Please note that these travel pages pre-date the UK leaving the EU and Covid-19. Some details may no longer be accurate!

Travelling

I'd never really been into travelling but I'd always wondered what it would be like to live and work in Europe, especially in Germany. With this as inspiration, a couple of family members and I flew out to Berlin for a couple of days.

Planning the trip was stressful. There were so many unknowns. Berlin was awesome. We had a great time doing all the tourist stuff. And to my surprise, I really enjoyed the whole travelling experience, despite the stress.

Berlin had been a big eye opener and motivation for me to start taking regular trips abroad. On one of those trips I was sat on a high speed train, watching picturesque towns and villages fly past, wishing I could go explore them. Wouldn't it be great to have the freedom to go wherever I wanted and not be constrained by trains and planes. It made me think of the stories a friend had told me of the time he took a road trip across Europe.

Roadtrip?

My friend''s road trip stories had been lingering in the back of my mind. When I decided to change jobs it seemed like the perfect opportunity to take a break from work. Maybe I could do my own version of a road trip?

And that's exactly what I did. Bought a car, got back in to driving, spent a load of time researching and planning and went off on a four-week road trip across Europe.

I ended up driving 3,000 miles across Europe. The trip started out with a drive down to Dover and a car ferry trip across to Dunkirk in France. Through Belgium to Luxembourg, then south through Eastern France and Switzerland until I got to the Italian coast. Around and back up through Italy, Austria and into Germany. Around Germany and up to Holland, ending up back at Calais for the ferry home.

While on the road trip, my brain was buzzing with all the information I'd accumulated during the research and planning. It just seemed like something that needed to be written down before it was forgotten. Perhaps some of it might be useful to others. And that's how I came to write this!

What I've written about

Most people write about their exciting adventures, the fantastic places they've been to, the amazing people they met. I'm not going to write about those things. To be honest, compared to most people's holidays you'd probably find mine boring.

There was way too much information to fit in to a single webpage so I've tried to break it down into different themes across several pages. I've written about how I organised and researched my road trip, some of the decisions I had to make about where to go and accommodation and I've described the journey across on the car ferry.

The information that I've put on this website is aimed at holiday newbies travelling on a limited budget. People who aim to stay in relatively cheap B&Bs and Hotels. There are also some bits on camping and driving. I write from a UK perspective, travelling to Western European destinations.

Find links to the pages at the top of this page.