I'm in Iceland and I'm here in a motorhome that I drove all the way from the UK and by far the
biggest question that I've been getting is how did I get here what was the route
and how much did it cost surprise it wasn't cheap so if you want to know how to bring
your car your motorhome your camper van your motorbike all the way from the UK or anywhere
else in Mainland Europe over to Iceland here's everything you need to know [Music]
hey guys I'm Kat from wondering word and right now I am in Iceland and I've been here for a few
days I've been sharing stuff on Instagram and Facebook and I shared a bit about the ferry and
what it was like on board and I've had so many questions about how you book it and everything
else so I wanted to go into that whole process a little bit more detail for you and also share
some tips and things that I discovered from having taken the ferry over and in fact I will give you
a complete cost breakdown on what the trip cost me and some tips that I've got to make things a
little bit cheaper for you when you go to book it up yourself so the only way to get to Iceland with
a vehicle from Mainland Europe is this Ferry and it's one ferry from Smule line I'm hoping that's
how you pronounce it called the Ms narona and it goes from hertzels which is right at the top of
Denmark across to see this fjorda something like that if anybody speaks Icelandic I'm really sorry
I'm about to butcher a heck of lot of names and probably Danish as well but you know I'll put the
names down on that so you know how this felt um but it goes all the way down to the east coast of
Iceland so not new Reykjavik near the east coast and that route goes once a week in the summer a
little bit less in the winter and it also does a brief stop at the Pharaoh Islands not long enough
for you to get off the boat so they're only in there for about an hour I think so you're not
allowed off to have a look around the town on the Faroe Island unless you've booked to stay there so
on the way back from Iceland I'm actually going to stop off in the Faroe Islands for two days so I'm
going to take the van off and have two days going around the Pharaoh Island and then get the ferry
back to Denmark so that's the route and that's how it works now because it was only one Ferry
a week it gets booked up crazy in advance and I recommend that you book as far Advantage as you
possibly can so I booked this trip I'm now here in June and I booked this trip I think it was
December last year so good six months in advance and there was plenty of space then however when
I needed to do a modification and I wanted to change my cabin I tried to lose that in March
it was full I wasn't able to do it so by March things had got really really full so at least
three to four months before you want to travel if you want to go on specific dates and how long does
it take it takes about two days so I left Denmark left her tools at 11 30 in the morning and arrived
in Iceland then got about nine o'clock 9 30 on the Thursday morning so two days later so just under
two days again with a quick stop in the Faroe Island in that time now when you book there are
some options that you'll have to choose obviously the vehicle that you'll be taking how many people
you'll be taking the cab type that you want and because it's a longer Journey you'll have to have
a cabin unlike when you get a ferry from the UK to France or whatever you don't necessarily need a
cabin you do on this trip I think I'm pretty sure you're not allowed to travel without booking a
cabin and then also there are options if you want to pre-book your meals and I'm going to talk about
that shortly but before I do that let's dive into the ferry itself and what it's actually like on
board so the ferry is 166 meters long it's about 36 000 tons and it carries I think it was about
1480 passengers and then on top of that it's got about 120 crew the facilities on board they're not
quite as Posh as a cruise ship if you're used to cruise ships but they are a heck of a lot
better than you might get on the the ferry from the UK to France so there are three restaurants
of different levels so there's like a cafeteria and then there is a buffet restaurant which is
where I had most of my meals and then there's a slightly more upmarket restaurant I don't think
we're open for breakfast I think they were just open for lunch and dinner on top of that they've
got loads of other facilities you can use so there is a gym and a swimming pool that's right down in
the bows of the ship down in deck one that was cool the swimming pool is massive it's more like
a plunge pool but it's big enough the gym had like a couple of treadmills and there were people on
there I accidentally used slo-mo so there's a cool action shot here of somebody doing that and then
um other facilities they have a kids playroom and a teen room and a kids football pitch like
enclosed football pitch with a ball provided they've also got hot tubs they've got three
Jacuzzi hot tubs with views outside you have to book those they've got a cinema with some
of the latest movies showing you had to book that but they weren't that fun to think of like
eight Euros for Ticket which wasn't that much and what other facilities do they have they've
got a library and like a restroom they've got a beautiful Cafe right on the top on Deck 10
with Incredible views but all inside they've got smoking area and they've got a helicopter
pad should you need to fly in on your private helicopter if you're gonna do that probably
just slide Outland but you know I booked a double cabin with a window and because I get a seasick I
wanted to have a window on my cabin and I didn't know double cabins were an option but they were
whatever I think
it's wardrobes hey great job for this so if you are a single person like I was you could
either order a twin room or you can order a double cabin and it would be better perfect
for starfishing it was great I had fantastic views out of that they've also got different
tiers they do have some shared cabins if you want to share them or they've got some
slightly more up Market ones I think they had a couple that had a balcony as well but they were
now my biggest fear when I booked this trip was the weather I get really badly seasick which as I
always say is ridiculous because I'm ex-navy and I lived on boats for 15 years you'd think I would be
over it but I'm not in fact it's getting worse as I get older and I was really really worried and I
don't quite know which gods I prayed to or who heard my call but it was like a Mill Pond this
is the North Atlantic and part of the North Sea I'm never entirely sure where the two meet but
hey and it's notoriously bad weather all year round I mean obviously it's worse in winter but
even the summer you are not you are not guaranteed to get nice weather and it was just unbelievable
like we came out of Denmark and it was just flat I was like surely the bad weather's going to hit
and at least the waves are going to kick in this was about half a meter waves and the ship will
go out in waves up to about eight meters they can have waves up like 13 or 15 meters in this
area apparently and the Ship Won't Sail when the sea state is that bad but even 8 meters that's
going to be a lot of rocking and rolling and sea bands a couple of things if you do get seasick
that work for me is the c-band with the pressure points you can get them from boots or Amazon or
whatever they're brilliant ginging up biscuits they work so so well for me or Ginger shops I
know somebody who takes these Ginger shots you can get them at Health Food Shops and stuff
um so if you take one of them before you go and then the other thing that works is just Studio
on sujon works really well for me I'm going to Antarctica next year um yeah the drink passage
which is another notoriously in fact worse it's the worst bit of sea in the world sailing from
South America over to Antarctica I'm really hoping my luck holds out but I don't too I was really
lucky of course not everybody is this lucky but it is just when it's lovely like that it was such a
fantastic trip and I could get into cruising this is Magic unfortunately it's not like that all the
time so let's talk about the castle I'm going to check my notes here to make sure that I tell you
the right things now I was traveling in a seven meter motorhome the Bailey Adamo that was uh given
to me by Bailey for the purposes of this trip so it's about the same size as my motone but if your
motorhome is over seven meters obviously it'll be a little bit more and again if you're under
six meters be a little bit less so I paid for one adult that was me and I paid for one return trip
with a seven meter motorhome and then I paid for a cabin with a window each way and then I paid for a
mini bar now I my theory with this was that drinks on board were going to be really expensive and the
minibar was 17 Euros which I know sound expensive but it had a range of drinks and a range of snacks
got four bottles of water and four cans of Fizzy Pop um I was like is there three or even two Euros
each that mini bars paid for itself so I booked that on both ways and actually I probably would
definitely do that again I paid a little bit extra because I'm doing a stopover in the Faroe Islands
on the way back I'm actually getting off the ferry with my motorhome I've got two days to go and
explore the Pharaoh Island and then get back on the next ferry and go back to Denmark now I didn't
know this was thing because I was like oh they've only got one Ferry a week and I couldn't spend a
week in the Pharaoh Island because of timings but they also do a ferry an extra Ferry from Denmark
to the Pharaoh Island and back again so as far as I understand it the ferry route goes Denmark
Pharaoh's Iceland pharaohs Denmark pharaohs Denmark and then it all starts over again I hope
that made sense but that's how they do it which means that you can stop in the farewell I think
I've got about two and a half days so you can actually do that and have a short stop there but
you do pay a little bit extra on the ferry cost now one thing I did do because I thought you had
to was pre-order my meals it turns out you do not have to pre-order your meals you can pay as you go
or you could bring food on board with you it's another good reason to have the minibar in all
fairness because you could bring bread and ham and cheese or whatever you wanted on board with you
and create your own lunch or just bring pre-made sandwiches or whatever that would last for a
couple of days you cannot take fresh food into Iceland but taking stuff onto the ferry to eat on
the ferry you can do I prepaid for two breakfasts two lunches and two dinners now the breakfast and
the dinners had drinks all inclusive so obviously breakfast was um fruit juices and teas and coffee
fees and water and whatever you wanted dinner had alcohol so I had wine had beer Spirits weren't
included if you're a big drink or you want two or three drinks with dinner you get bottles of
wine they will include some of them some of them were included I should say and then obviously
soft drinks were all included with dinner I think breakfast and dinner was worth pre-booking it was
slightly cheaper pre-booking it than if you did it on the ferry and you got the drinks included
and the breakfast was really really good there was a huge big Buffet cooked breakfast and then there
was hams and cheeses and pastries and croissants and toast and yogurts and fruit and all of this
stuff the breakfast was delicious and same thing for dinner the dinner buffet had a huge range of
different fish and cooked meats and cooked food and potatoes and vegetables and then add salad
bar massive salad bar with lovely huge range of dessert if they have the berry cheesecake oh
rough dreams about that Berry cheesecake it was delicious and then they had oh they also
have pancakes for breakfast I didn't have any but they did have them and what else do they
have oh they had like soup and they had loads of other things in the dinner stuff the one I regret
booking an advantage lunch now so lunch I paid 20 euros I didn't realize it didn't include drinks
why would it have been so difficult to include soft drinks for lunch and also so 20 euros but the
buffet it only covered a tiny tiny little Buffet car and a salad bar and don't get me wrong the
food was lovely and but there wasn't any variety from day to day it was the exact thing both days
which again it's only two days not the end of the world but what really frustrated me is in that
lunch one you could have got Bergen chips for 14 euros and you could have got I think a pizza was
about 16 euros and you could have got there was a huge range of other foods that you could have got
that were cheaper than the 20 euros for lunch and I would have been annoyed about that not annoyed
I was a bit that was a bit that I regretted the most because I probably would have had you know
a burger and salad or something like that rather than just the buffet again because I was having
a cook buffet for lunch and then a cooked buffet for dinner and it was all a bit samey so yeah if
I went again I wouldn't pre-book the lunch so here is the total of what the trip over there
cost me now one thing that a lot of people have said is surely it's cheaper to fly and drive so
let's look at this let's break this down so I've just opened three different websites here just
to give you an idea on what it costs to rent a campervan or a motorhome and obviously we're in
the middle of the busy summer period so loads of vehicles are already rented out so it wouldn't
give me prices I've had to adjust the thing so this one here with Indie campers are for next year
um Hertz was in October and this one in camper days is for September so it's not even the main
part of the summer which is June July and August but I just wanted to show you the reindeer the
prices and none of this is Affiliated I don't I'm not recommending any of these companies I'm just
showing you the prices from a quick search so you can get a tiny tiny little van that hasn't
got very many facilities at all over 100 pounds a night you can get um it goes up there with a
rooftop camper and all the way up they had a big motor home down here they've got a family
standard motorhome which sleeps for adults and has got a toilet and shower which for me I would
really want is 261 pounds a night and again this is in for three weeks in September this year so
that whole thing is 5491 pounds and I'm guessing because we all know what it's like when you rent
a vehicle there will be extras on top of that I've not looked into this I don't know that for
sure but that's just the base price a mode to home and it even goes up so you've got six seven there
for a slightly bigger one and then you've got a four by four vehicles which are 8 900 pounds for
three weeks then just looking at a comparison to hurt obviously got a huge range as well
um the motorhome manual so let's do that at today's exchange rate
is eight thousand seven hundred and eighty pounds so that's just under nine thousand
pounds for three weeks Ian that's in October that was well out of peak season and Indie
campers so they've got an atlas motorhome that is 163 pounds for the night so four thousand pounds
for three weeks next May to June um they've also got a bigger one there that's four four
and then they come down again so it depends on the level of comfort you'd want whether
you want toilets and showers whether you're happy with just an exterior shower
um and if you want to use toilets and showers on the different campsites it's up to you the
kind of van I just wanted to show you the price and how actually the ferry is not that crazy
expensive especially when on top of these prices you've got to look at flight then you'll have to
look at the fact that you've got to have all your stuff with you because obviously I think some of
them do come with bedding and basic pots and pans but if you want all of your other bits and pieces
especially for three weeks if you're coming for that long then you're gonna have to take
that into account when you are looking at booking your different options now of course I've gone for
three weeks I know a lot of people would want to go for shorter so of course if you're just going
to fly in and go for a few days or a week it will be absolutely cheaper to fly and drive but I just
wanted to give you a comparison between the ferry costs and what it costs to hire a motorhome over
in Iceland a couple of other questions that people have asked can you take your dog yes I think you
can take your dog I think there were a few kennels however you need to remember that Iceland require
every animal to do quarantine for two weeks when you arrive so poor old Mac would have had to be in
quarantine for two weeks and even though I'm going to be in the country for three weeks it wasn't
fair to do that with him which is why I've got Crossfield he's here as my Mac alternative because
I wouldn't I'm just not going to put Mac through a two-week quarantine for for this it's not worth
it so you can I believe but I think they're a very very limited space on the dog kennel so
book that up very early is there a direct route to Iceland from the UK no there is not obviously
their flight but not with your vehicle you can't take your vehicle in fact the only direct route
to Iceland from Mainland Europe at all or the UK is by this Ferry right I hope that answered all
your questions if you've got any more questions about the ferry Crossing or indeed traveling in
Iceland then by all means dropping below and I'll do my best to answer them for you if you
want to see more about my adventures in Iceland then make sure you're subscribing it's totally
free and you can change your mind at any time and I will see you in an upcoming video take care bye