Salzburg to Calais

[DocSteve]

Doing this with one night to stop somewhere along the way, don't need to be at Calais until 530pm. Does anyone have any suggested routes, hopefully to include some good stretches of Autobahn? On the way down to Croatia via Innsbruck had a few decent bits south of Ulm but otherwise mostly roadworks and/or traffic were annoying.

Any advice on stopover location also welcome.

Thanks
Steve

[dcb]

DocSteve said:

Doing this with one night to stop somewhere along the way, don't need to be at Calais until 530pm. Does anyone have any suggested routes, hopefully to include some good stretches of Autobahn? On the way down to Croatia via Innsbruck had a few decent bits south of Ulm but otherwise mostly roadworks and/or traffic were annoying.

Any advice on stopover location also welcome.

Salzburg - Munich - Nuremburg - Frankfurt - Cologne - Aachen - Brussels - Calais
would be my preferred route.

Frankfurt about half way. Nearby Darmstadt quite pretty. Koblenz and Wurzburg,
although both further away are both nice towns to visit.

NW of Frankfurt on the A3, I've had some pleasant results with smaller places
like Limburg.

Most of the route I suggest is three lanes both ways no limits, so should be
plenty of chance for a Vmax run, if you catch it when it is quiet (2200 - 0600
are good times).

The A3 and the A8 are primary routes so expect plenty of traffic at busy times
(Mon-Fri: 0700 - 0900 and 1500 to 1700).

The autobahn repair teams are workaholics, so expect plenty of those in all places.

[DocSteve]

That's very helpful, thanks for the tips. Will have a look into some of those suggested stops. :-)

[chalda]

A good stretch of Autobahn is difficult to find on that route.

Expect everything around Munich to be crowded. The A6 north of Munich could be fast.

The A3 from Nuremberg to Würzburg is 2-lane, one of which is usually occupied by a continous file of lorries.

The A3 west of Würzburg until right into Cologne is hilly, bendy, congested and slow. I would even call it "annoying".

However, shortly after Montabaur (goggle it...) you could turn west onto the A48. This is a rather quite Autobahn with few speed restrictions. If you keep on it after Koblenz, it can become deserted. And you could realise what you came for.

You could then go via A1-A60 northwards into Belgium (keep to the speed limits there!!!) and into Liege, Brussels and finally into Calais. The stretch across Belgium is beautiful, as you go through the Eifel and the Ardennes.

Recommending a hotel to stay on the way would need you to specify what you expect from it.

[dcb]

chalda said:

The A3 west of Würzburg until right into Cologne is hilly, bendy, congested and slow.

Sort of, but these things are relative. German version of slow isn't
like anyone else's.

I don't really do over 200 kmh on it anymore ;->

The bends are a bit too much for me, at over 130 mph.
Still, three lanes each way means that lorries tend to be not much
of a problem.

Let's not forget that there are plenty of bridges over various rivers
than flow west into the Rhine. The crosswinds can be significant.

Still, the A3 is the place where some German bloke commuted to work
into Cologne at 230 mph !

[chalda]

I commute there regularly (meaning almost daily) on 300 kmh (not mph), but not by car but using the high-speed trains running south from Cologne into Frankfurt. I could not be bothered to drive the A3 with any car. It is truly awful.

However, I love the idea of the supercar commuter using very early hours to get to work and very late hours to get back home to see no wife and no kids. You could, for example, do this on the A4 from the Dutch border going into Cologne. But I believe that this was not the scope of the original question.

[DocSteve]

Thanks for further tips and interesting discussion! On the way down I had an indicated 157mph somewhere south of Ulm but there were no stretches for sustained high speeds - this was going via Saarbrucken/Mannheim/Heilbronn/Ulm then to Innsbruck.

In terms of hotels then preferably a small town/village with parking and (relatively) decent food. The hotel doesn't need to be especially high end but not looking for a cheap Formula 1 etc type of thing either.

If a vmax could be achieved after a remap and limiter removal that would of course be particularly rewarding :-)

[DocSteve]

Had a look as best as I can on my iPhone at that A48 route and it looks potentially appealing....

[egomeister]

Can't help you with routes, but there are some pretty places along the Moselle which you might be able to call in to, Cochem or maybe Boppard for example.

[DocSteve]

Well the autobahns were pretty packed with only a few brief opportunities to go seriously quickly, apart from the A48 as suggested that was much less busy although the time of day I hit it wasn't ideal. Thanks for the tip, it was worth it and I then decided to extend the trip for an extra day by staying in Spa.

Steve

[chalda]

Glad you enjoyed it. Just for the record, the A44 Autobahn from Aachen (at the Dutch/Belgian border) going towards Dusseldorf is also mostly unrestricted. I realised some very good progress there on a Sunday morning with my Mercedes-Benz 500 SEL, bouncing into its limiter while trying to chase a 458 Ferrari...