Tuscany Trip to collect brand new Roller Team...

Tuscany Trip to collect brand new Roller Team...

Author
Discussion

rugbyleague

260 posts

77 months

Saturday 13th April
quotequote all
egor110 said:
Sounds like a good road trip .

We're there any snagging problems at handover ?

I ended up driving this down to a customer in Cornwall yesterday.
It was a great trip indeed!

I asked about the PDI checks for the vehicles, The hire companies had representatives at the depot who checked the vehicles over prior to handing them to us who were relocating them to the UK.

A couple of issues with our vehicle.

Needed Adblue adding
Piece of trim above glove box wasn't fitting in correct position
One of the straps to stop people falling out of drop down bed broken

I'm I right in thinking Roller Team are mid range rather than premium?

That looks a nice vehicle on its way to Cornwall!

egor110

16,876 posts

204 months

Saturday 13th April
quotequote all
I'd put them in the same ballpark as pilote , autotrail and swift.

What do you think nagshead ?

nagsheadwarrior

2,781 posts

180 months

Monday 15th April
quotequote all
Rollerteam?
Mid range but much improved, I'm the mixer with their trigano group siblings of chausson and benimar.

Used to be awful but actually decent things now, bit yeah mid range, stepped up from budget, sell very well over here with the modern styling and with exceptions the plastic bodyshell works well, pre that so 2014 and before to be avoided tho

Kind of like Seat if yiu were comparing to a car.
I happily sold a 2017 Zefiro 696 to some good friends a couple of years ago to replace the rubbish new Compass my salesman sold them on my day off the year before lol

Steve Kimberley

144 posts

71 months

Wednesday 17th April
quotequote all
The Roaming Radfords on You Tube have recently done this. They kinda do my head in, but I watched out of curiosity.
10 days just ain't long enough for that kind of mileage unless you're happy to miss a lot, but if it floats your boat...

poo at Paul's

14,153 posts

176 months

Saturday 27th April
quotequote all
Steve Kimberley said:
The Roaming Radfords on You Tube have recently done this. They kinda do my head in, but I watched out of curiosity.
10 days just ain't long enough for that kind of mileage unless you're happy to miss a lot, but if it floats your boat...
Having done the repatriation from Italy back in 2018, we got our own Rollerteam in 2021 and have used it in Uk and a few euro trips since. In fact, last 3 Easters have all been in the south of France, replicating some of the routes we took back in 2018. St Tropez area is lovely at Easter, sunny, not too hot and most of it is open, unlike N Spain which we found last year largely closed, so soon headed up into France!
As we have a Rollerteam Sport with the massive garage, we take plenty of bikes and even motorbikes with us. This year, one of the kids is old enough to ride a scooter, so we took hers, one of my bikes, then missus rented a scooter down there. We did near 300 miles in 5 days all round Côte d’Azur, great fun.

What we have learned is, realistically, 300 miles in a day is doable, but it’s a 8 hour day, driving. We’ve found on such trips, both northbound and south, we plan on doing 250 to 300 miles each stint, then stay a few days at key points to enjoy the area. Last year was ferry to Spain, this year, we drove down to st tropez over 3 days, spent 6 there, then headed back, different route but again over 3 days.
Danger of doing less miles a day, and still needing to do say 2000 miles in 12 days etc, is you struggle to stay at a site for more than one night, and difficult to get to know an area.
Our van is 3,2 m so class 3. We’ve learned to accept we need to pay tolls sometimes, to make decent progress and where the mileage toll vs non toll is much lower, but class 3 tolls end up being about 60percent of the fuel cost on the same route. So say, 300 miles, can be about 90 euro in fuel but toll is like 60 euros or so. But, mpg on motorways can be 25 or so in our Ford van, averaging 60mph, whilst off toll route, it’s about 21mpg and you tend to average about 50 mpg. So balancing the need to get miles done to site (many French sites have relatively early evening arrival deadline, 6pm etc) vs cost and ease of route is a bit of an art!

Anyway, to anyone thinking of doing the Just Go repatriation, it’s a great experience but leave yourself as long as you can to do it. Minimum 10 days imo, ideally 12 to 14. But at Easter, when many of these trips happen, enjoy the south as long as you can, as it tends to get colder and wetter the further north you get!

Edited by poo at Paul's on Saturday 27th April 23:37

egor110

16,876 posts

204 months

How do you get on with weight limits having motorbikes and bicycles in your garage ?

TwinKam

2,987 posts

96 months

poo at Paul's said:
Steve Kimberley said:
The Roaming Radfords on You Tube have recently done this. They kinda do my head in, but I watched out of curiosity.
10 days just ain't long enough for that kind of mileage unless you're happy to miss a lot, but if it floats your boat...
Having done the repatriation from Italy back in 2018, we got our own Rollerteam in 2021 and have used it in Uk and a few euro trips since. In fact, last 3 Easters have all been in the south of France, replicating some of the routes we took back in 2018. St Tropez area is lovely at Easter, sunny, not too hot and most of it is open, unlike N Spain which we found last year largely closed, so soon headed up into France!
As we have a Rollerteam Sport with the massive garage, we take plenty of bikes and even motorbikes with us. This year, one of the kids is old enough to ride a scooter, so we took hers, one of my bikes, then missus rented a scooter down there. We did near 300 miles in 5 days all round Côte d’Azur, great fun.

What we have learned is, realistically, 300 miles in a day is doable, but it’s a 8 hour day, driving. We’ve found on such trips, both northbound and south, we plan on doing 250 to 300 miles each stint, then stay a few days at key points to enjoy the area. Last year was ferry to Spain, this year, we drove down to st tropez over 3 days, spent 6 there, then headed back, different route but again over 3 days.
Danger of doing less miles a day, and still needing to do say 2000 miles in 12 days etc, is you struggle to stay at a site for more than one night, and difficult to get to know an area.
Our van is 3,2 m so class 3. We’ve learned to accept we need to pay tolls sometimes, to make decent progress and where the mileage toll vs non toll is much lower, but class 3 tolls end up being about 60percent of the fuel cost on the same route. So say, 300 miles, can be about 90 euro in fuel but toll is like 60 euros or so. But, mpg on motorways can be 25 or so in our Ford van, averaging 60mph, whilst off toll route, it’s about 21mpg and you tend to average about 50 mpg. So balancing the need to get miles done to site (many French sites have relatively early evening arrival deadline, 6pm etc) vs cost and ease of route is a bit of an art!

Anyway, to anyone thinking of doing the Just Go repatriation, it’s a great experience but leave yourself as long as you can to do it. Minimum 10 days imo, ideally 12 to 14. But at Easter, when many of these trips happen, enjoy the south as long as you can, as it tends to get colder and wetter the further north you get!

Edited by poo at Paul's on Saturday 27th April 23:37
Penultimate para, 'average about 50mpg' should read 'average about 50mph' to make sense.

poo at Paul's

14,153 posts

176 months

egor110 said:
How do you get on with weight limits having motorbikes and bicycles in your garage ?
We're ok if we are careful with the packing and bikes we take. S France was a CBR 300 (165kg) and 2 stroke scooter, 70kg.
But you can up plate and carry more. 4.2 tonnes on the ford, no inspections all just done via papertrail.

chopper602

2,186 posts

224 months

Tuesday
quotequote all
Alternatively avoid France and their expensive peage network and head east to Germany, Austria, Italy (Ok the last two have a vignette/toll for some motorways) etc.

(That's where I'm off next week!)

egor110

16,876 posts

204 months

Tuesday
quotequote all
chopper602 said:
Alternatively avoid France and their expensive peage network and head east to Germany, Austria, Italy (Ok the last two have a vignette/toll for some motorways) etc.

(That's where I'm off next week!)
They still need to get to Calais within 10 days though .

oblio

5,411 posts

228 months

Yesterday (07:28)
quotequote all
chopper602 said:
Alternatively avoid France and their expensive peage network and head east to Germany, Austria, Italy (Ok the last two have a vignette/toll for some motorways) etc.

(That's where I'm off next week!)
It's easy to cross Austria and be toll/vignette free. The B road 182 from Innsbruck via the Fern and Brenner Passes shadows the motorway and is a lovely drive. We usually stay at Pfronten the night before and then one night somewhere off the 182 as there are numerous campsites to choose from up in the mountains. We have also stayed at a campsite near Innsbruck as well but that got really expensive for what it was.

We find it is worth paying the tolls in Italy if you want to make progress especially the more south you go.