Quick and boring route Calais to Ancona, Italy?

[dienamic]

I'm driving down to Greece in May with the wife and kids. Ferry leaves Ancona, Italy Saturday afternoon, we're planning on setting off from Yorkshire Thursday night and heading through tunnel, stopping south of calais somewhere. That leaves us a day and a half to get down to Ancona. Google comes up with 3 similar routes Troyes/Lyon/Turin/Parma, Troyes/Dijon/Geneva/Parma, and Reims/Metz/Basel/Lucerne/Milan. All 3 routes are similar times and not much difference distance-wise. Via michelin shows similar costs regarding tolls and vignette for either going through Switzerland or not. So which should we do and why? I'm favouring the Swiss route, as I imagine it to be a bit more scenic than the French, but I could be totally wrong. All 3 will be predominately motorway as we'll have to time to divert or we might literally miss the boat.
Lastly, would there be any risk of snow desruption by mid May if we went through the Alps?

[vournikas]

Back in 2013, we drove to Italy for a week in a small village between Pescara and Rome, so we drove past Ancona to get there. We did it in 3 easy days, with day 2 involving the Grimsel / Furka / St. Gotthard passes. Now, this was in the last week of June and the tops of Grimsel and Furka looked as if they had not long been cleared of snow, so I suspect any Alpine passes would be a no-go in May.

The easiest drive down to Italy we did was back in 2004 going Calais / Metz / Strasbourg / Basel / Milan / Verona. Boring (except the drive through Switz) but an easy 2 days with one overnight stop in Saverne.

Can I ask how much you paid for your crossing from Ancona? Because driving there was pretty easy, we've dabbled with the idea of driving to Greece as well.

[dcb]

vournikas said:

so I suspect any Alpine passes would be a no-go in May.

Not quite true. The lower ones are kept fine all year.
The lorries have to get through somehow.

For the higher ones, if it's raining down in the valley,
it'll be snowing at the top, even if it's June ;-|

Provided the OP sticks to the lower, lorry friendly, passes, then they will be
IMHO fine.

[vournikas]

That's what I was alluding to; the pass summits are likely to be still blocked with snow even in late May / early June.

[dienamic]

We will be sticking to the lower routes, we're in a fully laden VW T5 with 3 kids and associated gear, not really an alpine pass weapon! Ferry was €750, which worked out at £548 when I booked it the other night at €1.37 to the £. That included an early booking discount (I think it was 15%) for booking before the end of Feb. That includes a 4 bed cabin both ways with shower and bog. If you're happy to sleep in the corridors I think it could've been had for about £300. We're going for a fortnight, the 2nd week of which being spring bank, so flights to Preveza were nearly £400 each! With tunnel crossing, diesel, tolls, vignette and ferry, I reckon we'll get 5 of us to Lefkas for under £1200, and we'll have the car there for a fortnight to boot. It's just the 24 hours in the car with 3 kids under 5 I'm not looking forward to!!

[vournikas]

I would imagine the lower Alpine roads should be fine. The second time we drove to the Verona area, the route took us into Austria then over the Dolomites to drop down to Lake Garda. The road up mountains from Langenfeld was clear up past Obergurgl, and was only closed off at the summit.

Thanks for the info on the ferry costs . Taking fuel & tolls into account, it's financially out of our bandwidth at the mo. Our current plan (we're off to Lefkas as well) is a cheap flight to Corfu, ferry to Igoumenitsa, then hire a car from there. As you say, flights to Preveza are bloody extortionate!

[dienamic]

Have you seen easyjet are now flying into Preveza? From Gatwick only, starting 17th May on weds and Sundays. If you're flexible with dates then some of them are pretty cheap, especially the Wednesday ones, return fortnight for under £100

[NormalWisdom]

To eliminate French M-Way toll fees, try going through Germany - Brussels, Cologne, Frankfurt, Munich, Innsbruck, Verona, Bologna.

Easy 2-day drive (I regularly did Reading to Munich last year in 13 hours). It is about €4 for the short Austrian segment vignette to be purchased in advance at any border service stations and then the Italian M-Way is PAYGO.

[chilistrucker]

NormalWisdom said:

To eliminate French M-Way toll fees, try going through Germany - Brussels, Cologne, Frankfurt, Munich, Innsbruck, Verona, Bologna.

Easy 2-day drive (I regularly did Reading to Munich last year in 13 hours). It is about €4 for the short Austrian segment vignette to be purchased in advance at any border service stations and then the Italian M-Way is PAYGO.

Top thinking that man, very good alternative route.

[vournikas]

dienamic said:

Have you seen easyjet are now flying into Preveza? From Gatwick only, starting 17th May on weds and Sundays. If you're flexible with dates then some of them are pretty cheap, especially the Wednesday ones, return fortnight for under £100

Didn't know that!

I will investigate further without delay

[vournikas]

Flights booked!

Thanks again, dienamic; we owe you a chilled Mythos

[dienamic]

They only released them last week and they look to be selling well so hopefully they'll continue the route. Would be great for us if they added a Manchester one. That said, more competition should hopefully bring down the costs from the other operators (robbing bds)

When you going, and whereabouts?

[vournikas]

Flying out on the 9th September, and will be staying in Vass

This'll be the 6th time in 10 years we've been. We tried Paxos last year, and it was nice enough but a little too quiet for us. Just got an e-mail back from our favourite apartments in Vass confirming availability as well!

Happy. Days.

I take it you're a Lefkas regular as well?

[dienamic]

Yep, been going there for years. Parents have built a villa out there, just outside vliho on the road up to Haradiatika. They've also got a boat out there on charter with sail Ionian so we get around a bit! Love it in vass too, best gyros on the island!!

[vournikas]

We've talked about it at length, and given the correct numbers on a lottery win a villa on Lefkas would be top of our list.

You're right about the gyros in Vass. Yannis who owns the grill on the corner does killer souvlaki and gyros, and I swear he'll look the same when he's 90 years old as he did when we first met him in 2004! One thing we found on Paxos - talking of food - was something called kontosouvli; very slow roasted seasoned pork that exploded with flavour and fell off the bone. Not something we've seen anywhere on Lefkas.

[tgr]

NormalWisdom said:

I regularly did Reading to Munich last year in 13 hours

Normal

How much time did you allow for that journey? Were you able to do it all in a day or did you break it up?

I'm tempted by the route I think you're suggesting, which involves the Tauern autobahn in Austria via Villach.

tgr

[NormalWisdom]

tgr said:

NormalWisdom said:

I regularly did Reading to Munich last year in 13 hours

Normal

How much time did you allow for that journey? Were you able to do it all in a day or did you break it up?

I'm tempted by the route I think you're suggesting, which involves the Tauern autobahn in Austria via Villach.

tgr

I did the trip about 8 times - All +/- 30mins from 13h at varying times of the day. I didn't take much in the way of breaks (2x fuel and 2x Pee was the average), I find driving quite relaxing.... From Reading it is 765 miles door-to-door to the flat I had South of Munich, I used the Channel tunnel.

Beyond Munich, I would go to Innsbruck then Verona via the Brenner Pass (Stunning for a Motorway!!) and South East from there, Villach is an alternative which I've not done.

[tgr]

Thanks a lot Normal - good to know. I want to end up in Udine hence the choice of the Tauern, although I haven't checked whether it would be closed for snow at this time of the year.

I guess I would need winter tyres

tgr

[dienamic]

NormalWisdom said:

To eliminate French M-Way toll fees, try going through Germany - Brussels, Cologne, Frankfurt, Munich, Innsbruck, Verona, Bologna.

Easy 2-day drive (I regularly did Reading to Munich last year in 13 hours). It is about €4 for the short Austrian segment vignette to be purchased in advance at any border service stations and then the Italian M-Way is PAYGO.

Just had a quick look at this on Google maps and it adds 4.5hours, and nearly 400km. We've a long enough drive with 3 young kids arguing in the back as it is so the tolls are a price worth paying!!!

[NormalWisdom]

dienamic said:

Just had a quick look at this on Google maps and it adds 4.5hours, and nearly 400km. We've a long enough drive with 3 young kids arguing in the back as it is so the tolls are a price worth paying!!!

Sure it's about 200 mile further but when I looked G-Maps only made it an hour longer (17h 30m)