DRIVING AROUND EUROPE

I don’t think there are many people, except probably some die-hard Green Peace supporters, who wouldn’t love the idea of their next summer holiday to be a blast round Europe in a classic car. Trouble free of course; the car would be reliable, you wouldn’t get lost (or you would if, like me, you are that way inclined), it would be affordable and you had a comfortable place to stay each night (or you wouldn’t if, not like me, you were that way inclined). This all seems pretty impossible and, well, it is. That is not to say though that the benefits would be outweighed by a couple of foibles. I embarked this summer on such a trip in a 1975 BMW 1602 and on a student budget. Begrudgingly with a tent to keep accommodation costs down, I set off for Dover. With the tent and the necessary items to keep the gendarmes happy (high-vis jackets, insurance documents, light bulbs, etc) I packed a trusty friend who could speak very good French. We caught a ferry to Calais which was a mistake. Use the tunnel. You might think that a rest on the ferry is what you will need, especially if you caught a 6:30am ferry, but a rest in a floating mock mock-tudor pub or desperately-trying-to-be-cool coffee shop with either the smell of perfume from the duty free shop or sick (which is inevitable within at least 30 minutes after you launch) is damned near impossible. Use the Eurotunnel and stay in your own car for 20 minutes then spend another half an hour to an hour getting as far away from Calais as is humanly possible, then stop; it will be far more enjoyable. 

A friend on such a trip is vital even if it is just someone to operate the toll stations, mine fortunately was also good company. We had vowed that we would keep the motorway driving to a minimum, this way we would see more of the France we had come to see: the rustic French villages with at least one, if not more, old person sitting on the communal village bench keeping guard, vineyards, mountains, lakes, rivers, anything you might associate with a stereotypical view of France. We made very slow progress, after the first day of non-motorway roads to Reims then a day of pure motorway driving from Reims to Annecy we decided the solution was splitting the day with a morning of motorway driving then spending the afternoon, after lunch, on some nice roads. The car ran hotter on the motorway so we had hoped to do that driving when the ambient temperature was cooler, I was being somewhat over precautious [sic] as we very rarely did it that way and never once had an over heating problem.

I own the classic car driven on this trip. Having owned it for two years, two years of very involved repairs, before I went on the trip it never really worried me that it wouldn’t make it. If it did go wrong, unless it was drastic, it would be something I could attempt to fix. Despite its grand age of 35, 99% of parts are still available, so a couple of nights camping where the car had decided to stop while we waited for La Poste to deliver the necessary item wouldn’t have been the end of the world. Nevertheless we did take out European breakdown cover. It also, quite obviously, was not hard for me to get my hands on a classic car for the trip as I own one. You could of course hire a car that has been maintained by professionals and probably comes with some sort of recovery for such trips. This will bump up the cost but I think it would be worth it, a trip like this, for me anyway, really wouldn’t have been right in anything that wasn’t at the very least interesting just standing still. 

For many people the planning of a holiday is almost as exciting as the trip itself. I can’t say the same for myself, I am a bit more of a play-it-by-ear sort of chap. We decided where to go the night before we left and aimed for the place without the full intention or expectation of actually reaching the decided destination. Each destination was more of a direction than an actual way point. With this sort of attitude I don’t think I could recommend a particular route because if anyone were to give me a route it would have undoubtedly gone right out of the window after the first 24 hours. I can strongly recommend a map that is all. Sat-navs do take the fun out of the navigating but the route a sat-nav will give you won’t be completely uneventful, I have in the past ended up driving through a farm yard, amongst other small private roads, as directed by a sat-nav.

When you are ‘on the continent’ food will be the last of your worries. Your food budget might take a bit of a hit, but finding good food will not be hard, except maybe in Germany. When on the road, with no sort of kitchen, food preparation is pretty much impossible if you embark on these journeys as underprepared as I do. Butter will melt all over your possessions and will perfume the boot of your car forever. Restaurants are really the only option, there could well be another way but it’s not hard for me to revert to restaurants over anything else. Be it road-side-frites, the restaurant at Caffe’ Torino, a tiny restaurant decorated like 12 year old girl’s bedroom that serves something called a ‘bric’, or my favourite restaurant in the world, La Mule Blanche in Arles, you will always get good food even if, sometimes, it is at a cost.

You would think one of the most exotic, romantic and interesting places you might be able to visit on a trip around Europe would be the Côte d’Azur. The French Riviera includes Monaco, Saint Tropez, Cannes and Nice all places you think you want to go to France for. Well these days they have lost that jet set appeal they may have once had in the 60s and now they are sort of just one big, hot, traffic jam. The people you see in Monaco can easily be categorised into 3 groups: the yacht owners; easily identified as the ones standing by the boats so you know they are incredibly rich or driving around the town in a car which gives the same impression as their humungous boat, the tourists pretending to be residents of Monaco; masses of shopping bags in each hand and dressed in loud colours clothes adorned with logos more obvious than one of the plastic monstrosities they long to own in the harbour and finally the standard tourist; no different from any other fair weather tourist their style is dependant on their nationality but you can tell the ones who arrived in a classic car, they will be the ones who are far sweatier than anyone else. 

Enough about where not to go though as most of where you will end up will be excellent. What is fantastic is that, especially in Central Europe, there is such a wide range of cultures and traditions in such a small space. Each country has its own style of architecture, its own language and you can feel you are in a different country as soon as you cross a border. The Alps house the borders to these fantastic countries. Coincidentally the Alps also has some of the best driving roads in the world plus some of the greatest scenery you will ever witness. If you want an idealised, romantic holiday there is no better destination; it hasn’t lost its mystique and reputation in the same way the Riviera has; it still looks the same as it does in The Italian Job. All the towns, all the lakes and all the towns by all the lakes are picturesque and an absolute delight just to walk around. If you are on a budget and camping, it’s hard to find a better spot than on the side of Lake Annecy or Lake Como anywhere in the world. So my one suggestion is go to The Alps then decide from there, you can’t really go wrong.

This article is from issue 1 of The Idealist.