Finding Traction

Things have been moving slowly over the past year. Various obstacles cropped up or just increased in scale, causing delays and grief. 

A little progress was made as Frank the Tank, the classic Series 3 Land Rover got his engine back in and lives again. This is a good thing as Frank will be driven by Chris as the cat transporter.

 Meanwhile I’ll be in Rosie, an old Nissan Navara, with the back kitted out for the dogs. The ferries won’t allow dogs and cats in the same car, so both trucks are now arks. 

More developments come in the form of council planning permission. Yes, due to the weird rules where we live we can’t have a cargo container or lorry parked in the back garden. This means we have had to rethink the transportation needed to move our belongings. We really wanted a cargo container in the back garden so we could pack it up and then decorate the house as and when rooms were emptied. As it is, we now need a storage depot to put our stuff in to allow the house decorating to be done, which has narrowed down our shipping options to either a shipping company with a big removals truck, or a shipping company that can take a cargo container.

Ideally a cargo container will be used because it can then be unloaded at our new home in our own time. A removal truck would give limited time to sort ourselves out. The container could then become a shed or workshop etc.

Costings are underway but might have some tweaks due to the impending and ever increasing likelihood of Britain leaving the EU. A crazy idea, but not one I’m about to go into in this blog. 

The Brexit vote does mean things could mess up badly for the move, although we can still put certain plans in action whilst waiting until October for parliaments final decision. Maybe they’d even have formulated a plan by then…

Getting There. Part 1.

A major part of the move to Sweden is actually getting there with all of our belongings and pets.

The initial idea was for Chris to ferry/drive with Alex & the pets, with some essentials to set up house, and for me to follow a little later with a truck full of the rest of our gear. This is still our number 1 option.

The main ways of getting there are:

• Sea & road (okay for pets).
• Air & road (no good for pets).
• Rail & road (need to explore this one further).
• For our belongings we could possibly use a shipping company.

The truck would need to be simple, reliable & capable of the 1,500 miles (est) over roads of varying conditions, such as Tarmac &/or gravel. The thought here is an ex-military 4×4.

Top of the list is a Bedford MJ, then a DAF 45 4×4. I like the Bedford, and have heard the DAF has some problems. That being said, the DAFs are still in service, many are available as ex-military & apparently doing a great job in service – although they have various faults. The Bedford is as simple as they get, is no longer in service & is starting to become harder to find/buy. Additionally the Bedford is only a 2 seater, and ideally I want a 3 seater.

Once moved to Sweden, the truck would be used for big shopping trips, removals, ferrying things around, camping trips etc in all conditions that the Arctic town can throw at us. So it has to do the trip & then be a family utility of epic proportions. If it can’t work for us, then it’s not worth it. That alone starts me erring towards the DAF (but my heart wants the Bedford!).

I think the DAF would be the best option for such a long drive, as it would be less fatiguing to drive & it has that much more power & torque so won’t be being pushed so hard.

There are other options with more modern Scania, Man, Iveco, Mercedes, Volvo etc, but with those comes added complexity.

I could just go to eBay & buy a non-4×4 civilian truck, but I am concerned about how tough it would be & whether it could handle the road & weather conditions.

Either way, there is a lot of research to do on choosing the right truck.

For Chris & the pathfinder trip, a Ford Transit type van is required. That’s pretty simple to deal with. They are easy to find & can go on standard car ferries. The truck on the other hand has to go on a commercial RO-RO ship due to its size. They’ll both need the shipping routes sorted though, so that’s another bit of research to carry out.

If we have too much to take on one truck, we may decide to add a second truck, or get a shipping company involved. More research…

I think a sit down, cup of tea & a plate of biscuits is needed to write down all of the options.

Watch this space as they develop…