Driving through europe

Gaygle

Gaygle

Gaygle

Soldato
Joined
7 Nov 2004
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East of England
My friends and i were thinking of driving through Europe. We eventually want to end up in Finland (where a GF of one of my friends lives) and i was wondering what are the associated costs of doing so. Obviously we have fuel costs (should be around a 3000mile journey so fuel should be around 700 quid between us). Its just things like unforseen costs that i'm interested in.

Ie. what would you do if you were on a german motorway and your car just broke down? Who would you call? How would you get your car fixed?

Basically i want to know, from veterans of europe tourers, what to think about?

cheers
 
Depends....on many new cars you get European recovery and assistance, BMW's include repratiation of car back to UK if it can't be fixed and you need to continue your journey in a hire car provided by them. I don't know what car you have but you can probably work out the mileage and calculate the fuel, as for breakdown cover it would normally be a yearly cover so may be expensive for a single trip. I have no idea about the costs of 3rd party cover on your own car through AA or RAC but perhaps some else has experience of doing it that way.

Personally I would just hire a car from Hertz with the wheel on the other side, as I find it much easier to drive a left hand drive car in left hand drive countries. Perhaps get the ferry or tunnel tain through to France and hire from there.
 
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It isn't a new car, and certainly doesn't come with the luxury of BMW services. :p

Its a Primera GT and we don't really want to hire a car. I think the insurance for abroad is about £38 for 90 days of cover. We would want to take the ferry to places, to help keep the costs down and definately get european AA cover. Is there anything else to think about when driving abroad, apart from the obvious road laws for the different countries?

How many miles a day do you think we'd be able to cover?
 
OK I see, you definately need a bulb kit in some countries (spare one for every light). Would be good to take a first aid kit and also some basic spares like alternator belt if not been serviced in a while, you don't need to be able to fit them but really handy if the AA guy doenst have one or there is garage in a local town. Either that or find a friendly local garage to give it a good check over. Also bear in mind the tyre laws differ in countries so if any of them are near to 2mm replace (which you should be thinking of doing anyway).

Other than that the obvious light beam benders so you don't dazzle oncoming traffic are a requirement.

I have done it with two drivers and covered just under 1000 miles in a day but it is very tiring and I was forced into it so was not a fun roadtrip. If you are in no hurry and a single driver then problably best not to go over 8 -10 hours driving per day, distance covered will vary greatly dependant on route chosen and time of day but roughly 500 miles assuming an average of 50mph.
 
Depending on which way you're going, check up on ferry and bridge toll costs. If you're getting the ferry from the UK to Rotterdam it's about £300 for a car and 1 passenger, so more if there's a group of you.

If you're going to Finland via Denmark and Sweden there will be a toll for the bridge to Malmo, I forget what it's called.

If you're going the Commie way and plan to drive through Russia and the former Soviet Republics, you will all need to have valid travel visas for every country you pass through, as well as all the accompanying customs documentation for everything you carry at entry and exit points, and probably some bribe money as well. Have a read of something like Long Way Round or the GUmball Rally guides to see how hellish border checkpoints are at non-EU countries.

If I were you, I'd drive to Estonia and get the Talinn ferry to Helsinki, then get the ferry from Helsinki to Stockholm and go through Sweden and Denmark on the way back. You stay in the EU so you don't need to be digging out passports except for the ferries.

Depending when you go you may need snow chains or other cold weather gear when driving in Scandinavia, you'll certainly need a warning triangle, spare bulbs and a first aid kit as well as headlight adaptors to be legal. Hardly anyone ever gets into trouble for not having these, but you don't want to be in the minority that are, and at the end of the day they are useful.
 
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motorway tolls, road tolls

if you go through denmark, pretty much every bridge will have a toll. when we drove down from oslo, the tolls cost us around £100 i think in total.
you can take ferries instead of the bridges, but it takes longer and isn't really much cheaper
the bridge from copenhagen to malmö is the øresund bridge, and it's about £25 per passenger car

as scottly says pretty much
depends what you want to see - scandinavia or eastern europe
you could always go up through scandinavia and back through eastern europe.

we did that two years ago, and it wasn't that bad. the roads in poland are shocking though. i don't even think they have any motorways. lithuania has fantastic roads, and you can stop in vilnius and riga on that way up, which is always nice :p

sweden has (relatively) low speed limits, so it might take a while to go anywhere, but once you reach stockholm you can take a ferry to turku/åbo and you're in finland. it stops in the åland islands, which isn't the EU, so you can stock up with lots of booze ;D
 
theDude said:
France toll roads are quite pricey also.. they are good though
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Oh yes. Very good. This was on the way to le mans in 2006 :D

le%20mans%20(Small).jpg
 
This is the route we were thinking of taking:

goeuropewt0.jpg


We really want to stay away from the eastern european/former soviet countries.

We want to go Dover>Calais>Belgium>Nederlands>Germany>Denmark>Sweden>Finland.

Looking at the map, i was wondering what you experienced euro pioneers thought of the route, and how much each crossing is likely to be.

ie. Germany>Denmark and Sweden>Finland

cheers
 
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I think French Roads are Crap.... well, Northern France around Calais anyway.... All i remmeber them for is the drops and ramps every 200 yards. Austrian roads ***
 
Toll roads are the way to go in france.
I told my tomtom to avoid toll roads on the way from montpellier to paris and it insisted that this was the best road.
CIMG0678.JPG.jpg
 
Haha, that's ace :D

Why do you want to avoid Latvia/Lithuania/Estonia? Most interesting countries on the "route" IMO.
 
A friend any myself did France, Austria, Italy, Germany and a little bit of the Netherlands over the course of two weeks and a bit over 3000 miles. This was in an old Capri 2.8i and it was probably one of the best 2 weeks ever as a young(ish) single bloke.

It broke down a couple of times; wheel bearings were shot after a high speed blat down through France so we stopped in the camp site, took the hubs apart and walked to the nearest (tiny backstreet) garage who was happy to give us a large pot of grease for the price of un biere. Repacked the bearings and they managed to last out the rest of the journey, making horrible noises :D It also broke down near the top of the Stelvio pass after said mate was re-enacting the Italian job going up. Was just some crud stired up that jammed the metering valve in the silly Jetronic system which we sorted out pretty quickly.

If you aren't by yourself and your are reasonably competent with a spanner then it just adds to the adventure.

Anyway, if you have the time and money then don't even consider missing out on this. I guarantee you will have a ball.
 
Dogbreath said:
A friend any myself did France, Austria, Italy, Germany and a little bit of the Netherlands over the course of two weeks and a bit over 3000 miles. This was in an old Capri 2.8i and it was probably one of the best 2 weeks ever as a young(ish) single bloke.
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This is exactly what we want. We know we're rapidly approaching the age where we aren't going to get 12 weeks off holiday over the summer and won't have the cash to sling around like we do now. We want to do something we won't forget.


Dogbreath said:
It broke down a couple of times; wheel bearings were shot after a high speed blat down through France so we stopped in the camp site, took the hubs apart and walked to the nearest (tiny backstreet) garage who was happy to give us a large pot of grease for the price of un biere. Repacked the bearings and they managed to last out the rest of the journey, making horrible noises :D It also broke down near the top of the Stelvio pass after said mate was re-enacting the Italian job going up. Was just some crud stired up that jammed the metering valve in the silly Jetronic system which we sorted out pretty quickly.

If you aren't by yourself and your are reasonably competent with a spanner then it just adds to the adventure.
Click to expand...

I'm not good enough with a spanner to attempt repairs in a foreign country where i can't even speak the language. Breaking down is the biggest worry i have.

Dogbreath said:
Anyway, if you have the time and money then don't even consider missing out on this. I guarantee you will have a ball.
Click to expand...

We have the time and we'll earn the money for this trip. We're all really excited about it as it'd totally be a trip to remember. I'm just worried about the language barrier if an emergency arose....ie. breaking down, or speeding or something else
 
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If you're worried about breakdowns, get the car serviced before you go. When you're on your trip, check the water and oil regularly, and don't go completely stupid driving it, especially on the Autobahns. One good tip for Germany - be very, very careful pulling out to overtake on the Autobahns. Your visibility in that quarter isn't good, and it's hard to appreciate just how fast some of the mental German drivers go - the are regular horror stories of foreigners getting creamed from behind by fast German drivers because the foreigners couldn't judge the distance properly when pulling out. Also, above a certain speed (I think 150km/h but I'm not sure) all insurance is invalid. So be careful.

Most people in the parts of Belgium and Holland you're driving through will speak very good English, and your number plate will make it obvious that you're foreign. Danes, Swedes and Finns also speak good English as a rule, though not as good as the Dutch. In the parts of Germany close to the Dutch border standards of English are good, but the further East you go the worse they get. I work in Europe a lot, I can't speak any of the languages, but I've never had any problems.

As for prices I've checked lately, petrol is around €1.50 a litre in Holland, a bit more in Germany. Diesel is closer to €1.25 in both places. At current exchange rates it works out to be quite expensive for fuel.
 
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