Adding things up took a little time this year because we spent US dollars, Norwegian Kroner, Euros, British Pounds Sterling and Danish Kroner. In the past we have paid cash for virtually everything. This year, though, we had to use our debit card often, especially for campground reservations. We use a dedicated debit card/checking account which charges only a 1% foreign transaction fee. We rarely had to use our credit card, which has a 3% fee. None of the ATMs we used charged a fee until we got on a ferry to Denmark.
We normally plan to have $1000 a week available for all expenses and hope that we won’t really have to spend it. Then we put a little extra in the account for backup in case of emergencies. This year we also planned on three ferry trips, which were unusual expenses. And, of course, everything turned out to be far more expensive than we had hoped! We spent all that and a little more.
Gasoline: $3047 for 363.7 gallons (averaging $8.37/gal). We drove 3373 miles, averaging 43 miles each day; as close as we can figure, Rover got 9.2/mpg. We had only ten days where we traveled more than 100 miles, including one day of 200+ miles.
Campgrounds: $2222 for 76 nights, an average of $29/night. The three nights in Denmark were the most expensive at $50/night--these were also large resort sites. The six nights in London were $45/night. We stayed mainly in Caravan Club and Camping and Caravanning Club sites: they were well kept, clean places that were rather easy to reserve through the clubs.
Food: $4294. This is probably $2000 more than our normal food expenses for three months. Food on the ferries and in Denmark and Norway was extremely high priced, and there is also no cheap wine in England.
Other transportation costs (car rental, buses, parking, taxi, trains): $1124.
Insurance: $1028 for just the three months on the road.
Internet: $161.
Ferries: Holland to England $286
England to Denmark $814
Denmark to Oslo, Norway $521
Total $1622
Tourist activities (castles, tours, museums): $1506
LP Gas: $54
Phones: $377. (We discovered the extent of our I-Phone's coverage when we began receiving calls from the US in the middle of the night.)
Foreign Transaction and ATM Fees: approximately $150.
We also spent money on gifts, souvenirs, books, maps, laundry and miscellany. Additionally, our expenses this year included the costs of having our daughter with us for six days in London. Then the need to end our trip by getting to Lillehammer, Norway, fairly quickly added a couple hundred miles and two ferry trips.
All in all we ended up just over the budget; also, we had a few expenses before leaving home, including airfare ($2066), new truck-function GPS ($340), and more books and maps.
Nearly everything in Britain cost more than we’d experienced anywhere on the Continent. And Scandinavia--next year’s adventure--looks like it will be even more expensive.
We are grateful for this privilege of travel and can hardly believe we have spent 11 months over the past few years in good health and safety living in Rover in Europe. Rover has performed wonderfully. We cannot blame her for our electrical problems. Our challenge is to solve the charger/inverter problem before we begin our travels again: this next one will begin a little later in May--or even in June--to give Norway a chance to warm up before we get there.