Euro road trip 2018

Day 13 - Royan to Saint-Nazaire, France, 197 miles

Started today, effectively the last proper day of the holiday, with an interesting diversion from the off. The police had closed the road on the outskirts of Royan that we were planning to take and my satnav turned us around to take an alternate rather than the diversion the police were directing traffic towards. Now this incident was symptomatic of how things have worked on this trip. France in particular seems to be undergoing some massive road works programme so most days we've ran into a road closure on our route. On some of these the satnav has been great and directed us nicely around them and yet on others, despite showing the road as closed, it's still been determined to guide us back to the section of closed road. This mornings diversion seemed to work out pretty well but on the other occasions I've just followed my nose until it finally gave up and complied.

After the initial diversion we had a good run this morning from Royan up to La Rochelle where we had lunch and looked over the old U-boat base from the nearby roads. Quite a few interesting sights to take in which continued on into the afternoon as we headed to Saint-Nazaire for tonight's stop and the main purpose of heading this way. The U-boat base here is open to the public so I spent a bit of time this evening looking around inside before heading to the roof to check out the structure from up there. When you think how long some structures take to get completed today it's remarkable how something so robust was built so quickly and has survived as intact as it is to this day. Not sure I even need to mention the weather anymore - everyday is hot, hot, hot and looks like it'll be remaining that way even into England and the run home.

Tomorrow is all about the run for home and trying to get to Le Havre in time for our overnight ferry back to England. The route I've planned still takes in a lot of countryside and back roads so we should hopefully still get to see some wonderful sights along the way but there aren't any special stops planned other than general rest / food breaks. The satnav currently reckons on 7.5hrs for the route so we should be able to take it at a reasonable pace and have decent breaks and still have a bit of time to spare.

Not sure whether I'll be able to do the update tomorrow night or not - if not I'll do it sometime Saturday once we're home.

Thanks for all the updates youi've done. I've read them all and am very jealous :grin: So you miss the ferry. Unless you're going to get sacked for being late for work on ...... whatever day it is, forget it.

ENJOY THE JOURNEY!!

I know I've said it before and it's really hard to adhere to but man, how often will you do this trip? Next year? 10 years from now? Never again?

<BIG SIGH>

Day 14 - Saint-Nazaire to Le Havre, France, 291 miles

I'm writing this from the English Channel on the ferry crossing back to England so I'll need to keep it fairly brief. For those wondering it's been glorious weather again all day!

I'll be completely honest and admit that today was the day I had the most trepidation about on this trip before we even set off just because of the amount of time that was going to be spent behind the wheel and the fact that it was the only real day after day 1 that had some sort of deadline should anything go wrong. To be honest, despite the hours and hours behind the wheel, it's actually turned lout to be a breeze.

We set off this morning and took an elongated route around Saint-Nazaire so we could run through the harbour and industrial areas which took us past the Airbus factory. As it was a hot day they had all the doors open on the hangers and we were able to see inside where part assembled fuselages were lined up on the production lines. From there we pressed on conscious of time, occasional major roads but only to connect scenic sections that I'd picked for the final run home. About 2.5hrs in I spotted what looked like a little restaurant on a side road at the edge of a tiny village and peeled off so we could get some lunch. As we turned into the car park I was surprised at the number of spaces available, probably 100 for cars and at least 40 for trucks, but the place looked kind of deserted with just one other car and 2 trucks parked up. We duly went inside where the owner and staff were having lunch themselves but the owner was still eager to see us and came over to shake our hands and welcome us to his abode. Quickly realising we were English and spoke little French he promptly got his daughter up from her dinner to see to us instead - not because he doesn't like the English but because she can speak it (well I think that was the case :laugh. She informed us that service wasn't for another 10 minutes but we were welcome to a drink in the meantime so we accepted and sat outside to while away the time. That's when something bizarre started to happen - people started to arrive at this restaurant in the middle of nowhere. And they kept coming and coming and coming, like something out of a zombie movie where a never ending hoard emerge from nowhere with seemingly no end. Have to say the food was good and good value but where all these people came from I'll never know :surprise:

Once we hit the road again it was time to take in some more countryside which we did for another couple of hours before looking for another pitstop. This time we stumbled across a pizzeria which didn't have any customers at all and we didn't want a full meal at this stage so just settled for a drink and a big bowl of ice cream each. Again we seemed to hit the jackpot, the ice cream really was something else! We were well up for time at this point so took our time and relaxed a bit before hitting the road for the final stretch. This last section was probably the most scenic of the day and we wound our way through some lovely towns and villages which I hope will show up in their full splender on the video. Finally, about 40 minutes earlier than planned, we entered Le Havre and set about finding somewhere to grab some dinner (not noteworthy like the previous stops) before heading to the ferry terminal and getting onboard.

The ferry is due to dock at 6am so the plan will be to grab a stop fairly early for breakfast and then probably another along the way and we should be home sometime around the middle of the day. I'm going to see if I can grab a few hours sleep now (I booked us a cabin) but the captain has just wound us up to warp factor nine so things are fairly noisy:frown:. As I said before, I will try to put together a decent synopsis of our overall impressions at some point in the coming days as well as share some of the learnings that might be useful for others. I'll also post some links to photos and videos once I've had the chance to sort out / edit as appropriate.

A big thanks to all those who have read, liked, shared words of wisdom / encouragement or otherwise come along on this journey with us via this thread. It's been a pleasure, just wish you could have done it in person!

Thanks for sharing Your Euro Road Trip with us SLKWorld folks... :tu:
Glad You made it around and back safely R)

Some feed back from our last 5 Euro Road Trips:

> I have a black polatec scarf folded & sitting upon the centre console, to rest My arm on.

> When the SLK starts to get a tad to warm when the temp exceeds ~30'c I put the Air-Con on, with the fan on low & also use the re-circulate button.
(As a side note: Air-Con needs to be used ~5min a week or 30min a month to help keep the rubber seals from drying out...)

> I also have a little battery eBay fan, for when stopped trying to get the Sat-Nav to comply with the route I want to take...
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Portable...held-Rechargeable-USB-Desk-Pocket-Cooler-Mini-Fan-18650-Battery-UK/302366422797?
Your passenger will thank You for having one!!

> Detailed Maps, rather than just an Atlas of Europe makes the Navigation far easier.

> Carry a white towel behind the drivers seat to either place on the dash board when parked up or on the seats to stop the sun making them red hot...
(I also have a silver sun screen to place on the outside of the windscreen, to stop the car getting so hot when parked up during the day..)

> I always carry a old 500ml bottle of tap water behind the drivers seat & use petrol station paper towels & a silicon drying blade to clean the bugs off the windscreen every morning..

> Make use of the jet wash's every few days to keep Your SLK looking clean for pictures :tu:

> As for routes: I like taking the local roads to see the real country You are visiting as well, but their comes a time when the only way to get some real miles/kilometres under the tyres is to use the motorways to get from one area to another.

> If You plan to use quite a lot of French Toll roads, get a Sanef Tag as it makes ever Toll Booth far more fun
https://www.eurotunnel.com/uk/traveller-info/sanef-tolling/

...and for those who have only done coach tours of Europe, an SLK Road Trip is far far better, as long as Your partner is up for the challenge >

Summary - part 1

First off, apologies for it having taken me a few weeks to put this together - things have been a bit manic since we got back.

I suppose I should start by addressing the main elephant in the room in relation to this trip, that is the perceived intensity of it in terms of the constant day after day push to get to the next destination. It bothered me before we set off and there were a couple of days where it seemed we were driving for the sake of it but for the vast majority of the trip it was fine. There are probably a number of reasons why that was so which may not make it work for others:
1. Other than for a few small sections we avoided any motorway type driving
2. I had interspersed the route with some 'proper' driving roads to have fun
3. There was always new scenery to take in
4. It was me that set the agenda rather than following somebody else's plan or timetable
5. I had allowed extra time for the driving sections so it almost never felt like a race against the clock
6. Great weather and an open top SLK made most of it seem like we were just having a drive round rather than specifically heading to somewhere or something
7. I enjoy driving more than visiting places!

There was only 1 day on the entire trip when I felt particularly tired whilst driving. In fact trying to get all of the footage off of the dashcams and camera every night seemed more of a chore than the driving itself. In some ways this was probably more of a limiting factor than the mileage as each evening involved a routine devised to get this done. It would involve transferring footage from the front dashcam as soon as we got into our room, then head off out to explore and get dinner whilst making sure we got back early enough to start the transfer from the rear dashcam and camera done before bed. Each dashcam could take up to 90mins to transfer the days footage!

As with all things like this we had to rely on a little luck as well. For the most part the weather was fantastic which made a tremendous difference as I'm sure covering so many miles under dank conditions would have put a different complexion on things. The car was also with us and didn't miss a beat! I spent a considerable amount of money in the weeks leading up to the trip getting it all sorted but even so there is still always the risk of something going wrong. I'm actually convinced my car wants to move to the continent - there's always some niggly issue going on with it whilst it's in the UK but not even a squeak whilst we were away!

In terms of driving on the continent it was a none entity in the main. Sure there were a couple of places where you'd need to try and figure out exactly what the correct approach was and we found ourselves driving along some 'interesting' bits of road occasionally but 99.9% of it was great. I did do lots of planning beforehand and had checked most of the route via satellite imagery plus required sections in further details online via forums and things like Google Streetview. I've used the same approach successfully before when I knew I'd be driving a hire car abroad and it means that those bits are actually familiar to you when you come across them in real life. Maybe it takes away from the adventure a little but it also meant that the trip was virtually stress free. I'd also prepped some crib sheets for each countries driving rules just as a refresher on the fly. In general I applied what's always seemed to work - do whatever the majority of the locals seem to be doing!

Satnav wise I had programmed each days route as a series of waypoints to ensure we followed the actual roads I wanted to drive rather than what it would choose point to point. I had also programmed each itinerary feature into the satnav so in the event that we had to deviate off the chosen route we could easily get to that next point. This also meant that they showed up on screen alongside the route and made it easy to identify where the next stop was as we approached it. I'd also printed a daily itinerary off of each days 'highlights' which included expected timings, distance from the days start and (just in case the satnav failed and we had to switch to an alternate) address / coordinates for each location en-route. I know some people will consider this overkill and feel it might ruin the trip but for me it actually did the other and made it a breeze. There were a lot of roadworks underway along the route and we got deviated a fair few times. Sometimes the satnav went round no issue, other times it tried to head back towards the closed section of road as that's where I must have placed a node on the route. In the later cases we just headed in roughly the right direction until the satnav gave up and continued on the correct track.

I suppose I should just qualify a couple of points from the above so people don't think it was all that regimented:
1. The fact that we had timings on the itinerary and I'd allowed extra time for the driving sections actually added to the sense of calm. Most of the time we were ahead of schedule and even when we weren't I never used the timings as a target just a rough guide so I didn't have to try and calculate how we were doing on the fly.
2. In terms of landmarks / places to visit we did miss 2 out - 1 because I decided the place prior was worth staying much longer at and the other because I'd added it as a possible only and decided on the way past to give it a miss.
3. I'd added suggested places for rest breaks just so we knew they were there if needed but that's all they were. For the most part we were pretty ad hoc in that regard. We did keep a supply of snacks, fruit and drink in the car throughout the entire trip as backup and would consume / replenish along the way as required.

I'll come back and add some more details around certain countries etc. when I get time but for now there are 2 comments that probably best sum up how I feel about the trip:-

1. It's made me realise that for the most part driving in England is pants.

2. If somebody asked me would I do the exact same trip again tomorrow (money / time not withstanding) I'd snatch their hand off!

Until next time here's the videos I've managed to get done so far, they're all focussed on the best driving roads we encountered. I'm going to start work on the more general highlight type ones and themed ones such as the war memorials we visited next:

The Grand St Bernard Pass - Switzerland https://youtu.be/XleKio0DP74
The Grand St Bernard Pass - Italy https://youtu.be/U5vbYkWpGPk
SS28 road - Ligurian Alps, Italy https://youtu.be/lblClqkQwvE
DN7 road - Côte d’Azur, France https://youtu.be/kal6UrtrVXg
N20 / N22 France - The road to Andorra https://youtu.be/KMhzeb42Jgs
Envalira Pass - CG-2, Andorra https://youtu.be/7CANCo3HBrI
N-260, Spain - Adrall to Sort (part 1) https://youtu.be/L5STAXEkcU0
N-260, Spain - Adrall to Sort (part 2) https://youtu.be/CSPMCRLchDY
La Bonaigua pass - C-28 road, Spain https://youtu.be/6ZLAoDMIsww - probably the most fun I had on any single piece of road the whole trip!