Drive / Eat / Sleep - Repeat

Sunday 25 August 2024

This is the sight we woke up to on our first morning in Turkey. We’d arrived at this spot on the northern coast of the Gallipoli peninsula in complete darkness. Having driven past quite a few local tourists wild camping in caravans, vans and cars we reckoned we’d be safe here. 

Despite setting off at 6am from Slavonski Brod in Croatia for the long day ahead, we had underestimated the time it would take to get through 4 border crossings (queuing up in the non-EU passport lanes, customs checks and, for Turkey, purchasing vehicle insurance). I had worked on us arriving at our destination around 8pm - but it was just after 10pm when we finally parked up on the beach at Bolayir. Outside it was still over 30 degrees but the lovely sea breeze made it feel very comfortable. We popped the top, had a late snack and went to bed listening to the waves lap on the beach, no street lights, no traffic, no noise - just bliss.

In preparation for this trip I’d done plenty of research, best route, cost of fuel in each country, cost of tolls and/or vignettes and we had our Plan A all ‘mapped’ out. Not sure what plan we ended up on with road work delays, accidents closing motorways and border queuing but overall it still took the planned 5 days & we roughly took the original route.

If we’re on a mission to get straight to our destination then we generally suck up the costs and pay to drive on the fastest roads. We’re not usually paying for overnight stops or restaurant meals and drinks so it kind of evens out. If you’re interested the numbers for our trip from Shrewsbury - Mumcular (near Bodrum) are as follows:

2483 miles (door to door)

5 days

4 overnight stops (all free)

£94 one way ferry (Dover-Calais)

£12 two breakfasts (other food/drink in van)

£232 fuel (average ~ 42mpg)

£31 vignettes (Austria, Slovenia & Bulgaria)

£39 tolls (Croatia & Serbia)

£33 bridges & tunnels (Austria & Turkey)

£62 Turkish Vehicle Insurance (min 3 month)

£503 Approx total (20p per mile)

We’ve encountered many different systems for paying for road use on the trip out. Some countries are ‘free’ (for us transiting through they are anyway) like Belgium and Germany (famously very fast too!). For others you purchase a vignette which covers you to drive on their roads for a specified cost per time period. Then there’s the mystery charging on toll roads with booths - it’s hard to know how much the journey will cost us depending on the distance and what vehicle category each country class us as! 

In the future the UK may end up with a system which replaces the current Vehicle Excise Duty (VED) car tax system to plug a gap in Government funds. It will be interesting to see which of the possible systems they might decide to implement or whether it will be a flat pay-per-mile. UK diesel prices (which has a high level of fuel duty) are also more expensive than most of Europe (in Bulgaria we paid £1.04 a litre and in Turkey £0.93).

That last bit is all a bit dry and dull isn’t it so I’ll leave you with a photo of this ubiquitous Austrian road sign which always made us giggle!!