Graham Laing decided to retire 10 years earlier than planned to enjoy an epic driving tour with his SLC. The plan, inspired by conversations with his Father, was to drive the SLC from the southern most tip of mainland Europe in Spain to the northernmost tip of mainland Europe in Norway.
When he told his children, they said ‘you should write a blog about it’… So that’s exactly what Graham is doing. Graham approached the SLSHOP and asked whether we would be interested in hosting his work, and we were only too happy to share his story. The SLCenic Route was born!
In this episode Graham crosses from Denmark to Germany with the fuel light (almost) on
The SLCenic Route
Episode 30 – Aalborg (Denmark) to Bremerhaven (Germany) 375 miles
A long drive out of Denmark and into northern Germany. After a couple of weeks at much more northern latitudes, I had forgotten how hot the sun could be. Digging out the suntan lotion and my hat from 2 weeks of them slowly migrating to the bottom of a boot full of stuff reminded me how untidy I can be. I had also forgotten how boring Motorways were, so I split the journey into half motorways and half seeing the countryside.
The mainland part of Denmark (Jutland) is actually quite a pretty place full of small well-kept towns and villages. Denmark is famous for its pigs and although I didn’t see any farms, I did smell them, so it was windows closed for most of the journey.
Getting back to Germany did bring back one very pleasant memory, the price of fuel. Before starting out on the trip I did a google search on fuel prices round Europe and there are a number of useful websites. They allowed me to roughly know what to expect in each country and fill up accordingly. As Germany is in general much cheaper then Denmark, it made me test that the red low warning light worked on the fuel gauge. As I neared the border, it did, but the stress of running out of fuel in a foreign country without a spare fuel can wasn’t worth the savings.
Once crossing the Elbe it was obvious I was back in North west Europe again, roads were lined with deciduous trees, they may not have been the tall elegant tree lined avenues that I drove along all those days ago in Normandy, but gone were the pine forests of Scandinavia. And tonight was the first in many nights where I didn’t have to clean a million dead flying insects of the windscreen and headlights. The SLC needs a really good wash and polish, the miles are piling up and although I’ve been able to give it a quick wash every so often, the inside hasn’t had a hoover for nearly 10,000 miles. I definitely need to be more neat and tidy.
