Are there any updates on the UK to Scandinavia ferries situation? The quick answer is no.
I’ve just returned from a 2,224 km drive from Norway and feeling not only tired but perhaps more upset than ever that there are no ferry crossing between the UK and Scandinavia.
One of the most popular posts on this blog is how you’ll get ‘from the UK to Norway by car and ferry’. And sadly, it’s not a happy reading. The only help you’ll get on milage is the crossing between England and France. The next possible ferry is from Germany or Denmark onwards to Norway or Sweden. But this still involves a good drive from Calais.
DFDS’ historic passenger ferry route between Harwich and Esbjerg was closed down after struggling for a long time with high costs, loss of passengers and freight being switched to road transport.
Our last loophole was the freight ship from Ingham to Larvik. But this option is now ruled out as well as DFDS has made a strict no passenger allowed on board policy. You can send your car as freight but this comes at a rather high cost as well as the task of bringing it to Ingham and collecting it in Larvik.
The best solution for all travelling from South England, going to Norway, Sweden and Denmark would be if the Harwich – Esbjeg route would reopen. This could save us a drive of more than 1000km per way! Some of you in the comments section on my old posts have asked me to start a petition. But as such a petition already exist and I belive we are stronger together, I suggest signing the ongoing petition Reopen a direct ferry from the UK to Denmark.
Let’s hope this petition will get the attention of DFDS and its CEO, Niels Smedegaard. And that DFDS will reconsider their routes for 2018!
Lots of people here don’t seem to know about our group, (RHEG), working hard on restoring the ferry route, so I will just reiterate James Drennans link to our group. We are both administrators there, and would love to welcome you. https://www.facebook.com/groups/RHEGFerry
Hasse M. Pedersen
We used this, or the Gothenburg-Harwich, ferry two or three times a year from the late nineties until first the Gothenburg one shut down and then the Esbjerg one. It was an incredibly convenient way to visit family in UK! For a couple of years we drove down to Holland and took the ferry from Hook to Harwich but it is an absurdly tiring way to do it and the amount of fuel used can be called anything but climate smart.
Now we are stuck with fly and rent a car which, to my mind at least, is a very inferior way of doing the trip not least of all because one can carry so little. I used to take hand tools with me so as to be able to do work on my parents home whilst there and bottles of good Swedish hembränt which my dad loved, and don’t ever think about flying with Yule presents they’ll swipe the lot off you at airport security and any day now we’ll have to stand in the mega long “non EU citizens queue” just to add even more stress to an already extremely unpleasant experience!
Thank you for sharing the links James. x
Just a follow up on Hasse M Pedersen’s post in May last year encouraging you to join RHEG. We are working hard on this given the opportunity that Brexit has opened up and the imminent return of Sirena Seaways that has been on loan to Brittant Ferries. Please also sign the petition if you haven’t already done so, the numbers on there have tripled within a year.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/RHEGFerry
https://www.change.org/p/reopen-a-direct-ferry-from-the-uk-to-denmark?fbclid=IwAR2Tpyea1uyayDJ3dnNlsX-UIoKv6LYO1NgTwZrcuwaKVMnBr0mOu1_yynI
Good point. I wonder how Brexit will impact this situation. x
I think you will have your ferry back, The ferry (Princess Seaways) has been taken away from the route between Newcastle Amsterdam, and have sailed to the baltic to be on route between Karlsham Sweden to Kleipeda Lituania for 6 weeks and then it goes to drydock where they maintain the ship and leaves drydock just before brexit, maby its going to restart Esberg Harwich ?
PLEASE bring back your lovely ferrys at the uk at Harwich to Esbjerg so we can get across again to get to LEGOLAND saying I cant fly with me being epileptic ,since you took the ferry away from Harwich ive been very poolie by being upset fitting a lot ,just answer me this one question please how do you exspect disabled people like me who cant fly get to your country with the dfds taking the ferry away from Harwich .Im missing my lovely trip a lot please try your best by bringing it back to uk
Please please bring back the ferry crossing . We used to go as kids nearly every year . Scandinavia is a wonderful place and am desperate to go with my young kids and a ferry to denmark would be so easy .
What are peoples experience of sailing to holland anc driving? Or can you ferry from Europe to sweden/Norway ?
We’d love to use this service. We keep looking, hoping it’s been re-established. Sad face.
Wasn’t the excuse for cutting the ferry to Norway, Sweden and Denmark all blamed on EU sulphur emissions level changes?
In the 80’s we did Harwich to Gothenburg a few times. Short cruise and arrive Sweden. Superb.
Please can anyone who remembers give me the time schedule of Harwich to Esbjerg Ferry. I travelled that route in August 1961 and am trying to recall when I left Harwich and when I arrived in Esbjerg.
hi all, i would like to know if the ferry is active. I wanna go from Esbjerg to harwich. Can someone advice me, i am in Berlin at the moment. Thanks
See above comment I fed up now I am able to have more leisure time that its has been made harder to travel to countries without flying. My husband will not fly and it means extra travel time and more expensive due to the fuel prices abroad. Yet drivers from aboard do NOT pay anything towards the cost of our roads. Please open this route up again as I have never been to Norway maybe they do not want us to come over I would say your not welcome. Or is it our country that do not want us to see how another country is so much better. Just get it sorted,
Harwich to Esbjerg in the 70’s. What a fantastic 24 hrs. Disko dancing, bars, booze, lovely food, beautiful women, great storms, amazing seas, wonderful meetings of disparate peoples, and then the odour of the fish factories when you finally arrived in Esbjerg, what memories.
I’m a Brit married to a Swede. We’ve been travelling to and fro for 31 years to visit family. It was a TOTAL DISASTER for us when they stopped the Esbjerg – Harwich route. It used to take us 4 hours to drive to Esbjerg. We now have to drive all the way to Hoek van Holland to get an overnight ferry – 11.5 hours + breaks. No mean feat for 2 pensioners! The DFDS boat was expensive but at least it was relaxing and meant far less driving. Better for us and definitely better for the environment . All support in the world to any initiative to start up Scandinavian-UK ferries once again.
That’s interesting to hear to. Thanks for sharing your experience with us! x
Enig, Turid! x
I agree…we loved having family holidays in Denmark using the Harwich link despite living near Immingham and seeing the huge number of DFDS freight ships arriving and departing daily! We now use the P & O services from Hull to Rotterdam or Zeebrugge for holidays, but sadly this means we have had to cut out Denmark because it means an overnight stay eg near Hamburg, in addition to the overnight ferry…losing an extra 2 nights of holiday.
For many years my family and friends travelled from Newcastle to Scandinavia by ferry , I. Would support any route England or Scotland , hopefully once brexit has happened we may increase trade with our Viking friends again
This is a long time ago, I know, but I was stranded in Edinburgh when the Icelandic volcano erupted in 2010 and I needed to get back to Norway. I booked the ferry from Newcastle to Amsterdam but there were problems then in getting from Amsterdam to Oslo – to travel via Deutsche Bahn meant waiting over a week and because of the number of countries I would need to travel through (and change train companies!) there were problems. I managed to change from the route to Amsterdam to get a cabin from Harwich to Esbjerg on an extra sailing (the boat should have been out of service for a week for painting, but cancelled this to take people who had been stranded back to Scandinavia). The ticket cost a fortune, but my travel insurance company helped. Then of course I had to get to Fredrikshavn by train and then Stena Line to Oslo. The journey from Edinburgh to Oslo took 60 hours. However, I was so glad of that route from Harwich – I DID ,manage to get back home so I can appreciate how important it is to have a ferry to Scandinavia from Britain, especially for people travelling with cars!
Please open! No ferga between UK and Norway and Danmark! Very sad for all! Greatly missed!
We used the Espjerg Harwich ferry and return in 2013, never again will we use DFDS. It was expensive, the meals and cabin were mediocre and a cool tin of beer cost me seven quid on the grubby sun deck. the boat’s saving grace was the little bloke entertaining the kids as a magician and clown. If you want to get to the uk use a hotel overnight on the way down to Calais, you’ll save hundreds of Euros even taking fuel and hotel costs into consideration. This sea route deserved to close.
Miss the crossing after using it every year since 1971. Must be about making money, can’t do for ‘fun’!!
Ruten Harwich til Esbjerg må snart åpnes igjen. Har brukt den i mange år, alltid full båt.
Skulle tro at det ville være Good business!
May I suggest to all you lovely people here to join our group (RHEG), https://www.facebook.com/groups/RHEGFerry/ to help us get a ferry back.
We work hard at it, and we need all the help we can get, including signing our petition.
We desperately need a ferry from Harwich/ Esbjerg, we need to see Family there that is the only way we can do it, miss it so much after travelling that way for many years, and them coming to us. It is such a clean and friendly country. Please bing ferry back
we need car ferry to england
Thank you Clive. There certainly is an interest in the petition and many people have already signed. But more are needed! So thank you for sharing! Best, Bianca
The reason given to me by the Master of one of the DFDS Harwich-Gothenberg ferries was that the EU imposed draconian surcharges on the heavy fuel oil used by the ships. If true, that is a priceless example of left hand not even wishing to know what the right hand is doing. Instead we now have thousands of cars driving 2,000 miles each (return) with all their attendant pollution and traffic congestion. There’s a triumph for the Commission’s highly paid strategists. This ferry should be reinstated and properly marketed. The latter is crucial, although every time I travelled on that route, the ferry was fully booked. Lord knows why they lost money @ £1,000 a return trip
Just shared it on a vw camper forum because so many of the members want to explore Scandinavia but its a long way around in an old VW camper! Hope it helps.
I miss the ferries from Harwich to Germany (Hamburg) , Denmark and Sweden. I travelled on the last DFDS to Esbjerg and flew back to Stansted from Copenhagen. We used them for holidays in Sweden and Denmark.
We do travel a lot on the last remaining ferry to Hoek Van Holland with Stena Lines. I really like those ships but as one message said above, I think they are getting quite expensive now considering Eurostar now run a cheaper service to Amsterdam and being foot passengers its just as easy to get a train to London St Pancras and change in Brussels. I hope Stena Line do not price themselves out of the market and stop the service because of the lack of passengers. It is mainly used by commercial vehicles from the flower markets in Holland and I hope they carry on using it to keep it running.
Would the drive from Hook of Holland to Denmark/ Sweden be better than Calais. It would be a bit nearer I would think,
My husband and I have enjoyed taking our car on cross-country skiing holidays in Norway for the last 18 years or so. After the Bergen ferries were removed and then the Harwich to Esbjerg crossing stopped, we have been happy to travel on the DFDS freight ferry to Brevik. It was really disappointing last year to find we could no longer travel on this, and further enquiries have shown that DFDS would be happy to take us but the problem is the UK borders Agency which, according to our MP who we asked about it, says there are not enough facilities at the ports to deal with non-lorry passengers.
As there are only 12 cabins on each vessel and some of these will be occupied by lorry drivers, it seems to me that the numbers of private passengers is tiny and the resources involved to deal with them must be correspondingly small.
Maybe if others approached their MPs this very annoying decision, which is making it far more difficult to visit lovely areas, could be reversed.
I moved to Norway in 2008 and later that year the ferry from Newcastle to Stavanger stopped running meaning a huge journey to the south of England to catch the Ferry to denmark then driving over the bridge to Sweden and up to Norway. I tried all routes over the years and eventually as a single mum I just couldn’t manage it and returned to North Yorkshire. The thing that annoyed me the most was not the removal of the direct ferry to norway but that the newcastle to holland and the harwich to denmark ferries crossed paths meaning no matter which one I took I ended up having to drive extra miles and they wasted fuel crossing paths of ferries that should more practically have travelled to the nearest port across the north sea. I did use the dfds torline cargo ferry before my daughter was born but had to stop that as they had a rule no children under 5 and now as you’ve stated and I enquired last year they have stopped passengers on that ferry altogether. As a British woman who has a daughter with a Norwegian father this ferry issue is the absolute biggest issue in our lives, even the airpost isn’t really a viable option as that takes hours to reach, we can’t pack much in the way of christmas presents and all in all my daughters life has been negatively affected by the loss of these ferry options. To drive nonstop from my English base to the Norwegian one is 28 hours + 1.5 hours plus overnight ferry from Hull to Rotterdam, I’ve done it about 15 times, that’s 15 too many !
I used the Harwich – Esbjerg crossing several times every year and miss it a lot. There is a FB group campaigning to reopen the route.
please reopen a route..i motorcycle but am restricted to time..the ferry would be a great help
We used the ferry between the UK and Gothenburg for decades. Then feeling quite refreshed onwards by road for the journey to Norra Uppland. The children now all grown up remember the journey with affection.
Ten years ago the irresponsible Jeremy Clarkson demonstrated how you could beat the boat by driving virtually non stop. Nowadays in our twilight years we find the prospect of driving around just too much and consequently would greatly welcome the return of the ferry.
The budget airlines are fine but I do miss the romance and first sight of Sweden and the UK after the hours at sea.
We would happily support any initiative to bring the ferry service back
Just got a brand new camper last summer and desperate to visit Norway. Please make it easier by re-opening the ferry!
I really want a ferry to Scandinavia re-instated. I would love Newcastle to Gothenburg! But any route will do!! I am scared of flying now . I’m signing …. we were on the Harwich to Denmark route in 2012 and it was really busy then so I don’t know how they can say they didn’t make enough money! ?! Anne
Hi Roy. As I’m living in London a Newcastle to Esbjerg service would obviously be more helpful. But I do appreciate the Scottish connection to Scandinavia too. Both will save milage on the car, if not time or money. x
Newcastle to Esbjerg would be a much better prospect for DFDS. They already have a staffed terminal at North Shields for their Amsterdam service. The catchment area of Newcastle includes the whole of the north of England and Scotland which now have no ferry connection with the Continent.
Where do I sign?
Bring it back,no excuses
Just to let you know, there is and never has been any passenger or freight link between the UK and Larvik, and I have no idea where Ingham is. The link that I believe you are referring to is between Immingham and Brevik, some 40-50 minutes drive from the port in Larvik (which does have a passenger ferry to Denmark) I know this as I live in the area, have used the Larvik to Fredrikshavn (Denmark) and the Brevik to Immingham routes. Incidentally, it’s not a DFDS change of policy that has resulted in them no longer taking passengers but a change in the port status at Immingham, the port is no longer allowed to process any passengers other than truck drivers so if you want to get this possibility reinstated it would require a change of UK policy, something that might be easier to achieve than the establlishment of an entirely new route (or reinstatement of an old one)
The ferries really did kill their own market with extortionate pricing, in 2002 we travelled from Kristiansand to Newcastle and return for 5500kr (about £500), about 5 years later the price for our family had increased to 12500kr (about £1200) With the easily availability of budget airlines it became apparent to us that, despite the convenience of having one’s own car whilst visiting, the price difference was so great, even allowing for airport parking and car rental, that the convenience was just not worth the price. I will sign the petition as I live in hope but if the prices are still comparatively high to the alternative then I can’t see it being a viable business model. The hope is that they can grab a significant amount of the road freight market in order to keep prices under contoll.
Wonderful – thank you! Yes, let’s hope it does. x
I’ve signed the petition. Hope it gets somewhere
The freight ferries will not allow passengers with cars no longer. You can ship your car as freight, but you’d have to sort out a different form of transportation for yourself.
Hopefully not, Lynne. Let’s keep this campaign going! x
I went on a cruise to Norway and am anxious to return to Bergen. I am unable to fly and a ferry was the only answer. Why, Why oh why are there now NO ferries at all from the UK to Norway. I just cannot believe that there is no requirement for at least one. I would be a foot passenger so that rules out freight ferries too apparently.
We need this back, being 68 and my husband 73 we will probably be dead before they do it????