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Italy / Croatia Road Trip Advice

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TheDan
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Italy / Croatia Road Trip Advice

Post by TheDan » Thu May 26, 2022 3:54 pm

Hi all,

Me and my partner are planning a road trip to Italy and Croatia from the UK later this summer. The route would look something like the image below.
Italy and Croatia Road Trip.png
Italy and Croatia Road Trip.png (1.24 MiB) Viewed 940 times
Warwick > Folkestone > Calais > Chamonix > Como > Florence > Ancona > Zadar > Split > Ljubljana > Strasbourg > Calais > Folkestone > Warwick

I have a few questions about the route:
  • Do you think this is possible in 2 weeks (14 days) including overnight stop offs in the cities in bold above?
  • Is there anywhere not on the list you would recommend visiting?
  • Is there anywhere on the list you would recommend not visiting?
  • Are there any specific scenic routes/roads to take between these destinations?

At the moment we are mainly worried about the possibility of driving just under 3000 miles in 14 days while still being able to see the stop-offs.

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Italy / Croatia Road Trip Advice

Post by Johnny h » Thu May 26, 2022 4:05 pm

TheDan wrote: Thu May 26, 2022 3:54 pm Hi all,

Me and my partner are planning a road trip to Italy and Croatia from the UK later this summer. The route would look something like the image below.

Italy and Croatia Road Trip.png

Warwick > Folkestone > Calais > Chamonix > Como > Florence > Ancona > Zadar > Split > Ljubljana > Strasbourg > Calais > Folkestone > Warwick

I have a few questions about the route:
  • Do you think this is possible in 2 weeks (14 days) including overnight stop offs in the cities in bold above?
  • Is there anywhere not on the list you would recommend visiting?
  • Is there anywhere on the list you would recommend not visiting?
  • Are there any specific scenic routes/roads to take between these destinations?

At the moment we are mainly worried about the possibility of driving just under 3000 miles in 14 days while still being able to see the stop-offs.
Sorry, can’t be of any help but holy s**t!!!what a trip…..
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Italy / Croatia Road Trip Advice

Post by Rucky » Thu May 26, 2022 5:44 pm

We did a 10 day trip to Lipica in Slovenia to visit the Lippizaner Stud Farm. It is more or less on your intended route.
At that time we had the 2.5 Auto and the mountain roads were absolutely amazing. Had the roof down for the whole trip..
We took in as many mountain passes as we could including the Stelvio and drove about 250 to 300 per day, with pre booked overnight hotel stops
Essentially Black Forest, Switzerrland, Lichtenstein, Austria, Italy, Slovenia.
I could probably dig up some route hotels too if you like

I followed a motorcycle tour which I had in .gpx files .
I used Garmin basecamp to upload the route and loaded the gpx files into my Garmin Sat Nav.
I made the additional routes myself using basecamp.

Essentially this allows the upload of waypoints to force your Sat nave to use specific routes otherwise you Sat Nav and or Google maps will decide which route you should take.

If you want to use basecamp I could send you the GPX files - contacy me via email / personal message.
You can do the same on a Tablet in Google maps, pre plan a route , save it to internal memory in stages but be careful as google has a happy of rerouting you sometimes on an "easier" route.
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Italy / Croatia Road Trip Advice

Post by Rucky » Thu May 26, 2022 5:49 pm

Rucky Lipica trip
Rucky Lipica trip
Z4 trip Lipica.JPG (220.95 KiB) Viewed 924 times
Here is an uoload of the route to compare with yours
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Italy / Croatia Road Trip Advice

Post by Rucky » Thu May 26, 2022 6:03 pm

In a swer to your questions 3000m in 14 days is a Driving Trip. Enjoy the car , roads and scenery!!!
There is not time to go shopping, travel up the Ski lifts, visit museums etc.
We did a picnic lunch stop every day , Picnet hamper and jetboil.
I wanted to do as many alpine passes as possible some we did twice, up and down both ways!!
My wife wanted to see the horses - so we spent a full day with no driving.
We did Bled on the wau back too and Postonja caves.
DONT go in August as we did, there are too many camper vans.

It was so much fun I bought the 3.0si when we got back with paddle shift and bigger brakes and have every intention of the doing the same trip again.
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Italy / Croatia Road Trip Advice

Post by Mr Tidy » Thu May 26, 2022 8:26 pm

That looks like being a fantastic trip. :thumbsup:

Hopefully forum member zriha will see it as he lives in Zagreb.
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Italy / Croatia Road Trip Advice

Post by TheDan » Sat May 28, 2022 2:23 pm

Thanks guys, very useful information Rucky!

We have heard from a few friends who have done similar road trips from Italy that the worst/most boring part is traveling down through France to north Italy. They both mentioned potentially taking the motorail from Dusseldorf to either Villach or Verona which will cut out a large portion of the driving down and Dusseldorf is only 4 hours from Calais.

My next question is has anyone ever used the European motorail before? And how easy/convenient was it?

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Italy / Croatia Road Trip Advice

Post by Oilyfingers » Sat May 28, 2022 6:41 pm

Hi
The mrs and me have done a similar trip last year from the Netherlands to Rovinj in Croatia

We did about 350-400km a day avoiding motorways and doing mountainpasses in Austria and Italy where possible
This leaves sufficient time to do shopping or visit sights
We stayed 3 days in Rovinj and then headed back
If you are interested I can provide you with the details of the hotels and interesting sights.

4hrs fom Calais to Dusseldorf is a best case scenario. Traffic around Antwerp and Eindhoven can be a nightmare at the moment.
We took the autotrain to Munich a couple of years ago with our bikes. Keep in mind that the train usually leaves at 21.00h and was quite expensive. I would definately take the scenic route down south. Especially the Black Forest and Bavaria have stunning roads

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Italy / Croatia Road Trip Advice

Post by Greg 01 » Sat May 28, 2022 7:58 pm

Hi thedan .
We also heading for Croatia in September.
Via Austria and the Gross Glockner , this will be our 7th euro trip but the first to Croatia.
Looks a good route on the picc :thumbsup: .
The georges of Verdon , and the vallon pont d'arc in France are quite something .
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Italy / Croatia Road Trip Advice

Post by tonyz4c » Mon May 30, 2022 7:47 pm

One of the most beautiful road where I have ever driven, fantastic coast road :wink:

https://www.google.fr/maps/dir/44.24516 ... 80!1m0!3e0
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Italy / Croatia Road Trip Advice

Post by RobbiZ4 » Mon May 30, 2022 8:21 pm

Well,
my view directly from the continent:

Every location marked on your map is worth to stay another 2 or 3 days. Plus one day for joining the vicinity of each of these locations. I'd say it's a pity only heading down to Split as fast as possbile to fullfill this challenging plan.
You will regret not having more time for all the beautiful regions in D, AT, IT, CH. And don't forget Munich, you will love it as well with it's BMW world. :rofl:
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Italy / Croatia Road Trip Advice

Post by TheDan » Mon Jul 18, 2022 7:40 pm

We booked the motorail and then after a few weeks of not being able to pay because the company just would not respond to any form of communication we cancelled it again.

The route now looks like this with the first and last day being larger stints of driving (Warwick to Strasbourg and Luxembourg to Warwick respectively) to get to the "nicer" parts of Europe a bit quicker.
Screenshot 2022-07-18 193315.png
Screenshot 2022-07-18 193315.png (929.59 KiB) Viewed 777 times
We will likely stay just outside some of the more major cities and get the train in to see sights as driving/parking in them can be awful.

We may also make a few detours to take some of the amazing passes in the north of Italy (Stelvio, Furkapass).

This will take us just less than 3 weeks. :D

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