 Poster: A snowHead
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Doing my first driving trip on Easter....
Driving from Leeds to Folkestone for a 12:20 chunnel, so aiming to leave Leeds about 5:30/6am, it's 262.5 miles so reckoning on allowing 6 hours for stops/breakfast
So the question is how far to travel on the other side, we are thinking of stopping somewhere half way between Metz and Strasbourg, thus doing another 4.5 hrs from Calais, and 5 hrs the next day to get to Stuben.
Does that sound doable bearing in mind the driving already done from Leeds in the morning...
cheers,
Greg
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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I'd say that's about the sensible limit, but it also depends if you can share the driving. We drove back from Marseille to London in one hit over the summer. 16 hours door to door. It wasn't too bad, but our kids are pretty good in the car. Maybe the sedatives helped...
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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DVD players are the best means of keeping them entertained.
Many years ago we hotels to stop overnight but with three kids it was a hassle (and expensive) getting two rooms. We now drive overnight and change driver every 90mins to 2 hours, the little cherubs get to turn off the film about 9 or 10 and then they sleep for the rest of the journey.
Our normal run on a good day is 12 hours door to door, enevitably delays etc mean that we can be up to 15 hours but having two drivers and the discipline to change over before you are tired helps us get quite a long way.
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Well about 5 minutes is about enough to drive me nuts with my 3 6, 10 and 14 arguing in the car but if they'll behave and you can get a decent break as you go under the sea I'd say it sounds sensible. But even if they are 10 or so hours driving in a day is far from easy work if you aren't used to it.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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I found Semecourt a good place to stay in that area. Just off the motorway north of Metz it's a large commercial area with hotels, supermarkets, restaurants, etc.
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Depends on the kids! mine were great 7 and 11 at the time got a dvd player lots of cheap dvd's they'd never seen, monty python had them in stitches! never heard a whinge from them at all!! They had pillows and covers, sweets etc, made a sort of camp and loved it! We had an hour and a half to the crossing, then drove to Grenoble, with just quick stops, stayed overnight with a short drive into resort in the morning, worked well for us.
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Don't know if it helps but we've just got back having done:
Out...
Macclesfield - Chunnel - Reims
Reims - Le Grand Bornand
Back...
Le Grand Bornand - Lens
Lens - Chunnel - Macclesfield
with 6yo triplets. The DVD player comes out for this kind of trip and it helps that this year they can change the discs themselves (if they can agree on what to watch.
The LGB - Lens leg was the only one that I felt was too long but that was due to serious traffic problems around Geneva and Reims.
It's the fourth time we've done effectively the same trip and it works well for us. Having said that, if we lived down south (or didn't have kids with us) I'd be tempted to do it in one go. In fact we may try going straight through either there or back at Easter.
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kitenski, depends on your kids (of course) but I would have said if you're tooled up with DVDs and talking books, your fatigue would be more of a limiter. You'll be getting off the tunnel at about 1400, if you could keep going till 1930-2000, that's going to cut down your final stretch to only 3-4 hours the next day, which will fly by as it's the exciting uphill bit.  But if it's only you driving, what you've suggested is probably the sensible safe option.
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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I would suggest you to take also a few other entertaining stuff as cards, or small games.
Of course we need to stops to gas, restrooms and some walk.
But you can carry water, soft drinks, chocolates, fruits, candies, etc, this will save you a lot of time avoiding to get inside the shops to chose and pay.
Last time we did a long car trip( about 1200Km) we realized that we spent at least 30 minutes each time we came inside a shop, instead of only 15 for gas and restrooms. If you will stop each 2 hours it could represent as much as 2 hours plus in your trip.
Regards,
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the best bet for the kids is to drive overnight so they sleep. But that might not be so good for the drivers, of course.
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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DVDs and DSI seem to do this trick for us! Reccomend lots of in car drinks and snacks (fruits and sandwiches or brioche rolls as well as sweets seem to work with us) Also if you have boys I would reccomend an empty bottle in case it is a long time to the next toilets and of course if you do take a spare bottle make sure you remember which one is the pee bottle and don't confuse it with any apple juice in the car!
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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DVDs and DSI seem to do this trick for us! Reccomend lots of in car drinks and snacks (fruits and sandwiches or brioche rolls as well as sweets seem to work with us) Also if you have boys I would reccomend an empty bottle in case it is a long time to the next toilets and of course if you do take a spare bottle make sure you remember which one is the pee bottle and don't confuse it with any apple juice in the car!
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I think it depends at least as much on the car as on the kids. Years back when we swapped our Vectra for an Espace, our lads' behaviour on long trips improved damatically as each child had plenty of personal space, a private window, a more comfortable and roomy seat and an elevated view. Things got better again when we bought an even roomier Discovery. A decent car helps prevent driver fatigue, too.
The longest continuous trip we've attempted was 23 hours and it really wasn't any problem; in a cramped car, I'd hesitate to attempt a journey half the length. And our kids prefer books to DVDs, I'm happy to say.
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You know it makes sense.
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I go with all the other posts saying good new DVD's are your best bet and tend to keep the drivers entertained too if you can listen along to a decent movie! We pack really decent picnics to cut down on the cost of stopping and picnic outdoors with french coffee to keep us both awake. The service stations do surprisingly good instant machine coffees for 1Euro, (Why can't we have those machines?) We stopped in the Metz holiday in a couple of years ago which was good, reasonably priced and spoke good english to our average French! Lots of the continental service areas often have a play area which ours were happy to use wearing ski jackets! Probably the thought is always worse than the reality!
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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our kids prefer books to DVDs, I'm happy to say.
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this used to be a big bone of contention with our kids. They all loved reading but our daughter used to get terribly car sick if she tried to read whereas the boys were fine. She used to get really angry when they were reading for hour after hour and she just got bored and tended to niggle at them (that was long before the time of DVDs). We did enjoy tape stories - the Sheep Pig kept the entire family entranced from Scotland all the way down the M6/M5
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Poster: A snowHead
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I could recite one paticular episode of the red power ranger after 1 trip having never actually seen it and I have to confess that the sound track of Sean the Sheep always reminds me of skiing.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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Horrid Henry CDs, as read by Miranda Richardson are a good way to while away a few hours if the attractions of the DVD player have paled.
Don't get me going on HH's birthday party...
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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My kids have headphones, I hate listening to their DVDs when I am trying to drive!!
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
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Hi there
We live in Durham and in February this year, my kids aged 8, 10 & 13 took the ferry from Newcastle to Amsterdam, my husband then drove all the way to Niederau without stopping (well except toilet breaks and petrol). we had reckoned on it taking 9-10 hours at the most. It took us 12!. Hubby was donig 80-90 most of the time too, and cars were still flying by!.
The kids were no bother in the car. You will be able to judge by yourself how good a traveller your own kids are from previsous journeys you made. On the way back we decided to stay in Germany (Frankfurt) overnight and I am so glad we did as the return journey seemed to be much longer than the way there (even though it wasnt, about the same time - 12 hours). we had the DVD for the kids and ds and psp. Are you planning on taking snow chains? we were humming and haaaing about taking them and eventually decided to buy them and put them in the boot just in case. what a fool we would have looked without them. we would literally have been stuck in Worgl as when we arrived the snow was falling heavy and the roads had a good covering on them (also I think it depends what time of day you are due to arrive at your destination as the roads were fine during the day, but seemed to be snowed up at night). there is no way we would have finished the final leg of our journey without them.
Also are you taking satnav? we had satnav and I also tried to follow the map from the book and if we didnt have satnav god knows where we would have ended up!. the roads seemed to have about 3 different names to them! it was really confusing.
Also when started driving through Austria (about 9pm), the water in our windscreen washers froze solid and we couldnt see a bat. visibility was terrible. luckily we had some water in the car which we threw on the windscreen then pulled over at the next petrol station to buy some more water. the rest of our journey was spent at 80mph on the motorway throwing water on the windscreen. oh how we laughed.................. (NOT). it was very hairy!!!! I think where you are going could be maybe further than where we went so I would definitly add a couple hours to what you are quoted. hope this helps 
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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I would suggest an alternative route to driving through France. If you drive via Lille, Namur, Luxembourg, Saarbrucken, Pirmasens, Landau, Karlsruhe, Ulm you will save a lot in French road tolls, be able to fill up in Luxembourg for about 20c a litre less and still have pretty much the same journey time. I've driven this route many times and the only non-motorway section is between Pirmasens & Landau. As a guide I can do Calais to Karlsruhe in under 6 hours & Karlsruhe Ulm in around 1.5.
I'd say your reckoning is ok; I've got 3 kids of similar ages and they don't have a problem with the journey from Karlsruhe to Newcastle in one hit
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Just back from a very similar itinerary to Higs in an earlier post. Same traffic and (almost) the same stopovers (Cambrai rather than Lens on return).
A tip for French traffic queues - the slow lane moves the fastest. And at payages slip down to the right as the queues seem to fan out into more booths and hence move quicker. Look for green arrows as the orage "t" signs are "telepayage" and cause all sorts of problems with people getting into wrong queues. Better still, avoid France!
For info I wouldn't try your distance with children unless you know they're up for it and you can stand unplanned delays. Our longest stretch was St Gervais to Cambrai which should have been 6hr40 but with the traffic took over 9 hours.
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