🚀 11 countries, 50 days, 5000 miles (ish!) This will be an adventure!v

I posted a reel on Instagram a couple of days ago that has gone semi-viral, well certainly viral for me. Look at that, it's got like 184,000 views which is insane and it's basically the plan of my trip for Sweden and a bit of Finland and then coming back down through Norway kind of bit of the route and I've had so many questions about it and so many people offering advice which I'm really grateful for and just so many questions mainly about how to make this map and stuff. I'm going to share with you how to make this kind of map but I'm also going to share with you a little bit more insight into my trip and also how I've gone about planning such long trips and a lot of people have asked me about that. So I'm going to share the video in a little bit but let me just first talk you through the trip. So the first couple of days in the trip are actually the first European adventure for the Wandering Motorhome Club which is my little membership club and I'm taking 10 members, well actually more than 10 members because it's 10 vans, so I think it's about 18 members and people who have never been to Europe before so we're going on a sort of an inaugural trip and a little hand-holding thing and I've been giving them loads of advice, loads of tips on what they need to do before we go. For us we're going tomorrow but when this goes out we'll probably be day one or day two into the trip so you can follow along with that on Instagram or on Facebook if you're on either of those. But yeah so we're doing a crossing across to Dunkirk and then we're doing a night in Belgium in Ypres, we're going to go to the Meningate Ceremony, then two nights in the Netherlands and then I'm taking them to an air in Germany just to show them how airs work and how they can use and find them for the rest of the trip and then lots of them are being brave and going off and doing further adventures in Europe which I'm really excited about. So that's going to be the first part of that trip and then straight after that I'm going across and I'm going to go across from Germany to Sweden and then driving up through Sweden, a bit of Finland and then back down through Norway. So let me just cross over on, I've had to film this in two windows because Instagram apparently blocks you from filming your face whilst you're on Instagram so we're on two different windows here but let me just change this, oh there we go, there's my face again, let me put that in there, right cool. So what I've done here, this is Wilder Trips which is my favourite road trip planning software, it is just fantastic and what I've done, so I started off putting the fixed points on my trip here, so obviously we've got a ferry crossing from Rostock which is here in northern Germany, crossing to cross to Trelleborg, so that was an overnight crossing, booked that in and we've got a cabin and Mac is going to stay in the motorhome so it's like 10pm to I think it's like 7.30 in the morning so he'll be absolutely fine as long as he's had a good walk and an empty beforehand. So that's what we're going to do there, crossing over that bit which I'm really quite excited about, even though it's going to be mostly dark, we won't be able to see much but that'll be quite a fun bit of sea to explore and then I had a few other fixed points which are mostly airports because my partner Adam's flying in and out, so I've got a date that I've got a bit of Stockholm airport to drop him off so he's flying back, so he's with me for this first week and then I drop him off and I've got two and a bit weeks of solo travel just me and Mac and we're going to go all the way up through Sweden, bit of Finland, up to Norca, all on our own and then we've got him back at Tromso by a certain date, he's then with me for another few days and we're going to go down to Bergen, I've got to drop him off at Bergen and then I'm doing the trip all the way home which as you can see from this I haven't planned. So what I did on the trip was I planned in the set points, so obviously 20th September we cross to Trelleborg and then when we get to wherever it was Stockholm which I've just one passed, Stockholm's on a certain date obviously Tromso's then on a certain date, so I put them in. Then what I did was I started doing my research for places that I wanted to see and I've been really grateful actually because when I did the Instagram post loads of people commented on places to visit and also on my Facebook page when I put that on I've had 70 comments which was lovely but a lot of them have been really, really helpful, go here, visit here, this is a really cool place, this turns into a campsite overnight, really fantastic tips so thank you very much for those, I've incorporated as many as I can and I'm still working on incorporating some more. So the way that I build it out when I've got certain deadlines, I mean it's lovely to just meander and do it at your own pace but when you've got people flying in and out or you've got business commitments that you have to be back for a certain time, you sometimes do need to plan a trip to be at certain points at a certain time or if you've got an event, if you're traveling for a wedding or an event or a gig or something then you need to make sure that you can be somewhere. So this is how I do it, so like I said I've put in the fixed points, that was Stockholm and Tromso and Bergen for this so far and then I looked at how many days I had between them and what I've done then is I have put in the points that I really, really want to go and see. So I've got a couple of waterfalls, I've got a really pretty route that I've discovered, what's 12 Saarik National Park, this apparently here you've got Karuna and the Ice Hotel. I'm probably not going to go in the Ice Hotel although I don't know if you can go in for a day, I think I read somewhere you can go in for like a drink in the bar so if you can I definitely want to do that in fact. I'm going to just make sure if there is a Ice Hotel, that looks about right doesn't it. Now that has come up as being for a night trip, obviously I don't want it for an overnight but I'm going to do a place of interest there and then as you can see I obviously don't want it in that order so I'm going to do it that way round and then the last bit on my little stop there is Rovaniemi, I want to go and see Father Christmas so I'm going to come actually come back down a bit and do this bit through northern Finland. So I don't have any fixed points until I have to be at Tromso, so what I did was I so I have estimated that it will take me, I mean what is that, from Honnesværk which is a little town right next to Nordkapp and there's a lighthouse up there somewhere that somebody put in a comment and I definitely want to do that but it is about 300 miles or about eight and a half hours from up here to Tromso. It looks amazing doesn't it but it's all because it's teeny tiny little winding roads. So I have said eight hours okay I want us to maybe one or two days stop that, I might even try and get there the day before so I can have a couple of days there in case the weather's bad or something and then I'm giving myself, I don't think I've got to be in Tromso till the evening, I'm going to give myself two days and then I can stop and chill for the day and so actually let's do that while I'm talking about that so let's move them up so I want Dwayne to be there on around the 8th of October give or take. So then I'm working backwards so it's nine hours down to or up from Rovaniemi to up to Nordkapp that is probably about two days drive if you don't chill out so I'm going to see if I can allow myself three days so that is one, two, three, let's go there, Rovaniemi, Finland, I wonder if Santa is actually in Santa Roto, Arctic Circle, is that, oh Santa's Lapland experience is up there, didn't know that was there, how exciting, let's move that to there and the thing I love, absolutely love about wilder trips is you can see how far it is between point to point so that's four hours so if you don't go there let's go there and then from there to Nordkapp is about five hours so that's not bad actually that's that's probably around that time but I know that I have got all of that time then to get from there to there so I can delete that one and then it is five hours from the Corona Rise hotel to here so that's a couple of days and like I say I'm trying to do two days exploring and maybe one day sitting somewhere to enjoy but also just to recover to check up with emails to run wandering bird because it is a juggernaut that you can't really leave very long on its own now one thing I love is that you can just now insert a day before if you want to do that so I could then add one or two days in there and then what did I say on that one I think I said it was going to be there for the fourth I should have taken that to remove that day and remove that day which means I have to get to Tromso on a Saturday yes I had to check that I'd got all that right so there we go that's an easier way rather than moving them all the different spots you can now add and delete days which is brilliant and this is what I've been doing so like here to here that's nine hours that's not going to happen so what I can do is I can move that down a bit so it gives me two days to do that and that I mean I've probably got an extra day here that I don't really need but that's a nice thing I've given myself an extra day so if I find somewhere that I really want to explore I've got all that time and that's exactly what I'm going to do as you can see I haven't done most of the trip like down from Norway yet just Tromso I want to do Lofoten I think there's a ferry you can get from here so I need to do some more research into that and then we're going to do a fairly sort of quick whip down this bit because I want to do the Atlantic road and I want to do some more of the fjords so we are a little bit limited on time on that bit but we're going to do the best we can to move and sightsee at the same time and then I don't know what I'm going to do from Bergen I might catch the ferry back to Denmark, Hirtshals we're at the top here and I might go down to Stavanger and there's another ferry that you can do or I might drive it all the way around but that's a lot of driving that I've done so far I'm going to see how I feel but hey although having said that we've got to be back in the Netherlands because we're going to do that's our last one on our alphabet challenge and I also want to do a part one in Sweden and a part one in Norway whilst I'm up there so I can tip them off the list but we're going to definitely do Zedd it's near Rotterdam so that's another fixed point that we want to be there and do on that one so that is the plan and it's coming together quite nicely there's lots of other comments and bits so if you do have any other comments or places that I should definitely see or campsites or airs or anywhere by all means drop them below I'm really really grateful for all of your suggestions because it's a lot of country to see and so liking to see the best bits like I try to do with you and share all my tips if you've got any tips for me please do share them and so that's that right now I am going to connect my phone and show you how to create that little map I'm going to have to disconnect this camera I think but I will see how I can do right so here we go I have got my phone up and here is how you do oh I've just got Starlink I've got to show you this because I'm really excited about it I've just got the Starlink mini I've not used it properly yet I've literally just got it a couple of well a couple of hours ago look at the size of it it's like the size of my face it's about an A4 sheet and it is like three kilos it's ridiculously light um so yeah this is this afternoon's job I'm going to go play with this finish this video and then I can go and play right let me show you how you use this stuff why does it say Tuesday the 9th on my phone it's definitely not Tuesday the 9th what's happened to my phone right worry about that later let me show you how to do this first and I worry about why my phone's gone insane right so you open this app it's travel boast I think it was free um but there was a small bit for premium which meant that you could download it um you could download it without anything so this game this is what I I created this is my map so let me start again so what you'll do is you'll put in your start point of say let's say London and then your end point just for the sake of argument let's do uh let's do Amsterdam just so it's there we go right so that is the start and the end point of your trip what you do then is you put your finger on the little orange line and you drag it to the various points that you want to visit now it doesn't they don't have to be exact as you can see it's absolutely not exact that was one of the reasons when I did it it sort of went out into the sea not planning on doing a huge amount of channel swimming but you know and then you can zoom out on your phone it's way easier on your phone than it is on a laptop and then you can just put some points in possibly that I'm going to put it to there because the light will hit it I'm going to come back there and then when you play it you can play you can change the video length so you can make it really really quick or you can make it really long you can change the size of the model you can also if you press the little ruler at the bottom there that shows you the distance you can press the little mark it looks a bit like Africa that shows you all the different flags and everything that you've got going through you can if you want to put on a frame and stuff I don't bother you can change the size so this one is obviously for YouTube or whatever you can do it for that this one is what I use for Instagram 916 or you can do 11 and then you can save it to camera roll but you can also if you want to if you push and hold your finger on the little car you can change it to a motorhome you can put some effects on so if you wanted an octopus or something so if you now go and see oh hang on go back if you play it there will be an octopus somewhere there we go with the sea whenever it's near the sea if you want to that's how you get but that's how you can do it and then you can download it to share on Instagram or Facebook or wherever you want to do it so another question I wanted to answer was how do you build up your confidence with driving and navigating at the same time the easiest one to that is get a decent sat-nav get a proper or leave a link to our sat-nav comparison post which just compared some of the main models on the market but getting a proper sat-nav really helps I tend to use the sat-nav alongside my phone um so that I can basically compare the routes and see if it's telling me the right thing but remember the sat-nav will have my vehicle dimensions in especially height whereas my phone doesn't so if I'm not sure I tend to listen to the sat-nav and that really helps me be able to drive and navigate at the same time if I'm not sure I just pull over and check the map it takes about 30 seconds I don't tend to use paper maps I tend to use my phone as a map and obviously then the sat-nav but if I'm not sure I'll just pull into a services pull into a lay-by pull in wherever somewhere safe where I can just check where I'm going make sure I'm not going in totally the wrong direction I've done that a few times it helps and I find that 30 seconds rather than having to reverse or turn around the van in a tiny narrow lane does really help too if you're not very confident on driving the only way you're going to gain confidence is to do it and I know that's frustrating I did do a whole video about building your confidence with driving and I'm going to do another video shortly on building confidence when you're traveling solo because that's a question I've been getting a lot lately so I will do a video on that but I will also link to the video on how you build up your basic confidence for driving a large vehicle like a motorhome because I do appreciate that it can be quite terrifying but that is going to be my trip to Sweden and Finland and Norway it's starting well it's probably started by the time you're watching this so you can follow along I'm going to try and do daily updates on Instagram and Facebook if signal allows hopefully it will with my new star link and then yes you can follow along on that I hope that helps you with a little map if you do make a little map using that by all means please tag me I want to see where you're off to or what your trip has been like and I will see you as soon as I can find a decent signal to start posting about all these adventures if you're not already following along now is an excellent time to subscribe and I'll see you on the next video take care bye