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New Work: Lonely Planet’s Epic Road Trips of Europe

Lonely Planet released a new coffee table book: Epic Road Trips of Europe — and we got to contribute a chapter! It was a work dream come true to create a story for a Lonely Planet book and about one of our favourite subjects too, an amazing vanlife trip to the west coast of Jutland in Denmark.
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Lonely Planet’s Epic Road Trips of Europe

The newest book in a series that also include Epic Drives of the World, Lonely Planet’s Epic Road Trips of Europe showcases 50 of Europe’s greatest road trips. In the book, you can find everything from classic drives such as Route Napoleon through the south of France to longer trips including Ireland’s magical Wild Atlantic Way. The book is filled with beautiful imagery, first-person accounts from travel writers who’ve done the drives themselves and give expert advice on the routes taken and lots of tips for the road.

The drives are graded from easy to harder to epic and the vehicles range from simple rental cars to campervans and even some EVs. Writer Kelly Walker takes on part of the Grand Tour of Switzerland, a 1600km (1000mi) route entirely doable with an EV, encompassing chic cities, great lakes, glaciers and mountain passes. It’s a drive that’s high on our wish list! Writer Phoebe Smith explores the Scottish island Orkney in a small electric campervan, a Nissan Dalbury, based on the E-NV200. Orkney encourages both residents and visitors to use EVs to get around! We’re planning to take a road trip to Scotland in our own electric campervan in 2023 and we definitely want to visit the Orkney Islands as well.

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How we got to create a chapter for a Lonely Planet book

I (Sara) was editor-in-chief of the Dutch edition of Lonely Planet magazine for almost four years. During that time, I was very lucky to meet and get to know some of the talented editors working on the UK edition and I visited Lonely Planet’s London office (now, sadly, closed) several times. I also got to contribute some stories for Lonely Planet campaigns like Best in Travel.

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Fast forward several years, and I’m now creating feature stories as a freelancer together with Jurrien (who, if you didn’t know yet, is a freelance photographer) for several publications. We sold an article about an epic road trip through Denmark to Lonely Planet magazine in the Netherlands and when it was published, we shared the publication on our socials. A commissioning editor of Lonely Planet happened to spot this post, and told us he thought the story could be a good fit for a new book he was commissioning, about some of the best road trips in Europe. We of course jumped at the chance to create a chapter, with me writing and Jurrien providing the images. We were stoked to get to contribute to such a beautiful Lonely Planet book. And we especially loved that we could create a story about the road trip that actually made us decide to buy our own van.

Our epic campervan trip across Denmark

Back in 2020, Jurrien and I rented a diesel-powered campervan to try out vanlife and to see if living in a van fulltime could be something for us (spoiler alert: it was!). We were still in the middle of the pandemic at that time, but it was late in the summer and the rate of infections was relatively low in Western Europe. So, we decided to not drive too far away from our home in Groningen, the Netherlands, and to visit Jutland in Denmark. A region we’d never been to before but we’d heard lots of good things.

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We rented a factory-converted, Fiat Ducato campervan because we already had our eye on the electric Fiat E-Ducato model, but it wasn’t on the market yet. That’s why we chose a factory-converted, diesel Ducato: the next best thing, and it would allow us to see if we liked the setup of the interior and the size of the van. We picked up our rental campervan in the north of the Netherlands and followed the coast upwards from the Wadden Sea to the rugged, northernmost tip of Denmark. It was an amazing trip and we completely fell in love with the ease of travelling in a tiny home on wheels.

We started on the island of Rømø just across the border with Germany, where we drove onto one of the widest beaches in Europe. Heading north, the coast became wilder, with trees twisted into strange shapes by the never-relinquishing elements in National Park Thy. North of Thy, we visited the town of Klitmøller, a surfing hotspot that has been dubbed ‘Cold Hawaii.’ Skagen, the northernmost tip of the country, formed the end point of the trip before we drove homewards again. From the Grey Lighthouse, we could see the place where the inky waves of the North Sea and the clear waters of the Kattegat meet.

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Order Lonely Planet’s Epic Road Trips of Europe

It was an amazing trip to a beautiful area of Denmark that we’ve since visited in our own electric campervan. If you’d like to read our chapter as well as many more inspiring road trips, you can buy Lonely Planet’s Epic Road Trips of Europe in a store near you, or easily order it online. Because it’s quite a big coffee table book, we think it also makes for a great present! If you’d like to order the book through Amazon, we’ve included the direct links for the Netherlands, USA, Germany and UK below. Ordering through these links means that we earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.

Bestel Epic Road Trips of Europe via Amazon NL

Order Epic Road Trips of Europe via Amazon US

Kaufe Epic Road Trips of Europe via Amazon DE

Order Epic Road Trips of Europe via Amazon UK

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links to products that we’ve bought ourselves and love. Affiliate means that if you decide to make a purchase through one or more of these links, we earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.  

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