Honeymoon Euro Trip August 2011.

[hicksy]

Hi all,

Some of you may have seen my Caravelle to Camper self build and it is all for this reason. On 20th August Dominika and I will drive Bulli 950miles to Poland, stopping at Kassel in Germany overnight. We will wed on saturday 27th August (and sunday too as polish weddings are two days!) and Proceed to travel auround Europe for two weeks starting on the tuesday.

From Szczytna in Poland we plan to travel through the Czech republic, hitting Prague, then through Austria to Italy and would like to visit Venice. We would like then to take the mountain coast road from Italy to france and spend a week on the south coast of France to relax and sun-bathe before heading back up to Calais for the ferry back.

I am pretty good at travelling and being an ex-squaddie I get very well prepared for trips (sometimes over-prepared!) but I would love to know your experiences of similar trips and any and all hints tips or reccomendations for our impending journey. Whats your best Euro story?

What sites can you recommend? we are partial to glamping and wild camping. We would love to know the best Places to visit and see, contacts of good and VW friendly garages or very helpful folk along the way.

What sort of breakdown cover do you use please? I am thinking of getting it through my insurance (Glynwoods) but does anyone have any actual experience with a breakdown with them?

Also any ideas of essential MUST TAKE items would all be handy too.

Thank you all in advance for your help and I look to forward to your stories!

[roberts-t25]

Hey, Sounds like an adventure! We're going on our own magical mystery tour in a few days
Everyone's idea of 'must have' items will be different, we were at knutsford 2 weeks ago and saw some funny sights. Someone had took two 4 ft plastic topiary trees in pots to stand outside the van, which was made even more bizarre because they only satyed 2 nights and the weather was horrible!
We've got 3 kids so our essentials come more along the lines of tissues and tangerines, but we do also cart a box of crap.., I mean very useful items such as....spare bulbs, cable ties, WD40 (cures everthing), random bits of pipe, screwdrivers etc, jerry can, oil and the list goes on...
And as for breakdown, we get ours through the insurance company. Last year we were with Adrian Flux and unfortunatly had to use the breakdown service a couple of times in the old van, but they were great! We've gone with the camping and caravanning club this year as they gave us the best deal, but hopefully we won't need to use it
I don't know about others but a few companies wouldn't cover us for breakdown as the van is over 20 years old.
Anyway have fun on your trip and don't forget to share any nice places/site you come across

[melmelody]

hi there,

i stopped at a good site in prague the other year its on a small island in the river if i remember correctly. it was cheap too i think about 15 euros a night .i think i still have the address too i'll have a look for you when i get back from my hols but nice showers washing facilities and laundrette and only a couple of quid to the city centre by cab if you cant ba arsed walking. about 2 or 3 kms to centre IIRC. will send details as soon as i have them

cheers Mel.

[Ralf85]

Have enough food, wine, water etc on for at two days. As well as tools, oil and fan belt, spare rocker box cover seals and throttle cable. Having the last two will speed up recovery time as it saves sending away for them and they are cheap to buy here. 950 miles is up to three days driving for me at the speed my van (and I) can go comfortably. On the motorway all the way possibly two days, but not a lot of fun. Good luck and have a great wedding and holiday, but take it easy.

Patrick

[hicksy]

Thank you guys,

Through this fab forum (and a bit of research rather than just posting a question ) I have a lot of great advice.
I will buy one of the european 'free camping spots' book, I have a good list of this for the kit list and we are getting european cover through Glynwoods.

I cant wait, only 4 weeks to go!

[Titus A Duxass]

You might find this useful (if you can get your head around the German or get it translated) - http://wohnmobil-stellplaetze.net/

If you're passing Leipzig and want a cuppa give me a shout (contact details in the Members Help List - well worth printing out).

[hicksy]

You might find this useful (if you can get your head around the German or get it translated) - http://wohnmobil-stellplaetze.net/

If you're passing Leipzig and want a cuppa give me a shout (contact details in the Members Help List - well worth printing out).

Thanks Titas, That sounds great, we may well take you up on that. Our trip will take us from calais to Szczytna (poland) via an overnight stop in Kassel, and you just happen to be right on our in Leipzig if my google maps is correct!

It could work out to be a great lunch stop as it is about half way from Kassel to Szczytna! Will you be around on Sunday 21st?

[Titus A Duxass]

Yes we are around on the 21st (our wedding anniversary).
I'll PM you my address.

[hicksy]

Hi all,

Just to let you all know, we have safely made it to our overnight stop in Kassel, Germany. We did 450 (nearly) trouble free miles today and it was nice and chilled with pleanty of stops and have another 450miles tomorrow to get to Szczytna, Poland.

The issues today- We hit a pigeon at 60mph within 40 miles of our jouney, no damage to the van thankfully, unfortunately the same cannot be said for the bird! And on getting to the hotel this evening I have noticed a light splattering over the back of the van of black and pink dots. Black=oil Pink=coolant.
I will check all the levels in the morning when its all cool, and report back later.

[Mickyfin]

Glad you made the first stage ok, poor bird! Get some photos up, as you know, we all love photos of adventures

[hicksy]

Arrived in Poland, at last!

870 miles, two days, two very tired drivers and one dirty dirty van! All went well, but I did do a raodside repair on the speedo at 710 miles. The cog and spindle for the top row of digits keeps sliding waywards and missing the corkscrew cog beneath it resulting in the mileage stop being recorded, the little bugger!

[Titus A Duxass]

Arrived in Poland, at last!

870 miles, two days, two very tired drivers and one dirty dirty van! All went well, but I did do a raodside repair on the speedo at 710 miles. The cog and spindle for the top row of digits keeps sliding waywards and missing the corkscrew cog beneath it resulting in the mileage stop being recorded, the little bugger!

Glad it went well.

[farley5258]

Hey Hicksy!

Glad it went well.. we met at Sunday show in Chalvington a couple of weeks back.. we chatted alot about your paint job!!!

safe travels!!

Karen

[hicksy]

Hi all.

Just a quick update, My new bride Dominika, Bulli the van, and I are safe and well in Klosterneuburg near vienna, Austria. The wedding was amazing and we set off on the honey moon on wednesday. Today we spent the day in Vienna which is an incredible city and before today I knew little about. I can recommend in it.

Tommorrow we will make the long (620km) drive to venice in Italy which will be our next stop. We cannot wait to be there and are only doing the whole drive in one day so we can relax a bit when there. Bulli is holding up well but after I tried a home made mod to keep the speedo mileometer spindle in place (it kept slipping out) I have admitted defeat for the time being after making 3 repairs. I will now depend on the sat nav to keep track of mileage and subsequent fuel usage calculations.

My camping interior design is working well but in a caravelle it will always be tight. Luckily we have a DELUXE gazebo from Argos that broke within 2 minutes of getting it out the bag!

Anyway, my internet is running out so farewell for now, I will report again soon, and pictures will happen post-trip.

Love Love, Hicksy

[hicksy]

Hi all,

We are back! After travelling through 9 countries, having one wedding, a huge, epic and wonderful euro trip Honeymoon and driven over 4800kms with NO BREAKDOWNS(!) we are finally home!

We spent a week running round carrying out last minute errands in Poland which added at least 400kms to our total distance, then had the wedding over the Bank Holiday weekend (Polish weddings are two days long). We then had a day or two relaxing, sleeping and recovering before setting off on thursday 1st September on the trip.

We hit Vienna first, then on our way through to Venice we met a buch of VW guys at a rest stop in Austria who invited us to the Bi-annual VW Festival where we camped and attended the show for 15euros(!!!) and we won a prize for the furthest travelled to the show! (Cheeky or what!) http://www.vw-kaefer.at/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

After staying a second night we travelled to venice and stayed at the most perfect quiet little site in Cavllino-Traporti. We then travelled across Italy visiting Verona en-route to Savona where we stayed at a beachside campsite for two nights before taking the italy-France coast road to Saint-Tropez, not before driving into Monaco to drive Bulli partly round the F1 Track.

In Saint Tropez we spent a lovely night at Camping De La Plage, and left on saturday morning for the long drive home to calais. We stopped at Dijon overnight (In a Hotel ) and left early the next morning to catch our boat.

Bulli: Had little niggling problems. Namely the speedo. I could read the mph fine, that worked, but the odometer was very intermitent in its recording ability meaning my final mileage for the whole trip is a good guesstimate. On route to Poland wte found a coolant leak which turned out to be a failed jubilee clip that was swiftly replaced with no further issues. And we have a small oil drip from the sump somewhere. Both of these faults only cost us about halp a pint of oil and water/coolant over the whole trip.

So thats the trip in a nutshell, but dont worry I shall updating with pictures and details about our stops and campsites soon.