This section covers all the Ws: who, where, why, what, when, and, erm, how. 
A daily record of the plans made and the decisions taken. 
Click on the articles below for the latest news.

We know where we are visiting on the trip, have a rough estimate of how many miles we will cover, and know what public transport we will be using, so we can start calculating the cost of our epic journey. Although we have booked some hotels, we still have a couple more to do. Therefore, there is no final cost for accommodation yet, so I'll keep that summary for another post. We have settled on the train to take us on to mainland Europe, and the ferry to bring us back. Based

This post isn't about some rubbish film starring a fading Hollywood light, made on the cheap and deemed not good enough to be shown at the cinema. No, this is a cute little video showing the scale of the drive ahead of us. Putting names in a list is one thing; seeing them mapped out is quite another. Click on the video below for a peek at our journey (it might take a minute to load). The Full Pull...

We have just about decided on our trip; we know where we are going as part of the organised rally, and we have almost settled on the route home after Monte Carlo and Nice. If things go to plan, the whole trip will take 12 days and cover around 2,200 miles. Our current itinerary: Wed 10th - Driving from Liverpool to Namur Thur 11th - Day off Fri 12th - Driving from Namur to Freiburg Sat 13th - Driving from Freiburg to Menaggio Sun 14th - Driving from Menaggio to Nice Mon 15th

We have checked the ferry timetables and will be departing Bilbao at 13:00 on 20th June, arriving in Portsmouth at 17:30 the following day. It takes about 5 hours to travel from Portsmouth to Liverpool, so we will be home late Sunday night. We will be travelling on the Galica, the blurb says it is the first of the Brittany Ferries designed especially for routes to Spain. The Galicia showcases some of the very best of Spain with décor inspired by the beautiful region of northe

With the apartment in Nice booked, that is where the official journey ends and our own path is forged. We discussed at length what the next steps were, banding ideas around, looking for the best way to get from the south of France back to Blighty. The direct route is right up the centre of France, up to Lyon, up to Paris, over to Calais, through the tunnel and bosh, back home. But what if we didn't take the direct route? I've been thinking about heading to northern Spain a

By this point, we are all very much on the way to being drunk, with the exception of Richie, who was on some mad, low alcohol beer, as he knew he would need a clear head for the award presentation he was attending the following day. His relative sobriety was a massive help as we headed to Nice on our hotel booking journey. Like the first day, we decided to spread the trip over two days to give us some time to decompress. As we were staying a couple of days in Nice, we compl

We were on a roll now, another round of drinks was consumed, the noise level went up, and people started to get visibly giddy as we had two hotels in the bag. The next stop on the route is Menaggio on the banks of Lake Como, and we knew this was going to be a wallet-busting stop! We ignored the Bust Rallies Bible this time. We knew exactly what we wanted and how much we were willing to pay. What we found was that Menaggio was a very popular spot for tourists in mid-June -

After another round of drinks, it was back into Booking.com to check out available digs, this time in the German city of Freiburg. Again, we dipped into the Bust Rallies Bible to see what they suggested and then completely ignored them! Namur is an old town which came to prominence in Roman times and is filled with quaint old buildings. Freiburg is much bigger, and the city centre is modern, so it was unlikely we would find another chateau to stay in, which turned out to be

We had a nice little get-together on Saturday night: a few friends, a few drinks and the daunting task of booking all the hotels for the trip. All we had to do was agree on four hotels that satisfied five people's individual needs!!! Straightforward, right? Actually, it was pretty painless. We first had to decide what day we were leaving, which changed from Thursday to Wednesday. This was to give us an extra day in Namur to decompress after the 8-hour drive from Liverpool

There are so many moving parts to this trip that my head is spinning. We definitely need to book hotels and trains/ferries. We need to decide if we are having a week in a villa, find out who can make it, and then book that. Then there are the cars; they all need checking to ensure they will actually make the trip before we get busy with the decorations. Then there are the drivers. Lisa and I are definitely in - barring any disasters at home. Carl is definitely in, but do

Looking through the Pre-Rally Bible, I stumbled across something called Auto-Train, a service in which your vehicle hitches a ride on a rail-based car transporter while you travel in style to your destination. The service ran from Nice to Calais, which would have been an absolute boon for our trip. Notice I used 'ran' instead of 'runs'. The service to Calais ceased in 2017, with the link to Paris ceasing in 2019. Loading the car up in Nice and then letting the train take t

Following on from The Great British Innuendo Tour , I stumbled across a map of places in Northern Ireland that we should definitely add...

These days, when you come, the beautiful sun...I get a flush of excitement thinking about our trip next year and start planning a...

What better way to spend an afternoon on a rally across Europe than at an, erm, football match?! As part of the route we visit Menaggio...

With a heavy heart, I must announce that our jaunt across Europe has been put on hold until next year.  There are many reasons, but...

I'm worried that Abbie will develop multiple personality disorders during our upcoming European road trip, as she must respond to six...

I may have stumbled across our next road trip. Hot on the heels of our plan to race across Britain to prove the Abarths are quicker than...

There is no suggestion that we will speed up when completing the rally. Still, it is better to be prepared, so I researched how much the...

In the previous post , I discussed the different sign colours across Europe. The takeaway is that countries flip-flop between blue and...

In the second in the series of 'Weird Stuff The Europeans Do To Their Road Signs' - I know, riveting, right? - we learn that not only do...