10 Months on the Road: Planning Our Trip

Another month passed and it’s that time for me to push Louise aside and have my say on the blog.

Having now be on the road for a little over 10 months I can say that planning your rough route well in advance pays dividends. We made an initial plan back in New Zealand as to where we thought we should head. We have made tactical changes along the way but if you are planning a trip like this you do need a rough plan but also be ready to change.

We made the first stop Scandinavia as we felt we had a 3-month window over summer to enjoy it and we were right. The last thing we wanted to do was be bitterly cold and strike snow on the roads. Fitting chains to the van would not have been much fun.  Even then it was cold at times. We had also intended to head down to Croatia, Albania, Romania and the other Balkan countries around October. That plan changed quickly when we realised how cold it was going to be over December, January and February. Instead we headed to Spain for winter. A much better idea. We will get to the Balkans in August this year but not in the motorhome.

We ran into a NZ couple back in Bern who had given themselves 6 months to see the UK and Europe. When we spoke to them they admitted they hadn’t put in the planning needed. They had spent too long in the UK then once in Europe they realised how much they wanted to see and how big the distances were. There was a motorsport event they badly wanted to see so went back to the UK, then back to Europe and by that time their 6 months was almost up. It was obvious they had not used their time well and they had no plan of where they were going.

It’s impossible to see everything but Louise has been a fantastic planner. Working out ahead where to go basically month by month and making sure we didn’t have to back track and cross over ourselves, or worse still miss any of the not-to-be-missed sights. Some months before getting to Barcelona we came up with a change of plan and decided to catch a ferry to Sardinia then take another one to Sicily before finishing up at the bottom of Italy to then drive to the top. Otherwise we would have to have driven around the top of Italy then to the bottom then backtrack up – a waste of time and this way we got to see Sardinia and Sicily. Cost wise the ferry crossings weren’t much dearer than paying the diesel and road tolls to drive around, and it was much more fun with two 12-hour ferry crossings.

We also thank Google Maps. Whilst we have a large European road atlas, which we use, Google Maps has been great and once again Louise has been a superb navigator. And I mean superb!! Because it can be hard to follow at times and Google Maps doesn’t know how big you are. Whilst we haven’t been totally caught out, we have had some close calls on small roads. When we arrived for are first house-sitting job in a small French village, we realised we were being sent down very small roads that were far too narrow for us and we had to do a quick about-turn and find another way. In one small seaside village in Spain the road seemed to be getting smaller and smaller ahead of us. I stopped, Louise got out and walked ahead on foot. She returned about 10 minutes later to say it would be OK for us, a bit tight but OK. In Italy Google Maps was taking us to our campsite, but the road was closed, and we had to keep driving ahead. Problem was the road was getting narrower and then there was a particularly low bridge with no sign to say the height. We tried to turn around, but the road was too narrow, and we were causing havoc blocking one side of an already narrow road. Thankfully a delivery van came passed, tooted and waved out indicating he was taller than us, so we followed him through. Crisis averted, but seriously we have spoken to people who have had to turn around and either go slowly back up a one-way street or worse still had to reverse all the way back along a one-way street.

Another thing we have tried to do is to get out of the cities and visit the countryside and small villages to get the feeling of the country. Again planning a few weeks ahead as to where you are going is so important to maximise your time and again Louise has been great at that. We have been to all the major places one is expected to go to like, Paris, Rome, Madrid, Venice, Oslo, Helsinki and so on, but we have been to many wonderful small towns that have so much history and culture and have enabled us to experience life outside the big cities. As they say; “by failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”

Sicily

Off the beaten track in Sardinia

Treating ourselves in Sardinia

As for the numbers we were ever so slightly over budget this month but still well under after 10 months. The reason? We ate out a lot more this month and the price of diesel in Italy is one of the highest in Europe. We also had a couple of nights in hotels whilst walking the Cinque Terre and travelling down to the Amalfi Coast. Both are places you can not take a motor home and both were on our not-to-be-missed list.