New Mid Europe members start here

[Robert OB 33/48]

Guys and Girls,

A remember notice.

Dont forget to join us on the road during our first European tour for Mid Europe OB.
We start on the 23rd and are at the Matterhorn on the 26th til the 28th of july.
See details on the Forum and the Rally points.

Overland Bound, Mid-Europe Matterhorn Tour 2019

Tuesday the 23th of July 2019 We will start from my house in Gaanderen and will drive south. We drive in a good pase trhough the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg

www.overlandbound.com

 

[RichRunner]

@robert, thanks!. For us, the destination is always secondary to the drive to get there. We like to enjoy the long drive the most and meet people on the road.

 

[Constantin]

Hello! My name is Rich and I am new to Germany around Kaiserslautern area. Looking to get into overlanding in Europe and I have no idea where to start. My family and I were pretty active overlanders when we were in Alaska and Arizona and would like to see what Europe has to offer.
We have a new Toyota 4Runner as our go to rig that I would eventually modify, but for now it is good enough to what we would need along the beaten path. Hope to learn from the veterans here and meet some of you down the road. Cheers!View attachment 107295

Welcome Rich. You can also join the Mid Europe Facebook Group if not already. Very nice rig btw!
Despite Regulations there are some great regions for overland travel in Europe: Spain and Portugal, Italy (especially the Alps), Norway & Sweden, Poland & the Baltic Countries, Eastern Europe with Montenegro, Bosnia, Serbia, Romania,Albania, Greece ...
Enjoy Europe! Even though it’s sometimes tight and crowded and regulated thanks to the density, there are great landscapes here [emoji6]

 

[Rockwilder]

HI Rich, nice rig, welcome to Europe.

 

[Constantin]

Hello! My name is Rich and I am new to Germany around Kaiserslautern area. Looking to get into overlanding in Europe and I have no idea where to start. My family and I were pretty active overlanders when we were in Alaska and Arizona and would like to see what Europe has to offer.
We have a new Toyota 4Runner as our go to rig that I would eventually modify, but for now it is good enough to what we would need along the beaten path. Hope to learn from the veterans here and meet some of you down the road. Cheers!View attachment 107295

BTW, Rich, this is my rig [emoji6]

I‘m a German guy but I’m watching too many US vids on YouTube [emoji16] that I fell in love with the 4Runner, so I had to import one in 2016 [emoji4]

 

[leeloo]

Hello,
My name is Mihai , I am a Romanian and I live in Brussels, for about 6 years now. I also lived for a few years in Luxembourg and Germany.( moving around with the job, I actually might move back to Luxembourg in a few months :) )
I have Landcruiser J120 Prado.
So far I did an off-road tour of the Pyrenees mountains, and off-road tour of Portugal, and leaving for an tour of Albania in a couple of days.

I see a lot of people have some trouble finding some week-end routes. I would suggest to try and use WIKILOC. It is a great little app with trails for all activities including off-road. In a week end for example I did a small off road tour of the Normandy landing beaches, you will find plenty of tracks in Belgium and France as well. Germany is completely closed unfortunately, for any kind of overlanding. Portugal and Spain are very overlanding friendly countries. In most Est Europe wild camping is allowed.
For next year I will go to Georgia or Morocco, I haven't decided yet.
I travel with my family, wife and 12 year old kid.
My vehicle is pretty much stock, it is capable enough, confortable with the air suspension, I have an RTT, an auxiliary battery setup and a 35L fridge.and some recovery equipment ( maxtrax and a shovel ) ...so far so good.

 

[MarkD]

Hello,
My name is Mihai , I am a Romanian and I live in Brussels, for about 6 years now. I also lived for a few years in Luxembourg and Germany.( moving around with the job, I actually might move back to Luxembourg in a few months :) )
I have Landcruiser J120 Prado.
So far I did an off-road tour of the Pyrenees mountains, and off-road tour of Portugal, and leaving for an tour of Albania in a couple of days.

I see a lot of people have some trouble finding some week-end routes. I would suggest to try and use WIKILOC. It is a great little app with trails for all activities including off-road. In a week end for example I did a small off road tour of the Normandy landing beaches, you will find plenty of tracks in Belgium and France as well. Germany is completely closed unfortunately, for any kind of overlanding. Portugal and Spain are very overlanding friendly countries. In most Est Europe wild camping is allowed.
For next year I will go to Georgia or Morocco, I haven't decided yet.
I travel with my family, wife and 12 year old kid.
My vehicle is pretty much stock, it is capable enough, confortable with the air suspension, I have an RTT, an auxiliary battery setup and a 35L fridge.and some recovery equipment ( maxtrax and a shovel ) ...so far so good.

Welcome Mihai

do you all fit in the RTT ok? we travel as a family of three and we are quickly out growing our RTT, my Daughter is almost 5

 

[MarkD]

Hello! My name is Rich and I am new to Germany around Kaiserslautern area. Looking to get into overlanding in Europe and I have no idea where to start. My family and I were pretty active overlanders when we were in Alaska and Arizona and would like to see what Europe has to offer.
We have a new Toyota 4Runner as our go to rig that I would eventually modify, but for now it is good enough to what we would need along the beaten path. Hope to learn from the veterans here and meet some of you down the road. Cheers!View attachment 107295

Welcome Rich, Nice 4Runner

 

[leeloo]

Welcome Mihai

do you all fit in the RTT ok? we travel as a family of three and we are quickly out growing our RTT, my Daughter is almost 5

Thank you.
So basically I bought the widest hard-shell RTT I could find. It is an Autohome Columbus and on the inside is 165 cm wide, so a queen size bed . It is fine for us. But most of the so called 3 people tents on the market are 140 cm. I can honestly say we have no trouble, those extra 25 cm really make an impact.
Having such a wide tent can be a challenge, the roof bars need to be as wide as the tent, in my case minimum 1.6 m, or you risk damaging the shell, so I had to change them. Plus it is very heavy , about 77 kg vs 55kg the smaller version. My car is very tall so it is almost impossible to put on and take down by 2 people. So it became a permanent fixture on the car. If you have a garage you can get Thule storage system for it, it is a pulley system to lift it and store it on the ceiling. Not that expensive.
I see you are from Netherlands. I bought mine from a Dutch dealer, very nice and helpful guy in Tilburg I think . In Belgium there are no RTT dealers at all.
The good thing is that he has a showroom with all kind of models so you can actually test them before you buy.
If you are interested I can send you the site and details on PM, not sure if it is allowed to post here.

 

[76_overlander]

Welcome leeloo, good to have you here :)

 

[MarkD]

Thank you.
So basically I bought the widest hard-shell RTT I could find. It is an Autohome Columbus and on the inside is 165 cm wide, so a queen size bed . It is fine for us. But most of the so called 3 people tents on the market are 140 cm. I can honestly say we have no trouble, those extra 25 cm really make an impact.
Having such a wide tent can be a challenge, the roof bars need to be as wide as the tent, in my case minimum 1.6 m, or you risk damaging the shell, so I had to change them. Plus it is very heavy , about 77 kg vs 55kg the smaller version. My car is very tall so it is almost impossible to put on and take down by 2 people. So it became a permanent fixture on the car. If you have a garage you can get Thule storage system for it, it is a pulley system to lift it and store it on the ceiling. Not that expensive.
I see you are from Netherlands. I bought mine from a Dutch dealer, very nice and helpful guy in Tilburg I think . In Belgium there are no RTT dealers at all.
The good thing is that he has a showroom with all kind of models so you can actually test them before you buy.
If you are interested I can send you the site and details on PM, not sure if it is allowed to post here.

I have a soft shell, its 140cm wide and i think 220cm long so at the moment my daughter is sleeping width ways at the top, 140cm is not enough to all sleep side by side for us. but soon she will not fit that way, we got a tent with an annex so she can sleep in there but it is too much to put up and down if you moving daily and i would prefer she is not the first person in front of the door if someone with bad intentions was coming in.

maybe the company is Daktent.nl? i did visit them before i brought mine, at that time i didn't want a hard shell but i am reconsidering, i quite like the Ikamper but it quite expensive.

I put my roof tent on and off with a forklift and store it on a shelf at work but reducing weight on the roof is something i also want so... i dont know, here is my set up anyway

 

[leeloo]

The dealer where I went is below, is not the one you mentioned but close enough.

Uw auto daktent vindt u bij TOP daktenten | Nederland | België |

Wij zijn dealer van de volgende auto daktenten: Maggiolina, Columbus, Airtop, Overland en Thule Tepui daktenten. www.topdaktenten.nl

topdaktenten.nl

You can even setup an appointment with him during the week-ends and he will be there showing you and explaining everything.
All of us sleep side by side, I am quite big, 1.82 cm at 105 kg... . Both me and my wife sleep on a side most of the time, maybe we take less space because of this so this is ok for us.
I can leave all the bedding inside ( pillows, sleeping bags etc.. ) .
The time from stop to having a cold one in hand on my chair is about 4 min :) . When I leave takes more time to fold and pack the chairs and the table I have.
I had it in Portugal this easter holiday for a 2 week trip, mostly wild camping and it was fine .
I just bought rhino rack awning for the next trip, so I can add a few more minutes to setup that one.

I have seen some Columbus tents second hand in Netherlands but not the wide version I have.
Because mine was black was a bit more expensive(not sure why, I seen the same thing on Autohome site ) , at 3k euro, but for sure cheaper than the iKamper. But he had it on stock so I went for it.
What ever you decide my advice is go to a dealer that has it on stock, the exact size you need and test it, see if you can live with it. This RTT's are quite expensive and if you choose wrong can be quite costly.

 

[Constantin]

Hello,
My name is Mihai , I am a Romanian and I live in Brussels, for about 6 years now. I also lived for a few years in Luxembourg and Germany.( moving around with the job, I actually might move back to Luxembourg in a few months :) )
I have Landcruiser J120 Prado.
So far I did an off-road tour of the Pyrenees mountains, and off-road tour of Portugal, and leaving for an tour of Albania in a couple of days.

I see a lot of people have some trouble finding some week-end routes. I would suggest to try and use WIKILOC. It is a great little app with trails for all activities including off-road. In a week end for example I did a small off road tour of the Normandy landing beaches, you will find plenty of tracks in Belgium and France as well. Germany is completely closed unfortunately, for any kind of overlanding. Portugal and Spain are very overlanding friendly countries. In most Est Europe wild camping is allowed.
For next year I will go to Georgia or Morocco, I haven't decided yet.
I travel with my family, wife and 12 year old kid.
My vehicle is pretty much stock, it is capable enough, confortable with the air suspension, I have an RTT, an auxiliary battery setup and a 35L fridge.and some recovery equipment ( maxtrax and a shovel ) ...so far so good.

Welcome Ieeloo [emoji112]

 

[Tomaz]

Hi all,

I'm new on OB, just returned from a trip around the Alps with my Subaru Forester. I've been reading OB articles for some time and decided to become a member after being notified of the upcoming Mid-Europe trip near my home. Thanks for organizing Robert!

I'm driving a Subaru Forester SG that I've enhanced a bit for overlanding capabilities. Now the vehicle is more or less done it's time to work on my offroad skills and start planning more trips.

See you at the Mid-Europe meet!

 

[MarkD]

Hi all,

I'm new on OB, just returned from a trip around the Alps with my Subaru Forester. I've been reading OB articles for some time and decided to become a member after being notified of the upcoming Mid-Europe trip near my home. Thanks for organizing Robert!

I'm driving a Subaru Forester SG that I've enhanced a bit for overlanding capabilities. Now the vehicle is more or less done it's time to work on my offroad skills and start planning more trips.

See you at the Mid-Europe meet!

Welcome Tomaz

 

[John Smith]

Hi all,

I'm new on OB, just returned from a trip around the Alps with my Subaru Forester. I've been reading OB articles for some time and decided to become a member after being notified of the upcoming Mid-Europe trip near my home. Thanks for organizing Robert!

I'm driving a Subaru Forester SG that I've enhanced a bit for overlanding capabilities. Now the vehicle is more or less done it's time to work on my offroad skills and start planning more trips.

See you at the Mid-Europe meet!

Welcome from Luxembourg Thomas.

 

[Rockwilder]

Welcome Tomaz !

 

[76_overlander]

Welcome Tomaz :) Hope to meet you and share some kilometers someday :)

 

[NotGumby]

Welome Tomaz!

 

[Johannes_078]

Hi Folks,

I didn't check the forum for quite some time (shame on me) and just found this thread. So first of all, a big welcome to all of you, which have placed an introduction here already.

My name is Johannes aka Frisko, 41 yrs old and I am living in a small town called Höfingen near Stuttgart in the southern part of Germany. We have a few OB members here in that area and I hope we can also meet up and do something together in the future (the member map is really a cool tool).
My rig is a 2018 Jeep Wrangler JKU Rubicon, which is currently waiting for its offroad package, which will be installed beginning of September this year. Before the big summer holidays next year and a 3week trip to Sweden, it is planned to add the first parts to convert it into a real camper vehicle. I really like the conversion from "AbsoluteOutdoor" with the AluCab Expedition 3 RTT and the modified hart top, where you can enter the RTT from the inside. Also being able to carry some weight on top of the RTT is important for me, because I never go on holiday without my kayak .

Have a nice time.

Update: I forgot to add, that I am also new to overlanding, at least vehicle based. I really like being in the nature and in the past, it was more like touring kayak based traveling on rivers.