Norway - A Summary and Final Costs - Taking the Long Way Home %

So finally we have finished blogging about Norway. This was an epic trip, one that we had been planning for years but one that had always been postponed.

General Impressions

Norway may be our favourite country yet.

Was it worth the wait? I think so. We’re less worried about costs these days so the expense of Norway didn’t put us off in the way it might have done a few years ago. The distances were easier in our new van, which is more nimble so we can travel further in shorter times.

People have asked us about out favourite places in Norway but it’s so hard to pick things out. The truth is that pretty much the whole country is beautiful and offers many spectacular outdoor experiences. Some honeypot areas may see a lot of social media activity, but social media eats it’s own tail. Step away from those honeypot destinations and you’ll find just as much beauty and quieter too. There are a fair few outdoor activities that need to be booked with an operator i.e. boat trips, husky sledding. If we had been in the right places for whale watching then we would have definitely jumped on a trip. Some of the things that stick in our memory are:

If you’re looking for things to do that don’t involve getting out in the great outdoors then there are a scattering of options, but you need to plan a little harder to make sure you get to them at the right time (ie when it’s just too miserable to be outdoors). There are some very good museums (some less good), churches and other historic buildings, WWII related sites and Sami cultural events, but if you’re out in the sticks you can go miles before you find anything of that type. Some of our favourite museums:

We rarely ate out in Norway. When we did it was much more coffee (or tea in my case) and cake than dinners. We did do a lot of cooking, supermarkets offer a great range of foods from all sorts of cultures including traditional Norwegian foods. I’m not that keen on eating whale and the idea of lutefisk is not all that appealing, but we did try smoked lamb ribs, reindeer, brown cheese, lompe and lefse to name a few. We also had a great time foraging for all sorts of berries. Trying cloudberries for the first time as well as picking bilberries, lingonberries and raspberries.

Norwegians are said to be a very reserved people, which suits us to be honest, but we found that when we met Norwegians in the great outdoors they were friendly and helpful. Some even waxed lyrical about their part of Norway and places to go on hikes or our bikes. We learned a few Norwegian phrases but most people we met spoke excellent English, and those that didn’t spoke much better English than I speak Norwegian.

Money Matters

As usual we have added up our spending for the trip and are happy to share it with you. The usual disclaimer applies. Everyone is different and your spending will be different than ours, but with the explanations below it might help you work out a budget.

Holidays

This figure covers the major expenses of our trip. These included:

£1888.28 on fuel taking us 12213 miles from home to home, approx 15.5p per mile (this is not exact as we have a diesel heater which would have also consumed some fuel).
- Due to the good exchange rate we thought that fuel was roughly comparable to UK prices, although it was very variable and difficult to predict prices at different locations on different days.
- Every fuel station we used was pay at pump. Fuel stations were sometimes manned but that seemed to be more for selling pølsa and other snacks rather than anything food related.
£52.29 on Gas
- As we have a diesel heater we don’t use much gas. We topped up 5 times during our journey just because gas is hard to find so we topped up when we could.
- Gas prices were expensive compared to the UK but sadly I didn’t capture how many litres we filled up so I cant say how expensive.
£888.14 on Overnight locations
- This was over a total of 88 nights, averaging £10.10 per night.
- We found camper stops in Norway were relatively expensive compared to France. But many had additional facilities such as washing machines, toilets and showers. Our most expensive stop was in Trondheim – £48 for the night with just basic facilities (ie water and waste disposal) was poor value.
- The more touristy the area, the more expensive the overnight parking (as you would expect), and the fewer options for off grid parking. As usual we pay for overnight parking if we want to visit that area, we wouldn’t miss out on somewhere we really want to be just for the sake of a few £.
- The average was bought down because of the large number of opportunities to park in free locations. We paid for 39 nights out of our 88, so the average price for paid parking was £22.78.
119.78 for Travel Insurance
- We have a Nationwide bank account which provides travel insurance but we have to pay a top up for any trip longer than 30 days.

Transport

This figure covers the non fuel transport costs for the trip:

£96.11 on Road Tolls
- We used a toll tag for our trip which gives a discount. There are only a few toll roads and we thought the costs were pretty reasonable and wouldn’t worry about trying to avoid the toll roads.
£35.45 on Daytime Parking
- There were a few spots where we had to pay to park during the day. These were few and far between, usually when the parking was on privately owned land but also occasionally in city centres. Read the parking signs carefully as sometimes parking is only due between certain hours.
19.92 on Public Transport
- These were our travel cards in Oslo
£755.24 on Ferries
- Given the number of ferries we used; Dover/Calais, Denmark/Norway, and 14 internal ferries we thought this was very reasonable. Our toll tag was linked to Autopass for Ferje which gave us a discount on the internal ferries.

Home

The full £1882.52 was spent on groceries
- This included our booze spends at the Vinmonopolet and anything else, i.e. toiletries, that we bought at supermarkets.
- £21.40 per day on groceries is a significant spend but actually we spend approx £16.60 a day when we’re at home so we are just big spenders on groceries. I need to stop feeling so apologetic about it, we like our food. We knew that groceries would be expensive and we budgeted for it. As we were not eating out much we decided that we wouldn’t stress ourselves by price watching at the supermarkets. You could definitely eat cheaper by sticking to budget supermarkets (ie Rema 1000) and eating a more vegetarian diet)

Enjoyment

This covers all of our ‘going out’ costs

£185.19 on activites
- This includes money spent on Paul’s shiny things for fishing, lift passes for a day of mountain biking and the Sjoa Via Ferrata.
£250.43 on eating out
- Mostly cakes, but also a couple of meals, snacks and drinks stops.
£225.05 on entry fees for museums and exhibits
- Unlike some other countries, all museums had an entry fee. We visited seven museums, one cathedral and Polar Park.

Bills

This was the £279.86 we spent on mobile data over and above our phone contracts. As I was working we needed a fair bit of data. We paid for a 100GB Popit mobile sim which we use in our Huawei hot spot for my work, and a 100GB Saily e-sim which we used from Paul’s phone for leisure purposes. With our phones (30GB Lebara roaming allowance and 14GB 1p mobile roaming allowance) this just about did. We only had a couple of occasions in the middle of nowhere where we had limited signal. If there was village close by you could rely on getting a good fast monile signal.

Appearance

£59.19 paid on laundry. This was 5 washes, the most expensive of which was our washing in Germany on the way home when we washed everything We found we did quite a bit of laundry, especially in the latter stages of our trip, because we got sooo muddy. Fortunately we found a lot of camper stops had free washing machines. It’s a great perk when the camper areas are quiet but I can imagine it being difficult to get a turn at the washing machine in peak season.

Norway – A Summary and Final Costs