Euro Road Trip 2012

[leowyatt]

Spawning from volospian's gumball thread I decided I'd start one to see if there is any interest.

The plan would be to drive round europe over the course of around 5 days. There isn't as yet much more of a plan apart from this map.

http://www.badasszebedee.com/roadtripmap.jpg

Countries we'd visit would be France, Italy and Switzerland. All in we're looking at around 1720+ miles.

If people are interested then stick your name below. I can then look into accomodation, routes, etc.

[Dr. Z]

I'd like more info!

[BBx]

I'd like to be a passenger!!! :D

BB x

[leowyatt]

I'd like more info!

Ok, not having organised something like this before, what do you want to know?

[Dr. Z]

I dunno, this is pretty embryonic I guess.

Can I suggest that you go through Belgium and Germany before going down through Switzerland? France is pretty boring up there and Belguim is such a nice place! Germany is pretty concrete but the countryside is quite pretty in places.

I have done a route similar to the above, hit me up on MSN if you want to know more :)

[A Place of Light]

I had the best Ice Cream of my life in Monaco.

[Pheebs]

Aww I did a similar route when I drove to Venice and back! I'd love to but at the same time I need to see the rest of the worldy too!

I'm a mebbe :D

[vix]

Having never been out of this country before, I'm quite tempted by this!

[Feek]

Great idea, Leo but I think you need to spend more time or don't go so far. That's nearly 350 miles per day which personally I reckon is too much.

[leowyatt]

Once we have an idea of people who are interested I can start to look into exact routes, places to see. I agree 350 miles is rather a long way but the most interesting roads and sights I believe occur once we hit Italy and Switzerland.

[Kitten]

does sound like a lot. Will we be able to take anything in?

[Zirax]

Great idea, Leo but I think you need to spend more time or don't go so far. That's nearly 350 miles per day which personally I reckon is too much.

does sound like a lot. Will we be able to take anything in?

Another way to look at it is who else does long distance driving regularly? I used to do 220miles without issue, but 350 for someone who isn't used to doing it will hit hard. Around six hours driving per day?

I'm pretty sure the Mondeo (of diesel fail) could do it easily enough! Its already doing 700 pw. Interested :)

[Glaucus]

If I don't do a road trip in America next year, I could be interested.

[volospian]

Great idea, Leo but I think you need to spend more time or don't go so far. That's nearly 350 miles per day which personally I reckon is too much.

The trouble with a European road trip is, like Leo says, that anything interesting is in that mythical Kingdom of "Far far away". Northern France is relatively interesting in some respects, although really only if you are interested in world wars. Other than that it's fairly flat and featureless. The only real reason you go through there is to get to everywhere else.

The main points of interest for road trips, places like Monaco, the Millau bridge, Stelvio Pass, Nurburgring, the Amalfi coast, Rome, Milan, Montreux, St Bernard Pass, Le Mans and so on are all miles away from each other.

The place I really want to go is to the Transfagarasan Pass, in Romania, but that's a 1300 mile drive from Calais, just to get there in order to drive a 60 mile stretch of road. And then the closest place of any interest to me is Lake Bled (700 miles away) or Split (830 miles away).

You end up with either trying to fit everything in to a week, and travelling a million miles a day to get everywhere, driving a short distance each day, but taking the rest of your life to see everything, or compromising and driving some long haul stints, some short stuff and not seeing more than a handful of places.

Last year we saw Geneva, the Petit St Bernard Pass, The Alfa Museum outside Milan (but didn't get time to go into Milan itself), the Nurburgring and Koblenz. We travelled ~2500 miles and we took 5 days to do it. Apart from the Apline passes and the roads around Nurburg, the rest was motorway driving... although this was livened up with some high speed runs on the derestricted parts of the Autobahn. trying to Redline an M reg Alfa 155 in top gear was certainly a distraction from the tedium of motorway cruising. I managed an indicated 130, which wasn't bad. lol.

[Jonny69]

I did almost this exact same route in reverse in 2004.

We did big miles on the first day to the east of France, hitting the mountains and clipping the side of Geneva. We then drove round the edge of France past Switzerland, Italy and dropping into northern Spain to relax for a few days. The route home can be a long drive back, but there is an overnight road train from Toulouse to Calais which costs about the same as the petrol. The advantage is you skip a day of solid driving and arrive at the ferry port refreshed for the drive in Britain, which is suddenly hell compared to driving abroad. We did 1700 miles on the road plus whatever the return train would have added.

Some pics and rubbish here: http://www.jonny69.co.uk/euronats2004/euronats01.html

[Kitten]

The trouble with a European road trip is, like Leo says, that anything interesting is in that mythical Kingdom of "Far far away". Northern France is relatively interesting in some respects, although really only if you are interested in world wars. Other than that it's fairly flat and featureless. The only real reason you go through there is to get to everywhere else.


From a photographer's view though, you'll find the strangest things (to other people) and landscapes interesting. Sometimes the flat and featureless is better to photograph than the usual, over-taken landscapes. That's the way I'll be approaching it.

[Will]

I've done a similar trip on 2 wheels before. It was great. It wasn't really planned and just played by ear. Didn't get into too much trouble, brought enough money to pay fines, and then budgetted for hotels. Camping would have been too tough with us being on bikes. We spent 10 days doing it though so it was less of a hassle, though we did do France in one hit to get to the Alps ASAP. Needless to say we didn't stick to speed limits, but although I was happy to amble through my country, my friends wanted to get to the Alps - which actually was definitely worth while! :D I think it could be fun - roughly what dates are you thinking of?

5 days is quite a lot of driving to do nearly 2000 miles - whilst it';s fine for me, a lot of people will not have been to those countries before and undoubtedly (and absolutely fairly) will want to visit and spend some time looking around the places. There are some fantastic sights to be seen... It might be fun to pop into my old haunts on the S.Coast of France - and maybe pop over to see some friends on the way through Italy-Suisse etc... Also some poeple have never driven abroad so we'd have to consider that. Also, remember to get car insurance, and foreign breakdown cover too.

Put me down as a potential - as a driver too, happy to take a passenger.

[Mondo]

I'd love to come! Will depend on schedule.

So a may be!