I have just returned from Stavanger. Without the Newcastle ferry I had to drive 500 miles to Gothenburg to catch Tor Line's three-sailings-weekly service to Tilbury. Sailing to Tilbury took me to within 22 miles drive from home, instead of 300 from Newcastle but Norwegian roads are a lot slower than the A1 and I needed an overnight stop on the way from Stavanger to Gothenburg.
There were four driver-accompanied vehicles on the sailing; all had come from Norway and at least two of us would have used the Stavanger-Newcastle sailing had it still been available.
I do not know the origins of the unaccompanied trailers on that sailing of "Ark Forwarder" from Gothenburg but there used to be a fair amount of unaccompanied ro-ro freight on the Newcastle route, mostly connected with the offshore oil industry centred in Stavanger. That traffic must still be around somewhere.
The only direct UK-Norway ro-ro freight link (that I know of) is Tor Line's service from Immingham to Kristiansand and Brevik. Kristiansand is about 144 miles from Stavanger, only eight miles of which is motorway.
There are now quite a few disgruntled British oil workers in Stavanger with their own, UK registered cars, who have been "stranded" unless they make a double ferry trip home via Denmark.
I tend to think that the Newcastle-Stavanger link will be reinstated before long but very much doubt if it will ever again be served by a "floating gin palace" like the Queen of Scandinavia. At best, I would guess, it will be a RoPax but is more likely to be a simple, 12-pax RoRo.
