rendezvous with friends and more importantly a short walk down to one of Denmark’s exquisite beaches. Not only will you be rewarded with golden sand and dunes, many of them are strewn with remnants from WW2 and the German bunkers that lined the Atlantic Coast to defend their seized territory from the Allies. It’s a fascinating spectacle and well worth adding to the itinerary.

A second place you cannot miss, and you can also stay overnight at is the Rubjerg Knude Lighthouse. Built between 1899 and 1900 this is famous not just because it is still standing, because it is slowly relinquishing its position to the sea. There were predictions when we first came to visit, that by 2023 the lighthouse would have disappeared, although we were pleased to see that a preservation order had been put in place to salvage this historic monument. In the summer of 2019 they moved the lighthouse back by 70m securing its future until 2060. The northern most car park is now open for overnighting, which I have updated in Park 4 Night.

After that little interlude, it is just a 30 minute drive up to Hirtshals ready for embarkation of our third ferry in four days. We sailed with Colorlines, although you could also go with Fjordlines too. They operate both a catamaran and ferry. Our crossing cost us €267 one way for our motorhome plus 2 people. It was an excellent ship, more like a cruise liner than a ferry and within 3.5hrs we had arrived safely in Kristiansand.

TOP TIP; download the Custom Toll App for entry into Norway with excess alcohol. Whilst you are allowed duty free limits, any excess has to be paid for. Whilst we weren’t checked at Customs, we have heard stories of searches of vans, so we decided to be very transparent about the little excess we had brought into the country.

And that is our epic drive from Harwich in Essex across The Netherlands, Germany, Denmark and across to Norway. In just 2.5 days we covered 750 miles and had a day and a half to spare. So if you are planning on Norway anytime soon, then we hope this has been helpful. Check out our video for more information.