Europe Road Trip

miikeeyy92

miikeeyy92

miikeeyy92

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The south
I know I posted a while back asking about other peoples experiences from European road trips, but now our idea's are turning more towards reality.

Here is a rough route we were thinking of.



We are planning to be away for 10ish days. Do you think this would take longer? roughly 4-5 hours driving a day. Not sure if that is a lot for a road trip.. (anyone with experience on this?)

Car wise..I am hoping to pick up an E46 3 series diesel (do like them :)) from somewhere for this, and I would keep it for the year after as I am on placement. Good/bad car choice for the journey? I am full aware that ~2300 miles is a long way.

Any comments would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks
 
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We did a similar trip in C reg Merc about 3-4 years ago, slight difference being we went to Lille, Paris, Lyon, and then through Turin to Milan. Then straight into Zurich, Munich, Nurburgring, and then back home. Took us a week (rather than 10 days) to do and was a very enjoyable trip - roughly spent about the same time as you've accounted for in the car, but with regular breaks to break it up a little.

Had an absolute blast and hopefully we'll be doing it again in a year or two. An E46 diesel should be able to handle that without a sweat - just make sure the cooling system is up to scratch before departing :p
 
Atari said:
We did a similar trip in C reg Merc about 3-4 years ago, slight difference being we went to Lille, Paris, Lyon, and then through Turin to Milan. Then straight into Zurich, Munich, Nurburgring, and then back home. Took us a week (rather than 10 days) to do and was a very enjoyable trip - roughly spent about the same time as you've accounted for in the car, but with regular breaks to break it up a little.

Had an absolute blast and hopefully we'll be doing it again in a year or two. An E46 diesel should be able to handle that without a sweat - just make sure the cooling system is up to scratch before departing :p
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Would you say that the 7 days was enough? Or did you feel pushed for time at any point?

Looks like we have more driving in the alps than you, which would take up time due to the wiggly roads
 
miikeeyy92 said:
That looks good, although we were looking to take in a lot of the south coast of France, and then along to the riviera
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Fair enough, all beautiful areas. Planning a similar trip myself this year with a couple of mates, so I am interested in seeing how you get on with yours. When are you thinking of doing it?

In terms of roads to take, I found this link the other day which has been useful:

http://www.ultimatedrives.net/top-10-roads/index.php
 
Cheap e46 diesels are rubbish money pits, don't bother with them. If you can shrug the bills and hassle off then you can afford the extra fuel for the proper ones, too.

I did 3000 miles around Europe in a 530i and it averaged 35mpg.
 
Crimefighter said:
Have you thought about taking your Southerly route a bit further east and taking in the route Napoleon? (roughly from Grenoble to down to Nice).
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Was going to say this. Your drive from Calais to Monaco, apart from the Millau bridge, is extremely boring. However, it is quick and Orleans has a nice town centre/square if you want to stop somewhere other than Paris.
 
[TW]Fox;25635210 said:
Cheap e46 diesels are rubbish money pits, don't bother with them. If you can shrug the bills and hassle off then you can afford the extra fuel for the proper ones, too.

I did 3000 miles around Europe in a 530i and it averaged 35mpg.
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That was my only issue with one, being that if/when it went wrong, it would be $$$. What year was your 530i? Any recommendations instead?


megakid said:
Was going to say this. Your drive from Calais to Monaco, apart from the Millau bridge, is extremely boring. However, it is quick and Orleans has a nice town centre/square if you want to stop somewhere other than Paris.
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We haven't really looked into the journey through France much yet. The Millau Bridge is the main attraction, but the girlfriend grew up in France, and so she'll be wanting to stop here and there all over the place. Orleans looks like a good suggestion for a first nights stop. We did want to pop to Le Mans, although from memory apart from the track, theres nothing there.
 
miikeeyy92 said:
Would you say that the 7 days was enough? Or did you feel pushed for time at any point?

Looks like we have more driving in the alps than you, which would take up time due to the wiggly roads
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For our route, 7 days was perfect, we'd be up at 8ish in the morning each day, jump into the car onto the next destination and we'd generally have a solid afternoon and evening there (with the exception of Paris, Zurich, and Turin which we stopped at for a couple of hours). Gave us the opportunity to walk around and discover the cities we were in nicely.

The year after, the same group of friends (minus me) did a very very similar route to you for a 7 day trip in an E39 540i tourer (Geneva, Monaco through to Milan, and then through the alps (Stelvio pass) through Stuttgart and onto the Nurburgring) and while they all said they had a great time, I got the impression that they spent a lot of time in the car and it got very annoying, very quickly!

I think with 10 days at your disposal, you'll have an enjoyable trip if you're hitting the road early in the morning :cool:
 
Just pasting this here, route is very similar to the one I just did.

To give you an idea, I did this with 3 other chaps in 16 days. INCREDIBLE trip. Route was about right, but still fairly tight in places. If we had time we would have done the west coast of France, and returned via more of Germany and Belgium, but seeing as I've done Belgium 5/6 times and timings were tight we skipped it.

sqy0.jpg


Have a read of this thread and also my GoPro video of some places on there for you to visit along the way!

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18539487&highlight=eurotrip

Wack this in 1080p and enjoy!


We used about 7-8 tanks of fuel and about £130 on tolls. MPG was hammered due to roofbox + autobahn, hills, weight etc. Did about 35-42mpg on most tanks of fuel. £50 on breakdown, 2 x crossings at £80 each on ferry (singles for flexibility).

Camping was great and cheap, plus booking guesthouses and apartments worked well. The odd hotel was a bit pricey at last minute. Having milestone places to reach worked really well and booking a night or so in advance.

With regards to gear, Halfords do a pack which contains pretty much everything you need for driving abroad which is a good start and you need to allow time to stop and see things, so be careful not to be too ambitious with the route. We wanted to do the route you have suggested, but I would have wanted at least 3 weeks to do that.

Shout if you have any questions!
 
Atari said:
For our route, 7 days was perfect, we'd be up at 8ish in the morning each day, jump into the car onto the next destination and we'd generally have a solid afternoon and evening there (with the exception of Paris, Zurich, and Turin which we stopped at for a couple of hours). Gave us the opportunity to walk around and discover the cities we were in nicely.

The year after, the same group of friends (minus me) did a very very similar route to you for a 7 day trip in an E39 540i tourer (Geneva, Monaco through to Milan, and then through the alps (Stelvio pass) through Stuttgart and onto the Nurburgring) and while they all said they had a great time, I got the impression that they spent a lot of time in the car and it got very annoying, very quickly!

I think with 10 days at your disposal, you'll have an enjoyable trip if you're hitting the road early in the morning :cool:
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We were aiming for leaving at 9ish ... getting us to locations around lunchtime, and having the afternoon/evening there, which sounds very similar to your timings. We collectively had thought that 7 days was definitely too short, we were even thinking of stretching to 14 days, but it sounds like 10 should be enough.

ChocolateStarfishRammer said:
Well thats alright then!

Planning a pretty identical trip myself :)
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Let me know how it goes!
 
miikeeyy92 said:
Had already watched your video! Looked so good! Very jealous of the car, my wallet wouldn't stretch for the insurance!

How long was your route? and what sort of timings were you running? From the video it looked like you stayed a reasonable amount of time in some places?
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We did ~2500miles in total. We gained a day as I drove from Oxford to Marseille in day 1 (22 hours with stops). But mostly spent 3-4 days in each country in a range of places. Getting food poisoning put me down in France for a few days on the coast and being the only driver it meant we stayed put for longer than we wanted.

From memory:
French coast = 3-4 days
Genoa/Milan/Monza/Lake Como 3 days
Alpes = 1 day (wish I spent more time here)
Austria = 1 day (wish I spent more time here)
Munich = 2 days
Stuttgart = 1 day
Black forest = 2 days

It was all fairly tight, but once you have reached that bottom coast everything is small distances (1-3 hours) away and doesn't feel far at all.


ChocolateStarfishRammer said:
Very good video Booner! Enjoyed that!

What camera/pole was that?
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GoPro 3 Black edition with a cheap pole off amazon (not sure if I can link, but here goes).

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B002J9MMDI/ref=oh_details_o03_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

We also captured this in Italy..

 
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