🇳🇴 Norway Road Trip: 10 Essential Things You MUST know Before you go!

I've just spent four weeks road tripping around Norway looking for the most unique and beautiful places to share with you. In this video I'm sharing my top 10 tips for a Norway road trip and how to turn your adventure from good to unforgettable. I'll be sharing essential and practical things you need to know like navigating the tolls and ferries, seeing the northern lights, eating out, getting fuel and LPG, how to pay for things and the best times to visit. Are you ready? Let's dive on in. One of the biggest questions that I get asked about traveling around Norway is how you navigate the ferries and the tolls and it all seems quite daunting before you go. Whilst I completely appreciate and understand that, I promise that when you're actually there in country, it's a lot more straightforward. One thing that catches a lot of people out, including me, the first time I visited Norway, was just how many ferries there are in the country and a lot of the major roads have tolls as well. Now before you go, you need to register your vehicle on the Autopass system and you do that by choosing one of the companies that are affiliated with it. In the past I used Robiz, this time I went with Toll Tickets and you can register your vehicle both for the tolls and also on the ferries themselves, which gives you a discount for registering in advance, which we didn't have last time we went to Norway. So that made quite a big difference to the cost. If you want to know how much the whole trip cost me, by the way, I'll leave the link in the notes for you. So on the ferries and the toll system, the way that it works, the tolls you just drive through, ANPR cameras pick it up, pick up your registration plate and then it is billed to the appropriate company who've got your card details on file and everything else. That's actually really straightforward. With the ferries, it's just as straightforward as long as you have registered in advance. That bit can be a little bit tricky and can take quite a bit of time. So make sure you have prepared enough time or you do it enough time in advance to get it all sorted. But once you're done, you literally just pull up at the appropriate ferry terminal. Now you might find several lanes. If they're numbered 1, 2, 3, you go to the lowest number that you can fit your vehicle onto. So for example, if number 1 is empty, you pull into number 1 and what they then do is they load them up by those lanes. So there's no point you parking in lane number 3 because everybody in lane 1 and 2 will probably get on and fill up the ferry before you. What then happens is you're supposed to, once that ferry has gone, is move everything over or somebody will come and put a marker there so they know on the next ferry they're starting from you. So it does take a little bit of time to get used to that. The other thing to be aware of is when you turn up at some of the ferries, sometimes they're like island hoppers or port hoppers. So they'll either stop at several places or two or more ferries might come to that point and then go off in separate directions. So you need to make sure that you are in the appropriate lane for the ferry that you want to go on. If you can't see big signs either above on like a rail thing above the actual pull-in place or written on the floor, then it's fine. It will just go to the one destination. I highly recommend, having made the mistake of assuming that the ferries were all open all year round, that you check in advance to make sure that the ferry is running at the time that you're visiting and also what time they finish because they do close overnight on most of the routes. So you can use NORLED website or the Wegvisen website to check and make sure when the ferries are running. But as you were just driving down the road, you will just turn up at a ferry port and then you literally just wait. So it's not a problem during the day, but if you are traveling a lot at night, you might want to plan your journey based on when the ferries are or are not running. Tip number two is to appreciate the speed limits. Now I find the speed limits are a lot lower or slower than they are in the UK, but they're probably about right if you were driving around places like Cornwall or the Lake District. What does tend to happen is sometimes the speed limits can be quite high, but if you are road tripping in a larger vehicle like a motorhome or campervan, you might not be going that fast. I mean sometimes it's like national speed limit on this tiny little winding road. I'm not doing that in a big vehicle. So you obviously have to drive based on what you are comfortable with, but you also need to appreciate that it's not always going to be as fast to get to places as you might be used to. Another thing to appreciate when you are road tripping around Norway is getting fuel and indeed getting LPG gas if you've got a motorhome or a campervan. I found the fuel stops and LPG stops to be plentiful, much more plentiful than in Sweden, but I still filled up when I was about 50 percent on each and actually because I did so much driving was sort of filling up every day or every other day at fuel stations. All of the fuel stations took card. I used a visa debit card all the way around without any problem whatsoever and I also used a physical card in the pay machines for the fuel stations, but I did use my contactless card most times when I was in shops or things like that. One thing to be aware of on some of the fuel stations is there can sometimes be a central payment terminal that you need to activate before you can fill up your vehicle. So sometimes it's just like they are in the UK where you can pull in and you've got the nozzle right there and then you've got the card machine right there. Very rarely did you pay in the store. It was pretty much always pay at the machine and so you generally had to put your card in, put your pin in, select the type of fuel that you wanted to fill up with and then you take your card out and you fill it up. If you want a receipt you then have to go back and repress the receipt button after you filled up, but sometimes there is a central sort of payment column usually at one end or the other and sometimes based on where you're parked it can be quite hard to see. So you might have to walk around the whole thing and on that one you put your card and put your pin in, select the pump, then you select the type of fuel that you want and then you pay and then you have to go back and ask for a receipt if that's what you want to do. So it can be a bit tricky at first to sort of figure that all out but once you've got it it's really straightforward. LPG, I found that they took the UK connector most of the time or I should probably say about 50% of the time it was just the straight like connector so you didn't need to put any adapter on it and then the other times it was the big disc that was fitted on there so you connected on the big disc first and then you refilled up your gas assuming of course that you had refillable gas bottles not exchangeable ones. Next thing to know is about the wild camping rights and the right to row especially if you've got a motorhome or a camper Now Norway is one of these magical places where you actually have got rights to park up wherever you want as long as you're not causing an obstruction or as long as you're not you know parking too close to a building it's 150 meters and you're not making any noise and definitely don't leave any waste or rubbish. It's one of the cleanest countries so please please respect it as you go around but it does mean that you can stay in some incredible places for absolutely nothing. It really helps to make sure that you've got a vehicle that is self-contained so that you can enjoy these places and make the most of being in this incredible country. If you are road tripping by a car you could also stay in your car if your car is set up to do that but if not there are some wonderful wonderful places they have like these um I found these bird boxes and like mini box hotels that like in the hillside that have got these incredible views drove past a few of them but that might be quite fun to stay in and but I'll leave some of the links for them in the notes if you are doing a road trip rather than a motorhome trip and then you can make use of them or even to be fair if you're in the van and want to stay somewhere different then you might want to stay at one of them for a night on your trip but yeah the making the most of the wild camping or wild parking rules is one of the best things about touring around Norway. I should mention actually while we're talking about that inside the national parks and Norway's got several national parks there are separate rules or restrictions and you might find that a lot of the parking areas inside the national park have got big no overnight parking signs and things which is a shame but it is there to protect the national park so please do obey them and there's plenty of other places that you can find. Whilst we're talking about the national parks Norway have got a fantastic series of scenic routes that go throughout the country they're like tourist routes that have been set up very similar to like the NC500 or the Wild Atlantic Way and these routes generally go through places like the national parks or some of the most scenic areas. A couple of my favourite ones that I visited were obviously the Atlantic Road which is actually quite short I was surprised by how short it was but just the scenery was magnificent. Another one that I really enjoyed was Blue Mountain to the Rondane or Rondane however you pronounce that national park that was fantastic and one of the most famous roads in Norway is Trollstigen which is Troll's Ladder which is the one that snakes up and down the mountain however they have had a series of rock falls recently it was closed for the rest of 2024 so I didn't get to drive it whilst I was there I don't know when it's going to reopen so make sure you check that but if you can't drive that which I obviously couldn't if you keep going towards Goranger there's one called the Eagle Road which again has got a lookout and then it's very very similar road but you've actually got a fjord that you're overlooking so the views are way nicer than they are in Trollstigen so that is a really good second choice if you have to do that one instead. Another tip that I highly recommend that you work with is listening or watching the weather forecast and being aware of the road conditions now obviously this will vary depending on what time of year you visit Norway but even in the summer last time I went up to Norway three weeks in July it rained pretty much every day or at least for part of every day so even if you go in the summer you've got no guarantee of dry or clear weather it's really important to be aware of things like the rain but also the wind because it is so mountainous the winds can be really really strong and I had a couple of storms whilst I was up there which weren't all that pleasant to endure in a motorhome so make sure you know they're coming so you can get somewhere ideally quite sheltered and park so you can face on into the wind the nice thing is if you know a storm is coming you have got time hopefully to find a sheltered area and hopefully away from the wind you can park into the wind and you can get yourself all set up before it hits that leads me very nicely on actually to the best time to visit Norway and depends a lot on what it is you want to achieve I very specifically pick September October time because that is the start of northern light season obviously to see the northern lights it needs to get dark enough to see the northern lights and it only really starts to get dark enough sort of in September coming into October and then all the way through until about April is the best time to see them once you hit sort of the main summer period you get things like the midsummer sun which is incredible I was lucky enough to experience that when I was up in Iceland last year and actually the sun doesn't really set which means you get loads of time to explore and to do your driving and everything else but you won't be able to see the northern light so it does very much depend on what you want to achieve or see when you're over there if you are looking specifically for the northern lights there are a couple of apps that I recommend one is called the Glendale app the other one is just called Aurora and there was also one called Aurora forecast which was quite good as well the thing I like best about them is it can tell you the Glendale one was really good you have to a little bit of research of reading all about it once you're in there to understand what all the numbers mean but it can tell you when there's been like a solar flare which means there's lots of energy or whatever the technical terms are that make the northern lights brighter but it can tell you when that's happening it can tell you when they're expecting good northern lights and also you'll tend to find that a lot of the good displays happen in the one o'clock to four o'clock right in the middle of the night unless you are crazy which I was a couple of nights and stay up just hoping that they might happen the best way to know that happening is to use the alerts on the apps so you can actually um they'll beep and they'll tell you northern lights is coming now if like me you go to sleep headphones in or something like you're listening to calm or an audio book or something it will actually break through and you can set the beat to be quite loud even if you're on sleep mode so you can actually know that the northern lights are happening and above you the other nice thing I like on one of the app I think it's the Glendale app you can actually see when people have seen it um so I was actually up in Norway couldn't or Sweden I think it was couldn't see the northern lights at all and everyone in the UK was like oh I've got the northern lights this is amazing I'm like oh that's rubbish but it did get much better and I was able to enjoy them for lots afterwards so it was worth it in the end so let's talk about shopping and eating out alcohol to be fair now food is expensive up in Norway there's no getting around that it is the equivalent of your basic stuff is probably the equivalent of shopping at Marks and Spencer's and then the nicer stuff is up from there it is very expensive but you can make the cost of traveling in Norway a little bit cheaper and one if you are traveling with your own cooker like you would in a motorhome or campervan then obviously eating in your own vehicle is going to save you a lot of money the things that seem to cost the most are alcohol surprise surprise they've got a big tax on alcohol also be aware that their drink driving laws are way lower than the UK so whilst you could possibly have a glass or a pipe and then drive in the UK you definitely can't in Norway so make sure you don't fall foul of that you also need to be aware that you can only buy alcohol from very controlled outlets cool I'm going to read this make sure I get it right Vin Monopoly and that's a state-run shop for limited opening hours and that's where you can get wine and beer from and so you won't find it in the same way that you do in supermarkets and things it's not quite as easy to buy as you might be used to talking of buying things what's the best way to pay in Norway I like I say spend about four weeks about a month touring around Norway did not use cash once not a single time it didn't get any cash out didn't travel with any of it nothing I used my card the whole time and that was both the visa debit and then I used my contactless now I have a bank called Starling which I opened an account for and I use it for traveling and there were no exchange fees for using that overseas I've used it all around Europe and it has been absolutely brilliant so all I do is I just transfer some money in there and then use that whilst I am shopping so I recommend you do something like that there are a couple of them that you can use but I've only got personal experience with Starling and I can say I really recommend doing that but you don't need a lot of if any at all of cash the only time I've heard you might need a little bit of cash is at some of the campsites they have coin operated showers now if the reception is open then you can obviously get tokened or the coins from the reception and you'll be able to buy them using your card they're very very friendly and quite accommodating people especially in sort of touristy areas like campsites and things but if you aren't visiting when the receptions are open you might not be able to use the showers if you don't have coins you might want to think about that one thing I did was when and if I needed to use campsites which I didn't use all that often was I just went with the ones that have got like free or included showers or where it says you can the best place that I found if you look on like park for night you can find where showers are so I never actually used them in campsites once I discovered this because you can pay like five or fifty knocks it's about five pounds and you'll go in to one of the circle K garages you'll get a key you can pay for it by card and they are spotless absolute spotless with loads and loads of hot water so you don't have to worry about keep feeding coins into a or anything like that and then they also had a couple of hiking cabins which you could do exactly the same thing so you could pay with your card select the shower you wanted and then you just got hot water it was brilliant absolutely brilliant so if you are traveling around by motorhome or campervan and don't really want to worry about campsites too much that's a great way of getting showers on your vehicle now campsite and facilities are going to be pretty much what you're used to in the UK all the ones I stayed at were lovely even in sort of outside peak season sometimes they weren't even open as proper campsites they were just there as like airs or parking spaces sometimes they had a guy that came around or a person I don't know where the mail um but a person that came around between like 6 and 7 p.m which I found quite annoying because if you wanted to go out exploring or you wanted to go out for dinner or something like you had to make sure that you were there on site between whatever time they were coming around to pay so a little bit restricting what you might want to do but overall the facilities and the number of places that you could stay was fantastic you really can't fault Norway for the facilities that it puts in for motorhomers or campervans so that's it my 10 essential trips for road tripping around Norway I hope you found it useful I mentioned several links and things in the video I will leave all of that in the show description for you and I'll also include the link to the breakdown on how much the entire trip cost me spoiler it was not cheap if you'd like to know more about mistakes to avoid when you visit Norway on your road trip you'll find my next video really helpful if it has not already been released yet make sure you're subscribed and you click the little notification bell that will tell you when the video does get released as always thank you for watching and I'll see you on the next video again bye