Quick and boring route Calais to Ancona, Italy?
Discussion
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?
Lastly, would there be any risk of snow desruption by mid May if we went through the Alps?
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!!
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 b
ds)When you going, and whereabouts?
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!!!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.
Well, we made it there and back without incident!
Set off from Yorkshire 3.30 Thursday afternoon, A1 was shut so had to trudge down the M1 in the rain, got the eurotunnel about 11pm then with the kids asleep we hit the autoroute South until about 3am. Pulled into an aire South of Reims and got a bit of shut eye. I think it was about 8.30 by the time we set off again Friday morning, but we made good time through France. Somewhere around Strasbourg it started raining, and it didn't stop. We crossed into Switzerland at lunchtime, and were planning to stop to let the kids have a run around, instead we all huddled in the back of the van eating sandwiches. Switzerland would have been scenic I expect, if it weren't for the low cloud, torrential rain and thunderstorms. The rain turned to snow while climbing to the Gotthard tunnel, and was settling on the road as we entered it (this was the 15th May for the record). The 17kms tunnel was a pleasant respite from the weather, but it kicked in again when we came out, with a vengeance! The waterfalls were quite a sight as we dropped down to Italy, and the rain got worse. We got some tea about 19.30 at an Italian service station, and booked a hotel room in Bologna online for that night, which we made by about 11pm! The next day we just had 2 hours down to Ancona, which was easy enough, the weather had even brightened up a bit, ferry left at 16.00, and we arrived in Greece at 10.30am Sunday, with just a 2 hour drive down to Lefkas.
The return trip, we'd left ourselves a little less time. Had a full day on Lefkas, left 19.30, drove to Igoumenitsa, ferry was late so didn't leave till midnight, docked in Ancona 15.30 Saturday. It was gone 4pm by the time we got out of town onto the autostrada. We stopped for tea South of Milan about 19.30 for an about an hour, then with everyone else in the van asleep I cracked on. Didn't stop again through Italy, didn't drop below 80kph through Switzerland (it was a lot warmer on the way back), stopped for diesel just into France (it's significantly cheaper the Switzerland), then did another half hour or so drive. I've no idea where we pulled over to sleep for 3 hours, but it left us a 6 hour drive, and we had 6 and a half to make it. We were away again at 6.45, eldest threw up all over himself before breakfast, and we just made it to Calais in time - in the rain, and at the end of spring bank week. The eurotunnel check in was in meltdown, by the time we booked in we'd been shunted to the next train, which we went straight to boarding once we'd cleared immigration.
And that just left the 5 hour drive back up North from Folkestone. We were home for 19.30, bang on 48hours since leaving Greece.
Would we drive it again, absolutely!! The weather made the drive there harder than it should've been. I know for next time that we don't need such a big cabin on the ferry, we'd all fit in an en suite twin, and if we didn't the ferry's next to empty at that time of year, there's loads of places to sleep on deck (with the truckers). The aprr tag I got was brilliant, especially on the rush back into Calais, I just wish it worked in Italy too. It meant we could take what we liked, bikes etc, and had a car there all the time, and I reckon we saved a good £800 in total over the cost of flying, next time we'd have to pay for a flight for the youngest too - so we'll save even more.
I made a bit of a timelapse of the highlights of the journey out, it doesn't really show how bad the weather was, and it got even worse when it got dark!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOkHoNRGHhI
Set off from Yorkshire 3.30 Thursday afternoon, A1 was shut so had to trudge down the M1 in the rain, got the eurotunnel about 11pm then with the kids asleep we hit the autoroute South until about 3am. Pulled into an aire South of Reims and got a bit of shut eye. I think it was about 8.30 by the time we set off again Friday morning, but we made good time through France. Somewhere around Strasbourg it started raining, and it didn't stop. We crossed into Switzerland at lunchtime, and were planning to stop to let the kids have a run around, instead we all huddled in the back of the van eating sandwiches. Switzerland would have been scenic I expect, if it weren't for the low cloud, torrential rain and thunderstorms. The rain turned to snow while climbing to the Gotthard tunnel, and was settling on the road as we entered it (this was the 15th May for the record). The 17kms tunnel was a pleasant respite from the weather, but it kicked in again when we came out, with a vengeance! The waterfalls were quite a sight as we dropped down to Italy, and the rain got worse. We got some tea about 19.30 at an Italian service station, and booked a hotel room in Bologna online for that night, which we made by about 11pm! The next day we just had 2 hours down to Ancona, which was easy enough, the weather had even brightened up a bit, ferry left at 16.00, and we arrived in Greece at 10.30am Sunday, with just a 2 hour drive down to Lefkas.
The return trip, we'd left ourselves a little less time. Had a full day on Lefkas, left 19.30, drove to Igoumenitsa, ferry was late so didn't leave till midnight, docked in Ancona 15.30 Saturday. It was gone 4pm by the time we got out of town onto the autostrada. We stopped for tea South of Milan about 19.30 for an about an hour, then with everyone else in the van asleep I cracked on. Didn't stop again through Italy, didn't drop below 80kph through Switzerland (it was a lot warmer on the way back), stopped for diesel just into France (it's significantly cheaper the Switzerland), then did another half hour or so drive. I've no idea where we pulled over to sleep for 3 hours, but it left us a 6 hour drive, and we had 6 and a half to make it. We were away again at 6.45, eldest threw up all over himself before breakfast, and we just made it to Calais in time - in the rain, and at the end of spring bank week. The eurotunnel check in was in meltdown, by the time we booked in we'd been shunted to the next train, which we went straight to boarding once we'd cleared immigration.
And that just left the 5 hour drive back up North from Folkestone. We were home for 19.30, bang on 48hours since leaving Greece.
Would we drive it again, absolutely!! The weather made the drive there harder than it should've been. I know for next time that we don't need such a big cabin on the ferry, we'd all fit in an en suite twin, and if we didn't the ferry's next to empty at that time of year, there's loads of places to sleep on deck (with the truckers). The aprr tag I got was brilliant, especially on the rush back into Calais, I just wish it worked in Italy too. It meant we could take what we liked, bikes etc, and had a car there all the time, and I reckon we saved a good £800 in total over the cost of flying, next time we'd have to pay for a flight for the youngest too - so we'll save even more.
I made a bit of a timelapse of the highlights of the journey out, it doesn't really show how bad the weather was, and it got even worse when it got dark!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOkHoNRGHhI
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