European Road Trip April/May '16

[monkfish1]

a17vts said:

=UPDATED ITINERARY JUNE 2016=

After spending the best part of this weekend on the internet researching hotels and routes, I believe I have pretty much completed the plan for our trip, the only area I do not feel 100% confident with is the actual routes I'll be driving but they will only be minor adjustments to ensure I hit the roads I'm looking for.

The 'tour' will commence on Thursday 16th June 2016 and the details are as follows:

Day 1 - Home to Lake Geneva
Day 2 - Lake Geneva to Avigliana (via Chamonix & Saint Bernard Pass)
Day 3 - Avigliana to Monte Carlo (via Col Du Turini)
Day 4 - Monte Carlo to Maranello
Day 5 - Maranello to Lake Como (via Lake Garda)
Day 6 - Rest day at Lake Como
Day 7 - Lake Como to Davos (via Stelvio & Fluela Pass)
Day 8 - Davos to Andermatt (via San Bernadino, Furka & Grimmsel Pass)
Day 9 - Andermatt to Baden-Baden
Day 10 - Baden-Baden to Luxembourg City
Day 11 - Luxembourg City to Home

I've added a rest day at Lake Como, which will break up the trip and make it feel a little more 'holiday' like!

We've agreed on all our hotels and I'm after this post I'll be confirming these along with the Euro Tunnel crossing. I've also worked out the costing, although I still need to add the tolls fees, road taxes and general food etc.

In summary the costs are as follows;

Euro Tunnel = £158.00
Hotels = £1,262.31
Diesel = £199.40 (based at current diesel prices and average consumption)
Total = £1,619.68

According to my calculations I'll be completing around 2,500 miles during the whole trip.

I'll keep you all posted.

Tom

Good work. Might adopt your day 7 and 8 the other way!

[Happy Jim]

Day 9.

Leave Andermatt, head to Waldshut-Tiengen then follow the route 500 all the way to Baden Baden - it's a glorious run through the Black Forest BUT don't bother if you hit day 9 on a weekend......it's a bloody car park all the way up (too many tourists). If you are doing it at the weekend just plan a route that avoids that raid and you will get 90% of the benefit.

Jim

[Happy Jim]

Day 7.

Not sure what route you are taking to Stelvio but make sure you drive "up" it (I.e. from Prato Allo Stelvio South-West), coffee/snack/photo op at the top, keep going over the back and then pick up the Umbrail Pass on the way down before heading through Tschierv towards Zernez (epically great flowing roads through the forest and normally deserted!!), before picking up the route to the Fluella pass and then Davos.

Jim

[Poshbury]

Lets hope that the fuel prices hold out for you.
Diesel is currently the equivalent of 74p per litre in France.

Super unleaded Petrol meanwhile is 95p. Lovely.

[Happy Jim]

Day 10.

I'd be tempted to leave early and head to Adenau, you could be there for Lunchtime and if you get lucky the Ring might be open for a TF day/evening 😎

Adenau to Calais is about 4.5hrs taking it easy the next day

Jim

Right, best I go and finish planning my trip 👍

[a17vts]

Thanks for all the advice Jim.

Day 9 - Luckily I'll be doing Andermatt to Baden-Baden on a Friday so hopefully not to busy.

Day 7 - Thanks again for the help.

Day 10 - I was going to "pop" to Adenau but not sure the wife will be that keen! If its not to far out the way we may be able to stop by.

Once I've finalised each days plan I'll post them in here to see if I've made any errors or missed any beauty spots.

The only issues I've having at present is planning routes on passes which appears to be currently closed, I think google maps/TYRE only lets you select waypoints if the road is open so I need to spend a little time getting my head around this. However, I am enjoying the planning part far more than I was expecting.

[a17vts]

Poshbury said:

Lets hope that the fuel prices hold out for you.
Diesel is currently the equivalent of 74p per litre in France.

Super unleaded Petrol meanwhile is 95p. Lovely.

I had no idea that diesel was that much cheaper in France. I filled up yesterday at 99.9p per litre at my local Tesco which I was happy with

[kwk]

It's not only the Nurburgring to see in the Adenau area. Take the wife to Cochem, she will probably enjoy it.

Edited by kwk on Tuesday 12th January 12:39

[Zed 44]

You've probably got too many suggestions now to incorporate into one trip but here is one more for the drive to Baden Baden that is much more fun than the 500. But also much longer, it has to be said.

https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=z1ahuj2hTEP...

When we came back from the Andermatt Loop, we were able to pick up this route via. Lucerne and Bad Sackingen.

[Happy Jim]

Zed 44 said:

You've probably got too many suggestions now to incorporate into one trip but here is one more for the drive to Baden Baden that is much more fun than the 500. But also much longer, it has to be said.

https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=z1ahuj2hTEP...

When we came back from the Andermatt Loop, we were able to pick up this route via. Lucerne and Bad Sackingen.

Consider that route stolen :-) I will be hitting the black forest over a weekend this year so was thinking of which route to take.....solved ;-)

Jim

[a17vts]

Zed 44 said:

You've probably got too many suggestions now to incorporate into one trip but here is one more for the drive to Baden Baden that is much more fun than the 500. But also much longer, it has to be said.

https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=z1ahuj2hTEP...

When we came back from the Andermatt Loop, we were able to pick up this route via. Lucerne and Bad Sackingen.

Thanks for the route ideas.

Any ideas how long that route would take?

I've been trying to get google to tell me but unable to work it out!

[a17vts]

Just booked up our Eurotunnel via a Tesco discount deal.

In short if you have Tesco club card points they can be swapped into vouchers for the Eurotunnel. I converted £10 to £30 worth of vouchers, I sadly only had £12.50 available

[Zed 44]

a17vts said:

Zed 44 said:

You've probably got too many suggestions now to incorporate into one trip but here is one more for the drive to Baden Baden that is much more fun than the 500. But also much longer, it has to be said.

https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=z1ahuj2hTEP...

When we came back from the Andermatt Loop, we were able to pick up this route via. Lucerne and Bad Sackingen.

Thanks for the route ideas.

Any ideas how long that route would take?

I've been trying to get google to tell me but unable to work it out!

Motogoloco is your friend. 313.19 miles, 9 hours and 28 minutes.

[a17vts]

Zed 44 said:

Motogoloco is your friend. 313.19 miles, 9 hours and 28 minutes.

Thanks Zed.

Out of interest how did you get that file into Motogoloco?

Did you save the file from google maps and then upload to Motogoloco?

Thanks.

[Zed 44]

a17vts said:

Thanks Zed.

Out of interest how did you get that file into Motogoloco?

Did you save the file from google maps and then upload to Motogoloco?

Thanks.

I'm not sure if there is a way to import back to Motogoloco from Google Maps. I never had the need to. This is what I always do.

Create in Motogoloco
Export as a KML file
Open in Google Earth
Save as KMZ file into "my docs"
Open Google Maps
Click on the 3 striped icon in top left hand corner
Click on "My maps"
Bottom of the page click on "Create Map"
Click on import
Select the file from "My docs" that you have just saved
And you're there.

Then you have the file in both Motogoloco and Google Maps.


Hope this helps.

[a17vts]

ALL BOOKED

So today I booked up all the hotels for our trip along with the Eurotunnel.

I've almost finalised our routes, I'm up to day 8 but having some issues making the route follow the passes I require, for some reason TYRE keep drawing straight lines between my waypoints and not sticking to the roads.

Once I've finalised my routes I'll post up a day-to-day plan including hotels, driving times, mileage, etc.

[vonhosen]

a17vts said:

=ALL BOOKED=

So today I booked up all the hotels for our trip along with the Eurotunnel.

I've almost finalised our routes, I'm up to day 8 but having some issues making the route follow the passes I require, for some reason TYRE keep drawing straight lines between my waypoints and not sticking to the roads.

Once I've finalised my routes I'll post up a day-to-day plan including hotels, driving times, mileage, etc.

That's probably because the passes are closed at present, so TYRE isn't properly letting you route through them. Try it when they are back open in the spring & it should be fine.

[a17vts]

vonhosen said:

That's probably because the passes are closed at present, so TYRE isn't properly letting you route through them. Try it when they are back open in the spring & it should be fine.

Thanks for the reply vonhosen.

I did think that could be the issue but still spent around 3 hours trying to make it work! I may just place all my waypoints on TYRE so when the passes are all open again it will simply be a click of a button.

I thought I was going to be able to borrow my father-in-laws SatNav but its a NavMan and not sure it is compatible with TYRE. I'll keep playing around with my routes this weekend and closer to the summer I'll finalise them.

[Red Devil]

Happy Jim said:

Day 7.

Not sure what route you are taking to Stelvio but make sure you drive "up" it (I.e. from Prato Allo Stelvio South-West), coffee/snack/photo op at the top, keep going over the back and then pick up the Umbrail Pass on the way down before heading through Tschierv towards Zernez (epically great flowing roads through the forest and normally deserted!!), before picking up the route to the Fluella pass and then Davos.

+1

A couple of points. The map on page 1 doesn't seem to agree with the itinerary. The marked route doesn't appear to include the Stelvio. As far as I can tell the border crossing into Switzerland is between Chiavenna and Bregaglia. Prata Allo Stelvio is east of the pass. If the OP is travelling from Como he will be approaching from the west. The options for your route are either do both sides of Stelvio then double back to the Umbrail or go only as far as the facilities at the top.

The Umbrail doesn't seem to get mentioned as much as many of the other passes. Seems under rated: not sure why. It's Switzerland's highest. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siO9_Vgchpk

[a17vts]

Red Devil said:

+1

A couple of points. The map on page 1 doesn't seem to agree with the itinerary. The marked route doesn't appear to include the Stelvio. As far as I can tell the border crossing into Switzerland is between Chiavenna and Bregaglia. Prata Allo Stelvio is east of the pass. If the OP is travelling from Como he will be approaching from the west. The options for your route are either do both sides of Stelvio then double back to the Umbrail or go only as far as the facilities at the top.

The Umbrail doesn't seem to get mentioned as much as many of the other passes. Seems under rated: not sure why. It's Switzerland's highest. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siO9_Vgchpk

You are correct the original itinerary was just point to point via google to give me a rough idea of time distance, etc.

I'm current planning my routes in TYRE but appear to be having some issues as the passes are currently closed thus unable to map my actual route, but this is my planned route on the day in question:



As you can see I am unable to map the actual route up Stelvio.