Europe 2024 through France and beyond

Its a cold and clear Monday morning on the 25th March 2024 and we have a P&O ferry to catch to France. Dover to Calais and it departs at 8.30am. Having caught this ferry many times we know the drill but still leave our park up for the night early and manage a stop to refill our gas as well before lining up to board. Its the slow boat to China today, seems forever on what should be a 1.5hr trip. We are accompanied on the trip by bus loads of UK teenagers who do just teenage stuff I suppose. Its very noisy. At last we are released from the bowels of the ship and make our way into Gods country, France. An hour or so down the motorway and we manage a Lidl stop for the basics like wine and a baguette for lunch so we are good to go. Mind you the eyes start to droop as we head towards our possible parkup for the night. We arrive in Douai, not your typical French name for a town but French non the less. Its actually a very big town and our park up is in the middle, so its busy which isn’t ideal. But it has free electric and we hook up for hair dryer time. That part is very successful and we take full advantage before continuing on to an old favourite from 2018/2019 at Marciong where we pull up for the night.

 

   

 For those that know, France is the home of roundabouts, if you go through one you go through a hundred. It can be mind numbing especially as the satnav is going “ at the roundabout take the first/second or third exit”. Luckily after about half an hour we are on a N road, no tolls but usually dual lane and you can scoot along pretty well. A usual coffee stop around 11am and we make our destination at Saint-Nicolas-de-Port and a rather wet potholed parking area. Considering the weather it doesn’t really matter as we are basically constrained to the inside of our mobile home. Its books out and nap time after a late lunch.

This morning after a quick Lidl stop to load up on cheap French wine we are off again towards the German border and make our way to Muggensturm where we park up for the night. By 7pm its pretty crowded with weekenders making the most of a 4 day break, shame the weather is pretty ordinary. We do discuss this and decide its probably pretty good weather if you have been stuck in doors all winter so we should stop being negative about their weather.

 

The morning brings heavy rain as we make our way towards Stuttgart and beyond, even though its Easter Friday its pretty heavy traffic with wet roads. We get held up with accidents and roadworks, its a struggle today and the kilometres click by very slowly. Vic is nodding off in the passenger seat as its so dreary, cant really blame her its a bit monotonous. A coffee break reinvigorates us and we plow on down the tarmac, what does surprise us is the lack of trucks, so it looks like they are banned on the road today like Sundays. I really don’t know how many cars there on earth but my god you pass a bloody lot during the day, not many electric, all diesel. Fuelled by the Russians. We make our way to Augsburg and park up next to the lake. The sun has come out, people are bike riding and enjoying the outdoors. There is a wake board park in use, beach volleyball as well, its all happening with the long weekend. By evening the camper parking area is full, no Aussies though just Germans. We discuss the distances we have travelled and how far we need to go before we are Schengen free. It really comes down to we need to drive further each day, and how can we do that without any danger of over tiredness. So start earlier, break up the trip more and maybe a rest midway before continuing on. Ok we will see how we go tomorrow.

It wasn’t too bad, we had a relatively easy drive today, no accidents on the motorway thankfully and our side trip around Salzburg to miss the toll roads was fine, by 1pm we are at Bad Ischl parked up in the car park with a few others. After a bite to eat I’m too knackered to bother driving any further. So its a bit of a rest then a walk around the small town which is crowded with cafes. It seems everyone is having cake, Torte to be exact, plus enormous glass jars of ice cream and cream. The sun has come out, its nice and warm which helps the outdoor cafes, I think it reached 19 deg here. A pleasant place to spend Easter Saturday, I wonder what tomorrow Easter Sunday brings with these places? 

  

Well I heard bells at 6am but thats it. Mind you it may have been 7am as daylight saving finished at midnight. We track across the back roads of Austria, at times running next to the motorway that has tolls, through small villages, past towering snow topped mountains and traverse a few hairpin bends. Generally the worst part of mountain driving is downhill. Being so heavy we naturally gain speed and to alleviate the brakes from overheating its a careful game of gears and light touches on the brake pedal. After a few hours we park up behind a large bus station, its quiet and we will see how it goes for the afternoon. We get a few boys on their trail bikes but they are gone after an hour, looks like it should be fine apart from maybe the church bells which are currently chiming at 7 pm. Tomorrow we should cross to Hungary then down towards Bulgaria and our destination Turkey.

Yes we spent a very quiet night and the church didn’t ring their bells until 7am, or if they did I didn’t hear them. We head on another trundle through the very neat fields of Austria and into Hungary.  Some of the roads in Hungary are bloody shocking as we rattle along, plus  the odd maniac screaming past defying death with oncoming traffic. We make it to Lake Balaton and park up in a carpark adjacent to a lake entrance.  In a couple of months it will be heaving here, luckily for us its quiet at the moment but today its warming up at around 25 degrees. I think tomorrow we will make Serbia and halt our Schengen count down for a few days.

 
After a night of heavy rain and wind we leave and stop at a Lidl only 5 minutes away to stock up our larder. Its a tough drive again today, the roads are shocking, more trucks than you really want to see on narrow rutted roads. We pass through many small towns, all very similar and quiet. Nothing much to see here, its just a road to our destination. Surprisingly we are turned away at our first border crossing point into Serbia and redirected across country, about 25km to a larger point. Here we pass through in 5 minutes only to see the number of trucks lined up on the opposite crossing. We lost count but must have been over 300 trucks stationary, all waiting for the border crossing from Serbia into Hungary. Its been another long day on the road and after another half an hour we stop by a lake near Backa Topola for the night. Its an early start this morning as the road noise drives us from the warmth of our bed and we are greeted with a blue sky. The day turns into one of those that doesn’t want to be easy. We come across roadworks where we have to reverse out, one way streets that our satnav tries to takes us on and no internet. Looks like Serbia isn’t on our Popit plan nor my backup Euro E-sim so we bumble our way to Belgrade and manage a clean out and water topup before finding a McDonalds for free wifi and then hooking up a Serbia e-sim. All sorted now and we park up outside Belgrade on top of a hill with a monument to the unknown soldier. Cant wait to reach Turkey, the driving is very tiring, maybe another 4 days?

Well we did think it might be a busy night, and true to form the Serbs are out and about until 4am. Cars continuously parkup near us during the night, its a heavy gravel ground so the noise is also heavy. We don’t have any issues with boys doing burnouts or skidding through the gravel which is good, just the constant arrival and departure of vehicles through the night.

 

The morning brings a respite and we head off down the hill towards Bulgaria. So normally we shy away from toll roads unless it’s Italy, but our destination is showing over 6 hours and it’s about 300km, my first thought is the GPS is wrong but as we approach a toll station we exit and reconsider our route. After a quick google search we decide to get back on the toll road which shows about 2 and half hours instead of 6 plus. It’s a dream drive, not much traffic and by the time we make our destination it cost about $28 so quite happy with that. Unfortunately our first stop isn’t what we planned, it’s too busy and reminds us of last night, but we are a bit tired so it will do for a few hours while we rest and reconsider. There is a monastery not far that allows overnight stops so we head there and park up after a slightly difficult conversation with a guy but it ended with a handshake and a direction to where we can stop. Hopefully a quiet night to be had.

We enjoy a quiet night, and a cold morning in the shade of the mountains before a short drive to the border crossing into Bulgaria. While we are waiting we chat to a Frenchman who appears with backpack and walking sticks. He is on a walk to Jerusalem, 9000km round trip that should take 9 months. Its the ancient Templer route from 1096 where the French went from Dijon in France to conquer Jerusalem. Once through our border crossing we head south and park up near Plovdiv but in the hills adjacent a restaurant and bumbling creek. Tomorrow Turkey…

 

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