Driving to Malta

[Turbo5]

My Brother-in-law is moving to Malta with his job, he was supposed to drive there last Monday but on his leaving party on Sunday he fell down the stairs at the pub and fractured his shoulder blade in 2 places and was knocked out for 15 minutes. Anyhow he is flying out there this Monday and will come back for the cars at the end of Feb when he is fit enough to drive. He has asked me to drive his car down there fully expensed, fuel, hotels. drinks, meals, ferries and flight home. The good part is he has a brand new Honda S2000 GT.
Not bad for a freebie.

[geofflowe]

Lucky man!!
I drove the same route back in the 80's when my mate retired from the RAF and went back home - did 50 mph all the way as we had a knackered low loader with his BDA powered Cortina MkII on the back. Hope you go a bit faster!!
I went down through france, Mont Blanc tunnel, Aosta valley and down past Naples etc. Take a detour to the Lambo factory and Maranello if you get a chance. Regio Calabria is a bit of a dump BTW, don't get off in Sicily if there are black coated and hatted blokes walking around looking menacing. Don't beleive you are seeing an officer on the ferry to Malta if the have gold braid everywhere - he's probably the bog cleaner (they were when I went!)
Have a safe trip!

[Turbo5]

The trip I made was purely getting from A to B although I did manage to fit in the Amalfi coast.Its on route (slight detour but definitely worth it) its only 55KM from Sorrento to Salermo.
Day one Burnley to Reims set off at 8am and arrived at 4.30pm (used the channel tunnel)
Day two Reims to Portofino (Recco) (we took the Frejus tunnel, didn't fancy going over the alps in winter) arrived about 4.30pm again
Day 3 Portofino (Recco) to Salermo arrived about 6pm but we spent 2.5 hours doing the Amalfi coast.
Day 4 Salermo to Villa san Giovanni (Italy) lots of road works. then ferry from Villa san Giovanni to Messina (Sicily) its only a very short crossing less than a hour no need to book just turn up ferries every 30 minutes there are a few ferry companies there. We then traveled to Pozzallo, the ferry runs twice a day (not on Tuesday when we went or we would have arrived in malta this day. note there are no decent hotels here. The ferry company is called Virtu Ferries http://www.virtuferries.com/index.aspx Note if you wanted to miss out driving through Italy you can take a cruise from Genoa right down to Malta.
The photo is at Qawra point and the red Honda S2000 is the car I drove down.

[Wacky Racer]

The roads on Malta have been greatly improved the last two or three years, but watch out for the speed cameras that are springing up, especially the ones at the exit of the tunnels near St Julians.....very sneaky....

If he needs any general advice about the Island please pm me....

[Turbo5]

Thanks, he has been working there for the last 5 months and made the move about 6 weeks ago, Just took the cars there last week. (I don't know why considering he will only have 168 days before he either pays the 60% tax or ships them back to the UK)
regarding the speed cameras I heard they were 5 cameras.70 Euros fine no points. (I wish it was here)
On the way to the airport you will see a plaque on a wall where 4 boys from a local village were killed, apparently the driver survived and they tried to prosecute but he was sober, he has tried to take his own life twice since the accident and states that a volvo ran him off the road.

[Wacky Racer]

Yeah, the 60% tax is a killer, especially as the average Maltese earns around 60% of UK rates.

Still see some nice cars around though, Fezzas etc, although (imo) a bit pointless as there are very few places you can exceed 50mph.