And Home…

We set off on May 19th to attempt to visit every country in the European Union and climb the highest peak in each one. We arrived back on September 16th, to the view of The White Cliffs of Dover, having driven 16,204 miles. We didn’t quite achieve our goal, but did mange to visit every EU country except Cyprus, and climb 25 out of 28 of the highest points (Mont Blanc counts for two). The bar chart below shows the relative heights of each of the 28 high peaks. Denmark is the lowest at 171m and Italy/France are the highest at 4811m.

Part way through our journey we decided to leave Mont Blanc for another year. We didn’t feel that we had the required expertise to climb it alone and we didn’t fancy spending the ~€2,000 each to hire a guide for an attempt. With Mont Blanc delayed and therefore no prospect of completing them all within the year, we also decided there was little need to fly out to Cyprus to tick Mount Olympus off the list. So watch this space for the final two peaks!

Here are some statistics from our European roadtrip:

• We were away for 121 days (3 months and 29 days).

• This was mostly spent living in the 9.12 meters squared internal area of the van.

• We spent 6 nights in paying campsites ( 2 x Ireland, 1 x Barcelona, 1 x Zadar, 1 x Hungary, 1 x Gstad).

• We spent 22 nights “indoors”, 5 of these were mountain huts on the way up or down peaks.

• Our average daily expenditure each was £27.87 which was in our budget of £1000 a month.

• The biggest cost was fuel, our total expenditure can be seen broken down into categories in the pie chart below.

• We used 1760.2L of diesel, the van used an average of 41.68 miles per gallon which equated to an average cost of £0.13 per mile.

• We purchased fuel in 19 different countries with the cost per litre of fuel displayed in the bar chart below. Bulgaria had the cheapest fuel at £1.03 per litre and Norway the most expensive, £1.40 a litre. The UK had the fourth most expensive fuel.

• We visited a Lidl supermarket in 19 different EU countries, you can buy olive pasta sauce in all of them!

• The “special aisle” is similar in all Lidls e.g. angle grinders, fake croc shoes etc, but the “foreign food aisle” which is usually Spanish in UK Lidls differs country to country.

• The underwear sold in Aldi are more comfortable than that sold in Lidl.

The main reason our daily expenditure was so low was not paying for accommodation. We used an app called Park4Night which is used by the van community to identify good places to stop overnight and where certain facilities are; like water, toilets, bins, etc. The comments section of these sites is very useful to work out if people have been moved on by police, received fines or had their vans broken into.

We definitely found that some countries were easier to “wild camp” in than others. For example France often has areas run by the local community which have free toilets. We also stayed in a small town in Slovenia where the community had provided 6 parking spaces with free water and electricity. The Scandinavian countries also had a large variety of facilities including campfire areas with wood and compost toilets.

All in all despite this feeling at some points like a box ticking exercise and hitting a few bumps in the road we had a great time and were glad to have visited such amazing places.

Belgium: Signal de Botange (25/28)

From the underwhelming high point of Luxembourg we made our way to Dinant, Belgium. Dinant’s claim to fame is that it was the birthplace of Adolphe Sax – the inventor of the saxophone. This is proudly celebrated by the town with a museum dedicated to him, a golden statue of a saxophone, and a large number of other plastic saxophone statues dedicated to various countries around the world.

The other main attraction are the colourful buildings lining the river front. We had a mooch around before spending the night in a quiet spot on the hills above Dinant and the next morning headed to the highest point in Belgium, Signal de Botrange.

We arrived at the car park, and fetched the tripod from the van. On many of the smaller peaks we’ve needed to take the tripod as there’s not always someone around you can accost to take the summit photo. At this highest point a set of 20 steps has been erected, just to ensure you can gain a few more metres in altitude. It did make taking the photo a little more interesting, with only a 10 second timer on the camera I had to sprint steeply up the stairs to make it into the photo. By the fourth and final time, I was having to pause beforehand to catch my breath.

We spent the evening in the car park of an old coal mine, now opened for tourists. which had been gratefully kitted out with facilities for camper vans. We stopped by in the morning to see about taking a tour, but as they didn’t have one in English that day we decided it probably wasn’t worth the money and filled up our water containers before heading off. It was just after finishing the fill up that we noticed a pool of water on the floor. Initially we thought it was a spillage from filling up, but quickly realised that the previous evening our waste water from the sink had overflowed its container! We’d obviously got complacent and forgotten to empty it in a timely manner! After pulling everything out, and cleaning up the excess we were finally ready to be on our way. We made our way to Vaalserberg, the high point of The Netherlands.

From there we headed back into Belgium for a weekend of caving. One of our Dutch friends we’d met in Meghalaya, had organised us to meet up with a couple of Belgian cavers. In the morning we headed to St. Anne’s caving for a thorough explore and a few stops for some photography.

With a stop for a beer in the sunshine on the way back, we spent the evening in good company and making new friends. On Sunday morning we headed to De Keel quarry, abandoned marl quarries in South Limburg. Our Belgian companions were here to reshoot some footage for an upcoming video to showcase a couple of their sponsors products. We helped with the lighting and then had a poke around some of the other levels of the quarry. It was large and quite geometric with straight walls, tall ceiling, and 45˚ corner supports. After an explore and a short break for an underground coffee we headed back out into the glorious sunshine.

After a bite for lunch we set off to Dunkirk, where we had our ferry booked for Dover the next day. We stopped for the evening in Veurne and went out to celebrate the end of our trip with some tasty white-wine moules-frites from a local restaurant. Then in the morning we left for Dunkirk and the ferry home.

The Netherlands: Vaalserberg (24/28)

When we tell people what we are doing a common response is “well what about the Netherlands they must have the lowest peak”. In fact Vaalserberg is the sixth lowest of the twenty eight peaks at 321m. Which is actually quite surprising.

The peak is close to the tripoint border of Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands. There actually used to be a fourth country at this border point called Neutral Moresnet which existed between 1816 and 1920. After the demise on Napoleon’s empire the Dutch and Prussian representatives could not agree where the border (between the Netherlands and Prussia) should be situated, mainly as both wanted the valuable zinc spar mine situated near Neutral Moresnet. In the end they decided the mine and the adjacent village would become a neutral ground pending a future agreement. The mining company was the main source of employment here but it also funded residences, shops, a hospital and a bank.

It was actually quite good to live in Moresnet and there was a lot of immigration from the neighbouring countries. Inhabitants could benefit from low taxes, no import duties, a casino (which were banned in Belgium), three gin distilleries and the avoidance of military service.

The First World War brought about the end of neutrality and in 1919 the treaty of Versailles awarded Neutral Moresnet to Belgium.

Although you can park at the Vaalserberg summit we decided to parked a little further away and walk through the woods. There are a few attractions here including the tripoint of Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany, a viewing tower, a sign post showing the distances to other high peaks and a small maze.

Unfortunately the peak was all we saw whilst in the Netherlands, but we would like to go back in the future to explore further north. Our next stop was a weekend of caving in Belgium.

Luxembourg: Kneiff (23/28)

We followed the Mosel river for a while before crossing into the next country, Luxembourg. This was only to be a flying visit as we hadn’t planned to visit Luxembourg City (where most of the attractions appear to be located). Crossing into northern Luxembourg we ended up driving through the quaint town of Viaden which has an impressive castle towering over it on the cliffs above. The castle’s origins can be traced back to the 10th century but it was rebuilt in various styles in the 11th, 14th and 17th centuries before being left to fall into ruins. Conveniently for us it has recently been fully restored and is very photogenic.

We stopped for the night at some parking by a pumped hydro-electric plant where we enjoyed the last of our German wine and a caprese salad in the sunshine.

In the morning we headed for the peak, this involved driving half the length of the country which only took 45mins. I think this comes a close second to the least impressive highest peak. The spot is marked by a white concrete square next to the road.

However with another peak under our belts we headed across the border into Belgium. But before we go here are a few fun Luxembourg facts:

• Luxembourg has three official languages: German, French and Luxembourgish

• The first EU leader to marry a same-sex partner was Xavier Bettel, the prime minister of Luxembourg in 2015

• Luxembourg has the second highest GDP in the world (second to Qatar)

• Luxembourg has the highest minimum wage in Europe and second highest in the world

• Unemployment in Luxembourg is the lowest in all of Europe and has been for 40 years

• 43% of Luxembourgs population are foreign residents, this is the highest of all European countries.

Gallivanting in Germany

From Denmark we headed to Mannhiem in Germany. Not the most direct route, but an opportunity to meet up with Thomas & Julienne, two friends of mine I met in Cape Town. The weekend we visited happened to coincide with the Wurstmarkt, an annual wine festival in nearby Bad Dürkheim. So after catching up over lunch we caught the tram out to the Wurstmarkt. A number of local wineries had large stands setup, and we sampled some of their wines & local food from other stalls. There’s also a large number of fairground rides setup, with Julienne & I braving a three-dimensional spinning ride, and all of us venturing on the ‘Wild Mouse’ roller coaster (apparently much tamer than the previous year’s ‘Wild Mouse XL’).

The next day we visited nearby Heidelberg to view the sandstone castle, nested in the trees above the town. A rather unlucky castle it’s been twice partially destroyed by lightning bolts in the 1500s & 1700s.

Leaving Heidelberg, we had a slightly eventful time trying to find a launderette as I’d inadvertently selected a launderette on Google Maps located on an American airbase. Needless to say we had to find another one nearby. From there we made our way to a winery in the Mosel valley, with a small lot for camper van parking, so we stopped for the evening and sampled some of their wine. The next morning we took the small ferry across the river to Beilstein for a brief explore before heading to Luxembourg.