How far is too far to drive?

[Lynne Guinne]

Someone's post, perhaps @Lullabelle(?) mentioned that she doesn't drive and her dear hubby has been driving on vacation when they are off-tour for the day and on their own. That got me to thinking about how far most Europeans think is just too far to bother?

Unless you live along the east or west coast of the U.S., or the Chicago, Illinois area, public transportation is seriously lacking. My old hometown of Cleveland, Ohio does has a fine rail line, but it travels only between downtown to the eastern suburbs, or southwest to the airport, either of which is roughly 8 km from city center. There are also city run buses, but they also are limited in the routes they travel and the schedule they run. For this reason, most suburban and rural residents have a car (or more) in their family.

Before hubby retired, his one-way commute to work was 57 km, five days a week. Since we were transferred to Massachusetts, just going back home to see our kids is 971 km one way. Our annual trip to the beaches of Florida's west coast each autumn is a one-way drive of nearly 1000 km. Getting tired of driving yet? Because when our son was traveling between home and college, and we had already move to Massachusetts, our one way trip from Massachusetts to Ohio to Arizona was a whopping 4200 km. All of it driven. We never minded a bit.

For us personally, driving is far more pleasurable than air transportation. When something looks interesting, a pilot doesn't have the luxury to land the plane so you can explore. But even when vacation time was limited, we always built in free time to explore what looked interesting at any particular moment of a trip. The flexibility one can enjoy when setting one's pace and route allows for moments of surprise and wonder. Not to mention how much leg space compared to air travel, unless you are one who can book in First Class.

How far are you willing to take a full-on driving vacation before you think "oh, I could never!"?

 

[Francesca]

@Lynne Guinne

I have never driven in my life.

To fly within Spain, for example, Barcelona to Madrid is 30 Euros each way to 50 Euros each way & 45 minutes direct, of course, and to fly from Madrid to Marseille ( 1 hour) or (Milan is less than 2 hours ) is roughly same price.

We have excellent long distance bus services, and rail services as well as high speed rail - 2 hours to Madrid .. Howver, we love to fly. It is Exhilarating ..

My husband drives. However, we prefer to fly to our desitnation or take the 1st class buses Alsa, depending on where we are going. We find it very relaxing. I am not a grand fan of the rail system and rarely use it .. Though we have used the High Speed from time to time depending where we are going.

Most people outside of Manhattan or Boston or Wash D.C. or San Francisco drive in the Usa.

In Kilometres: Northeastern Spain to Cadiz or Málaga on southern coast : Approx. 650 Km .. And northwestern Spain to Málaga or Cadiz is 700 km approx .. 6 to 7 Hours approx. at most.

The Euro air fares are very reasonable and we get where we are going within an hour or 2 to fly to France, Switzerland, Italy, Portugal is 1/ 2 hour from Madrid and from Barcelona, 1 hour. London is 2 hours. Northern Europe, 2 1 / 2 hours approx ..

It took us 3 hours and 1 / 2 to fly to Bucharest, Romania in March of 2016, to visit a dear friend ahd her husband in Translyvania .. It was a dinner flight and very very pleasant ..

Gas / Petrol is very very expensive in Europe, unlike the USA, where you purchase by the gallon. We purchase by the Litre ! So, it is more cost efficent for us to take the bus to the airport or the Underground, and fly ! It is cheaper than the Gas or Petrol for a car !



Have a lovely weekend ..

 

[sidevalve]

We live in a quite rural part of England [but only 15mins drive from Durham city center] and the buses are [when they don't 'miss'] at best every hour [they also stop at 7pm] so public transport is a bit of a waste of time. When I used to work I would cover from 70 to 250 miles a day but now I rarely do more than 10 - It all depends on what you get used to.

 

[Cinisajoy]

In Texas and our vacations range anywhere from 300 miles one way to nearly 1500 miles one way. Long one was from Odessa Texas to Independence MO, to Little Rock Arkansas back to Odessa.
Once a year, we go to my mom's that is roughly 500 miles one way.

 

[epicuric]

Used to commute to Nottingham every day for about a year, that was 85 miles each way. Longest trip I can remember was in my feckless youth, driving to Aberdeen for a business meeting, and then back again the same day. It was around 800 miles and took about 12 hours. I wasn't much use to anybody for a few days after. Oddly enough, the meeting went well, and I had to go back again. This time I took a plane. Strange to think that such a meeting these days would be done from the comfort of your own desk.

 

[buckytom]

An odd thing about driving in New Jersey is that we talk about driving in terms of time more than distance.

For instance, if someone asks you how far away you live, or how far something is, we often respond in minutes or hours. I live an hour from work, instead of I live 50 miles from work.

Anyway, in that light, the longest I'll drive in one day is 8 to 10 hours, max.

That's probably 500 miles, or 800 km. Maybe a little more.

I can do it without a break if I'm by myself. With my wife, that's at least 3 rest stops.

 

[Cinisajoy]

An odd thing about driving in New Jersey is that we talk about driving in terms of time more than distance.

For instance, if someone asks you how far away you live, or how far something is, we often respond in minutes or hours. I live an hour from work, instead of I live 50 miles from work.

Anyway, in that light, the longest I'll drive in one day is 8 to 10 hours, max.

That's probably 500 miles, or 800 km. Maybe a little more.

I can do it without a break if I'm by myself. With my wife, that's at least 3 rest stops.

If you take the road from El Paso to San Antonio, that is nearly 600 miles and it can be done in less than 7 hours. Most of interstate 10 is 80 miles per hour through there. So is most of interstate 20 west of Penwell.

 

[Yorky]

When I worked on overland pipeline construction, driving was part of my job. It was not always possible to drive the route of the pipeline particularly when it had been raining and to access a certain point by road was often tortuous. When I moved into pipeline precommissioning operations 80% of my travel was by air and I became very bored with that.

Now I've retired, my wife does most of the local driving. For long runs (to the south coast (7 hours) or Bangkok (6 hours)) we share the driving (my wife refuses to drive in Bangkok!). If we visit my wife's family in the north west it's a 900 km drive which we break into two days.

 

[Lynne Guinne]

Used to commute to Nottingham every day for about a year, that was 85 miles each way. Longest trip I can remember was in my feckless youth, driving to Aberdeen for a business meeting, and then back again the same day. It was around 800 miles and took about 12 hours. I wasn't much use to anybody for a few days after. Oddly enough, the meeting went well, and I had to go back again. This time I took a plane. Strange to think that such a meeting these days would be done from the comfort of your own desk.

85 miles one way, each day, for a year? @epicuric, you must be made from steel! We won't even discuss an 800-mile round trip in one day.

 

[Lynne Guinne]

An odd thing about driving in New Jersey is that we talk about driving in terms of time more than distance.

For instance, if someone asks you how far away you live, or how far something is, we often respond in minutes or hours. I live an hour from work, instead of I live 50 miles from work.

Anyway, in that light, the longest I'll drive in one day is 8 to 10 hours, max.

That's probably 500 miles, or 800 km. Maybe a little more.

I can do it without a break if I'm by myself. With my wife, that's at least 3 rest stops.

Hey, don't pick on your wife! You guys don't have to accommodate the extra space needed for the little nursery that pre-born children move into.

"An odd thing about driving in New Jersey is that we talk about driving in terms of time more than distance."
^THIS!^ I noticed it when we moved here. After all, there are few traffic jams in the Ohio suburbs or in Amish Country. However, driving down the east coast from Massachusetts to Florida takes far longer than any mileage program can estimate. I usually look at what Google says it will take and laugh!

 

[Cinisajoy]

Hey, don't pick on your wife! You guys don't have to accommodate the extra space needed for the little nursery that pre-born children move into.

"An odd thing about driving in New Jersey is that we talk about driving in terms of time more than distance."
^THIS!^ I noticed it when we moved here. After all, there are few traffic jams in the Ohio suburbs or in Amish Country. However, driving down the east coast from Massachusetts to Florida takes far longer than any mileage program can estimate. I usually look at what Google says it will take and laugh!

We like to go to a town 60 miles away for lunch sometimes. The first half of the trip takes about 15 minutes longer or more than the second half of the trip. It is all Interstate. The first half is through two towns that have merged.

 

[Elawin]

The longest I've ever driven was when I worked in Waiblingen (near Stuttgart in southern Germany) in the 1960s. We went the scenic route (London/Dover/Dunkirk/Ypres/Luxemburg/Strassburg/Black Forest/Stuttgart/Waiblingen), which must have been about 650 miles. The Dover-Dunkirk ferry was a trainferry ship, and there were 16 cars in total on board, with 18 passengers (the two extra passengers were my Mum and Dad!). The ferry left at 8 p.m. and arrived in Dunkirk via the locks at midnight, so it was 1 a.m. by the time we disembarked. We had dinner on the ferry and managed to snatch a couple of hours sleep. The next stop was in a village near Ypres, where we had supper and some beer - it was a Watneys pub! - and breakfast in a village just outside Luxemburg. After that we drove down to the Black Forest, where we stopped for dinner. As it was too late then to get to Waiblingen before the office shut for the evening (they arranged accommodation for us), we stayed the night, and left very early the following morning to finish our journey, arriving in Waiblingen about 9 a.m. Google have got the times very wrong, in my opinion - I don't think they allowed 5 hours for the ferry for a start; they reckoned just over 9 hours for the whole journey!

Other than that, the longest journeys I have ever driven were from home to Annan in southern Scotland (about 350 miles), and from home to Keswick in the Lake District (about 325 miles), and from Waiblingen to Neumarkt bei Salzburg (just over 250 miles).

Nowadays, I can just about manage to drive to my daughter's house (about 110 miles). and even then I usually stop for a coffee half way, especially on the way home.

 

[Cinisajoy]

The longest I've ever driven was when I worked in Waiblingen (near Stuttgart in southern Germany) in the 1960s. We went the scenic route (London/Dover/Dunkirk/Ypres/Luxemburg/Strassburg/Black Forest/Stuttgart/Waiblingen), which must have been about 650 miles. The Dover-Dunkirk ferry was a trainferry ship, and there were 16 cars in total on board, with 18 passengers (the two extra passengers were my Mum and Dad!). The ferry left at 8 p.m. and arrived in Dunkirk via the locks at midnight, so it was 1 a.m. by the time we disembarked. We had dinner on the ferry and managed to snatch a couple of hours sleep. The next stop was in a village near Ypres, where we had supper and some beer - it was a Watneys pub! - and breakfast in a village just outside Luxemburg. After that we drove down to the Black Forest, where we stopped for dinner. As it was too late then to get to Waiblingen before the office shut for the evening (they arranged accommodation for us), we stayed the night, and left very early the following morning to finish our journey, arriving in Waiblingen about 9 a.m. Google have got the times very wrong, in my opinion - I don't think they allowed 5 hours for the ferry for a start; they reckoned just over 9 hours for the whole journey!

Other than that, the longest journeys I have ever driven were from home to Annan in southern Scotland (about 350 miles), and from home to Keswick in the Lake District (about 325 miles), and from Waiblingen to Neumarkt bei Salzburg (just over 250 miles).

Nowadays, I can just about manage to drive to my daughter's house (about 110 miles). and even then I usually stop for a coffee half way, especially on the way home.

If we go farther than about 60 miles, we usually have to stop at about the 50 or 60 mile spot to get rid of coffee. And maybe grab some water.

 

[Elawin]

If we go farther than about 60 miles, we usually have to stop at about the 50 or 60 mile spot to get rid of coffee. And maybe grab some water.

Actually, when I stop on the way up there, I rarely buy a drink nowadays- it's on the way back that I find I have to - and I think that is because I come back late to avoid most of the traffic. The last time I stopped on the way up there was about 18 months ago, when I had the mutt with me.

 

[Yorky]

I think the furthest I've driven was over a week back in 1990. Chester to Hull (ferry to Rotterdam), Rotterdam to Leipzig, Leipzig to Berlin, Berlin to Travemunde (north of Lubeck) then to Amsterdam via Lingen. 9 days.