I've been going to France since 2012, camping in a tent until 2019 then in a caravan since.
The first year we went, we decided to drive from Calais to Camping le Cormoran, (almost 300 miles), we were new to camping and also new to France otherwise we would have known that Cherbourg was only about 30 miles away! We stayed for two nights and then drove another 350 miles to Camping de la Cote d'argent for ten nights, obviously with it being our first year, we weren't really bothered with the long distances as it was an adventure, especially for our three young kids.
Over time, especially since we have had the caravan, we tend to drive less or stay at more sites before we get to our main site, probably not helped because the Mrs won't tow the caravan, but was happy to tow our trailer with the camping equipment in it.
I find that around 200 miles driving is about my limit before it starts to impact my enjoyment on the overall holiday, it also makes it more bearable for my 6 year old as I cant imagine its much fun sitting in a car for 7 or 8 hours in what is usually hot sun.
I was watching a few videos on YouTube and noticed that one of them was happy to get off the ferry in France and drive almost 700 miles to Spain, with just a one night stopover in between.
As much as I realise that everyone is different, it cant be enjoyable to travel such massive distances, so I wondered what everyone else considers a 'comfortable distance' to drive before it actually impacts their enjoyment of the holiday and whether they their holiday starting the minute they leave their house?
We always used to see the holiday starting the minute we got to our main site and that getting there was just a necessary evil but over time I have learnt that it should be enjoyable from the minute you get to the ferry port (I will never class driving in England as enjoyable!!), which played a big part in me driving less between campsites, forgive my ramblings, just wondered what everyone else thoughts were, or it could just be that I'm getting older!!
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Being on my own with no one to share the driving, I schedule regular breaks during the day, with the aim to start driving from about 10:00 (I am not a morning person), to arrive at a campsite no later than 17:00 or later if it is a motel/hotel.
In 2012, I drove from Dundee, Scotland back to home in Wiltshire in one day in my car towing a leisure trailer, arriving quite late in the evening.
Those days are long gone.
Nowadays, I prefer to take it at a leisurely pace, driving mainly in daylight hours, which is about 6h at the most.
DK
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These days, we find around 3 hours driving is enough for one day. If we are going to a site beyond that distance, then we plan for an overnight stop.
When we were younger, it was a different matter, of course, but now we stop approx every hour for a short break as we feel it is better from a safety point of view.
Depending on the type of roads, under 100 miles if possible, but will do up to 150 miles or so if all motorway. Our ideal is no more than 4 hours travelling, including a stop.
However, this is because we have plenty of time to wander now we are both retired.
I never had what you call a main site. I just went from place to place which interested me - anything from 30 miles on back roads to 300 miles on autoroutes.
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Our holiday starts the minute we drive off the Shuttle. As the holiday is generally unplanned, but maybe a vague idea, every day is a fresh trip. We drive about a couple of hours in the morning, have a lunch break about 1 hour, then maybe drive another hour or so, aiming to stop no later than about 4pm, before the sites get full. If we want to visit a market, we try to stay the night before and go to the market in the morning, as they tend to close at lunchtime.
We aim to only do a couple of hours a day although we haven't always been very successful at that.
We're very flexible about our planning (the beauty of having a motorhome in France). Last year we arrived at St Malo with the aim of heading where the weather was going to be better, Brittany or the Vendée, as it was raining in Brittany and forecast to do so for the next 5 days we headed south. It took us 5 hours to reach the site. The holiday is supposed to be relaxing but we didn't see that as a relaxing start.
This year we'll take much the same approach but we've found more places in between so hopefully, we can stick to the 2hrs.
2 hrs can be about 100 miles or so or it can be about 70 depending upon the route we're taking, roads, traffic etc.
We enter our starting point and our options for the destination into Google maps, something they say is a 1 1/2 hour drive in a car is about 2hrs by motorhome so we'll be using that as a guide.
400km (250 miles) max in a day, which works out at about 4hrs driving not including stops. It depends how far we're going, eg if it's Dordogne then we'll stop at maybe Loire-Atlantique or Nantes for a few days or maybe a week before moving on. If we're going to the Black Forest then that requires more serious planning and time.
When we used to go abroad I think the most I did in one day was about 450 miles but that was not the usual. Obviously when you have a three week holiday from work you want to make the most of it so longer journeys are acceptable in order to get where you want to get. Having said that, if we were going down to the Med we would stay a few days en route and perhaps the same on the way back. When we retired we tended to do less miles and stop at more places over a 8/9 week stay. Now we have a motorhome and don't tour abroad the max we would do is 200 miles but usually 100/150 is now our usual distance in one day. The older you get the less enthusiastic you are for long journeys!
David
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Netherton picked up on another point I was going to ask, specifically for those with a caravan but even those with motorhomes or tents could answer.
Do you tend to have a 'main site' booked and have stop oversites planned or do many of you just drive around with a night or two staying at different campsites?
We always have a main site but find that it can sometimes get a bit boring after about a week, last year we broke it up a bit and stopped at 5 sites over two weeks, obviously it's easier in a motorhome but still found it more interesting.
When the kids used to come with us we had to book a main site, that all stopped once our youngest went off to university, now we book the crossing and make it up as we go along but we tend to go out of high season and being motorhomers we have the advantage of being able to use aires and France Passion sites to choose from. We mostly use ACSI for the campsites.
We seldom spend more than 3 nights in any one place, more often than not it'll be 2 nights with the odd single night stop in between.
When we have booked a site it's because we absolutely had to be at a certain place at a certain time but that's a rarity these days.
The reason why we like to do 2hr max hops is so that we can arrive at a place either before lunch or just after lunch depending on if it's a site, their opening times. Basically pack up and move on in the morning, arrive somewhere by lunchtime/early afternoon, then make the most of our time.
We tend to have an "end point" we aim for, with ideas where to stop along the way, but don't always get to our end point or sometimes go off somewhere different altogether! With a caravan, we do like to have several days (or occasionally even 2 or 3 weeks!) in various places, along with shorter stops. We do tend to go abroad for up to 8 weeks at a time though.
To answer Paul and Nikki, Random places in France would catch my attention - an Art Nouveau exhibition in Nancy, a particular wine producer in Ammerschwir, the railway museum at Mulhouse, the palais Ideal at Hautrives, a recommended Alpine chalet restaurant serving tartiflette, Eifel’s viaduct at Garabit, the hospice at Beaune, a garden at Apremont sur Allier, all sorts things in Paris, and so on. So I toured France in the same way as I toured New Zealand and India. -never having what people call a main site, just place to place which I wanted to visit. And distances varied from day to day as I said earlier.
Before we had the caravan, in our days of tent camping, we would travel from Liverpool to the south of France with 2 stops. One in northern France, about an hour from calais and then all the way to the Côte d’Azur the next day. Nowadays we have a caravan and prefer to take things easy. We don’t go as far afield and travel for a maximum of 3 hours in a day before stopping overnight.
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Topic: How far do you drive?
via mobile 08/2/2024 at 4:54pm
