A nostalgic, 1,350 mile trip featured ‘wild camping’, plenty of food stops and reminiscing about decades past

The simulator jolts forward at an alarming angle as my daughter, Kate, “takes off” for a 100km per hour ski jump at Holmenkollen, Norway’s national ski jumping arena. I chuckle, watching her reaction on a monitor screen. Thankfully, she’s laughing, too.

I tried the same experience 18 years ago, while on a motorhome tour of Scandinavia with my three children. I know that what follows is a VR version of downhill skiing. The simulator jolts violently again, this time from side to side. “I don’t think I’ll be taking up elite skiing,” says Kate, as she exits the pod.

“Ready for lunch?” I ask, as she looks at me, her face a little pale.

For twenty years, my three children and I (their dad could rarely come with us) took many European road trips in our family motorhome – we visited 26 countries over those two decades.

Covid lockdowns stopped our tours and, by the time the hiatus had ended, the children seemed too adult for family adventures. I continued touring, in a smaller campervan, on my own.

When I mentioned to the family that I was departing for an eight-week adventure in Scandinavia, my eldest’s reaction indicated a fear of missing out. “I want to go,” said Kate, 26, who had moved out of the family home weeks earlier.

She’s not alone in feeling nostalgic. Research for Jet2holidays found that 71 per cent of people surveyed had returned to places they visited as a child. Kate followed their lead and booked a flight to Oslo.

She met me a week before I was due back in the UK, so we could spend the final few days of my campervan trip touring together, “like old times”.

I did all the driving; Kate is not insured to drive my campervan. I find the roads on the continent much easier (and generally quieter) to drive on than the UK’s, and certainly freer of potholes.

Overnights were adventurous. It’s possible to camp off-grid legally in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, as long as you leave no trace. So, we did just that, staying in my little campervan at different “wild” locations, often with fabulous sea views.

Provider: Caroline Mills: caroline@carolinemills.netCaroline driving in the old family motorhome in the Tatra Mountains in Poland on a previous trip (Photo: Caroline Mills)

I snore when I’m in deep sleep (apparently; I couldn’t possibly comment), but Kate brought earplugs in anticipation. With it staying light well into the evening, we didn’t go to bed until late. I was up earlier than Kate, so personal space for getting dressed or changed wasn’t really a problem, as, by the time Kate was awake and getting up, I’d already be out and about.

En route, we had some fabulous chats reminiscing about old times and past road trips, including an earlier tour of the Baltic States and Scandinavia when Kate was eight years old.

Scandinavia has changed since that motorhome tour 18 years ago – or maybe it’s that the UK has. Then, food and eating out seemed prohibitively expensive; I could barely afford to feed the kids while we travelled in the region. Today, it’s no more expensive to eat at a restaurant in Norway, Sweden, or Denmark than it is to dine at somewhere of a similar calibre in my native Cotswolds.

At Frognerseteren, a café in Oslo, for example, a hearty dish of homemade Norwegian meatballs with cabbage stew (tastier than it sounds), new potatoes, vegetables, and lingonberry sauce costs £15. In the Cotswolds, a main lunch dish such as a classic burger and fries tends to start from £18.

As dining out was more affordable than we had expected, our trip turned into a foodie tour as we travelled through Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, and France for our return home.

Provider: Caroline Mills: caroline@carolinemills.netCaroline’s children (left to right) Kate, Dominic and Lara on a trip in Poland (Photo: Caroline Mills)

The ski jump arena at Holmenkollen, a northern suburb of Oslo, was where Kate and I began our trip – after coffee and cake at Frognerseteren, a timber, chalet-style café a half-hour’s walk from Holmenkollen along woodland trails. The café has floral-decorated charm, good quality food, and views over the capital and Oslofjorden.

In Denmark, we dined at Værflets Madmarked, a street-food market in a former harbourside warehouse overlooking Kronborg Slot (“Hamlet’s Castle”) in Helsingør. A visit to Copenhagen included shopping in the elegant food halls of Magasin du Nord, Denmark’s equivalent of Paris’s Galeries Lafayette.

It was while travelling through Germany that we chanced upon a road sign for Karls Erlebnis-Dorf (translated as “village experience”) near Lübeck, and it was a no-brainer to make a stop. While on one of our family motorhome tours years earlier, we had visited another Karls (there are seven throughout Northeast Germany). The chain is strawberry themed: everything – jam, sweets, drinks, cakes – is made with strawberries. It was literally a nostalgic taste of summer.

Provider: Caroline Mills: caroline@carolinemills.netCaroline’s children (left to right) Dominic, Lara and Kate on a childhood trip (Photo: Caroline Mills)

In the Netherlands, we stopped in Nuenen, “Van Gogh’s Village”. He lived here, and it was here that he painted what’s considered his first masterpiece, The Potato Eaters. We dropped in at the Van Gogh Village Museum, which offers a fun introduction to the artist. Opposite, we discovered artisan chocolatier Maurice Daamen at work, creating chocolates based upon famous Van Gogh paintings like The Sunflowers and Almond Blossom.

Maurice recommended a good restaurant nearby – De Watermolen van Opwetten – a watermill once painted by Van Gogh and now a venue worthy of a road trip.

On the final night of our trip, in France, we visited the attractive canalside Westhoek Brasserie. The microbrewery in Bergues serves delicious homemade beers straight from the barrel alongside sharing platters of charcuterie and cheese; an attraction that’s easier without three under-tens in tow.

Our week’s road trip was over in a flash. But our 1,350-mile drive provided a great opportunity for meaningful girly chats, to reminisce, and to spend quality time together.

How to do it

Kate’s one-way flight from Heathrow to Oslo cost £60.

Caroline used her own campervan.  

For campervan hire from the UK, with European cover available, The Motorhome motorhomeholidaycompany.com has prices from £155 per night. For campervan pick-up in Oslo, roadsurfer.com has prices from €219 per night.