European Roadtrip 2015

[terryc101]

After reading a few threads on here from people who had done drives around Europe I decided that this summer I would give it a go in the clio with my younger brother. Booked 2 weeks off in august and started planning at the start of the year, we would mostly camp to keep costs down and stay on the odd hotel.

After untold amounts of paper and route planning on google maps we came up with our final route.

Capture by terry clarke, on Flickr

This would be spread over 15 days and with no more than 7 hours driving on the days in the car as I still wanted it to feel like a holiday. we also tried to plan it so that the days of driving 6+ hours were followed by a day where we didn't use the car at all. It didn't quite go to plan lol.


Day 1
So 1st of august rolled around and we were up at 5am to head down the road to catch the Eurotunnel, the journey took a bit longer than normal due to operation stack but the a20 isn't a bad road to drive on an empty morning.

Arrived early and got bumped up to the next train departing.

IMAG0033 by terry clarke, on Flickr

IMAG0035 by terry clarke, on Flickr

We arrived in Calais around 9am and made the short drive along to Bruges. Parked in the main train station car park which everyone on tripadvisor recommended, it was only a few euros for the day and a short walk into town.

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Climbed the belfry, wandered around and got some lunch and that was pretty much it for Bruges. I'd like to go back again for a day, certainly a lovely little town.

We left and drove the 3 or so hours to Amsterdam where we would be staying for 2 nights.

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Arrived at the campsite (http://www.gaaspercamping.nl/en/camping.html) pitched the tent for the first time and headed into town, which was only a short walk and 10min tube ride away.
What my brother failed to tell me until the last minute was that it was Pride this weekend so as you can imagine on a Saturday night, it was packed! We headed to a burger place id been recommended to get some dinner and then went to have a look around, stopping every so often to watch the drunken antics of people on boats.

IMAG0073 by terry clarke, on Flickr

IMAG0090 by terry clarke, on Flickr

This place was very very good, burger was huge though at 270g

IMAG0083 by terry clarke, on Flickr

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It was all fun and games till the guys to the right bumped into and scratched the guys nice boat on the left. Thought we were going to witness a pirate style boarding party the way they were screaming at him.

IMAG0084 by terry clarke, on Flickr

Day 2

Pancakes for breakfast

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Walked a lot!

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Spent a few hours in the Rijkmuseum

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Watched the community shield, chilled in a park, walked some more, drank and ate more, visited the red light district and done!

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Love the groups of oaps being guided around! the guy on the left in the background kindly offered me some ecstacy or cocaine, very friendly people.

IMAG0138 by terry clarke, on Flickr


Day 3
It started so well...

Woke up, packed away the tent and was on the road nice and early heading to the Ring. Then it started to get quite warm outside and in the car. The air con wasn't clicking on, so we came off the motorway to a small town in the Netherlands and found a kwik fit, shut on a Monday. Then we spotted a renault dealer, and after some translating back and forth between myself the mechanic and the lady behind the desk I convinced the mechanic to re gas it even though it was leaking.

IMAG0147 by terry clarke, on Flickr

IMAG0148 by terry clarke, on Flickr

2 hours and €100 later and we were on our way with ice cold air con!

Made it to the Ring, track was only open a few hours, everything else was shut and it was a ghost town. bit of a fail to visit on a weekday.

IMAG0152 by terry clarke, on Flickr

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So we headed off to get some food and back to sleep.

Day 4

Up early to drive 6+ hours to Munich in time to watch some football!

IMAG0157 by terry clarke, on Flickr

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Nice hassle free drive on the autobahn with only a few slow sections due to roadworks. Got to the campsite (http://branchenbuch.portal.muenchen.de/mhp/1250701/) set up and headed into town and then out to the Allianz.

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Day 5
Spent the day in munich, Walked a lot, visited Dachau, climbed some tower, walked more, watched people surf in a park and ate more burgers.
It was a consistent 30'c+ all day!!

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And now I need to have some lunch so I'll do the second part in a bit...

 

[terryc101]

Day 6

It was going so well...again!

We left Munich and headed down towards Italy via the alps. The plan was to drive up the Umbrail pass to the top of the Stelvio, hang about there for a bit and head down into italy for our stay at lake como.

The day started off well, making decent time down Germany and into Austria/switzerland.

IMAG0288 by terry clarke, on Flickr

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Then it all went tits up lol!
Just as we get onto the Umbrail the car starts to feel very underpowered and then begins cutting out like its being starved of fuel, it comes and goes when it pleases but mostly when on blind hairpins or parts where there are no barriers to stop you falling off a cliff! so we basically had the most stressful drive ever up a very challenging road. Got to the top and decided it wasnt worth the stress to carry on up to the peak of the Stelvio so headed back down the other side.

IMAG0345 by terry clarke, on Flickr

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The car then carried on with this intermittent problem all the way into Italy, It seemed to get worse the longer the car was driven or the hotter it was outside. We carried on while trying to give the car regular breaks to cool down and made it to Como by early evening. Set up our tent, got some dinner and went to chill by the lake!

IMAG0336 by terry clarke, on Flickr

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Day 7

This day was just a pure relaxation day, which was needed after the day before! Spent the day just hanging out by the lake and trying not to melt in the 38'c heat!

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Day 8

The worst of the days and also my birthday ffs! between me and my brother we have 4 pictures from this day, that sums up how it went! The plan after Como was to drive down to Monaco, have a look around then drive along a bit to Cagne Ser Mur and spend the night. We would then drive along the south coast at a leisurely pace to Perpignan, spend a night then drive to Barcelona for the Monday.

That plan went out the window when the car spat its dummy out an hour into our journey, we got stuck in a huge amount of traffic coming down towards the coast and the final toll booth for italy and I just couldnt keep the car running. I'd estimate it cut out around 40 times on and off until we gave up.

We pulled into a services and decided to call breakdown, they were no help at all. 'french garages dont open on weekends' 'we cant recover you from a motorway', they also never rang back countless times ad after saying they'd sort out somewhere for us to stay they just didnt call back. So we ended up sleeping in the car that night in the services.

IMAG0420 by terry clarke, on Flickr

Day 9

Woke up around 6am due to the already extreme heat outside, decided it wasnt worth driving along and then finding somewhere to stay etc as it was too much hassle. Instead we would just drive staright to Barcelona now and get there a day early, so we set off and made sure we stopped every 2 hours or so and gave the car a good cooling down period and made it there with no problems!

Luxury sleeping arrangements

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Arrived at the hotel and the guy behind the desk managed to sort us the same room we were booked in for the week for the extra night, parked the car in the car park, unpacked and tried very hard not to set fire to it before locking it! But that was it now 5 nights with no driving and no stress.

The feeling when walking into the freezing cold room is something I'll never forget lol such happiness to see an actual bed after sleeping in a clio seat in that heat!

IMAG0438 by terry clarke, on Flickr

Dumped all our stuff and headed out into Barcelona to get dinner and have a look around

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Barcelona

What an amazing place! Definitely want to go back again someday. So much to see and do, I've seen people say its only good for a long weekend, we were there 4 full days and didn't see half of what was there. Being in a major city thats also on the beach just seems so odd but its so good.

I wont upload too many pictures as there are hundreds but I'll put them in the full album. Below is a snippet of what we did on the four days there.

The beach

IMAG0470 by terry clarke, on Flickr

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Camp Nou

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Sagrada Familia

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1992 Olympic park

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More burgers! Barcelona love their burgers, its like London for independent burger joints.

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Font Magica

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And that was Barcelona done! All that was left now was the 13hour drive back up through France with a broken car.
We woke up and the weather looked pretty grim, result! Maybe if the car stayed cool it would be ok, and it was! we drove up france stopping halfway at Clermont Ferrand to sleep and made it Calais hassle free, even got bumped up to an earlier train back!

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And home 2765miles later! Apart from the two really bad car days the whole trip was epic, would recommend it to anyone and will definitely do a similar thing again in the future, maybe not in a 172 this time though!

full album https://flic.kr/s/aHskj15je9 - will be adding more as i sort through them

 

[Keviw]

Epic trip! Massive fan of Germany and the south of France! Did you ever discover the issue affecting the Clio? Must've been massively stressful!

 

[Matt W]

Long trip! Nice write up

 

[StuOwen86]

Looks like a fantastic trip would love to do something like this, I've done South of Italy in a Fiesta van that was a mad week as a support car for a few lads doing a car show there, and done Germany and the Ring over 4 days in an R32 quite a few years back loads of driving not much sightseeing unfortunately. Think now would have too stop regular as my daughter wouldn't like sitting in the car for too long (she's only one).

Should get a Clio Sport Euro road trip going lol.

 

[terryc101]

Epic trip! Massive fan of Germany and the south of France! Did you ever discover the issue affecting the Clio? Must've been massively stressful!

Nope lol it drove fine all the way back and I've only been back and a week but it's been fine so far. Before the trip I would have to double prime it in the mornings or after long periods of sitting, so I think the fuel pump relay might be acting up and possibly got worse with the heat/prolonged driving.

 

[TimR26]

Looks like a great trip, something I'd like to do one day.

 

[SharkyUK]

Awesome mate. I did a very similar trip (and route) back in 2007. We totalled just over 3000 miles in 7 days. Which was too much! Some days we were on the road for 12+ hours! I remember leaving Nice one morning in searing hot temperatures (heading over into Switzerland) and reaching the Umbrail Pass some 7-8 hours later. It was snowing and so cold at the top that we struggled to breathe! It didn't help being in shorts and t-shirt... I'm thinking of organising another Euro trip for some close friends for 2017.

 

[Sam]

Looks a great trip.

Plenty of beef burgers!

 

[fairm010]

Would love to do this, not sure I could handle such periods of driving though!

 

[General Dave]

Apart from the crappy French car issues it looked like an awesome trip!!

 

[terryc101]

Would love to do this, not sure I could handle such periods of driving though!

I was the same but the driving wasn't bad at all. most of our longest journeys were around 6 hours and when you stop every few hours for a piss or food it's not real tiring.

 

[fairm010]

I'd be up for it, if I could get a few in a convoy.

 

[Faxo]

Love Euro road trips.

Did a similar one in 2008 in my Flamer, down through France to Italy, across the South of France to Barcelona and back home to Huddersfield

My 172 broke, just as we pulled into our really posh hotel in Barcelona lol, both bolts had dropped out of the catalyst to manifold, so the cat dropped down

Managed to bodge it, but like yours, was a long drive home with a defective car!

 

[Ian_182]

Looks like a really good trip,
Thanks for sharing.

 

[Sunglasses_Ron]

Quality write up mate :up:

Looks like you had a great time! :up::up::up:

 

[Kyle beresford]

Every cool! Would love to do something like this in the future,just a shame your 172 decided to add some stress to the trip!

 

[terryc101]

Just going through my online banking now to total up the holiday.

£384.15 on petrol, not too bad considering it wasn't running very well on 2 of them days.

 

[terryc101]

Bit of a bump...

My brother finally built a new pc so I've been able to sort through my videos from the trip, the first one is of our failed drive up the Umbrail pass where the car first started to act up. Its not the most exciting 9mins but some nice scenery :up:😅

 

[CageyJ0nnY]

Day 8 sounded like something you'd see on an episode of roadkill haha!

Great write up buddy, sounds like you had a great time (apart from clio stress)

 

[terryc101]

A kind of summary of the trip in video form.