Why are road trips so alluring?

[Gavster]

I'm planning a trip to Italy, so have researched the costs of flying and getting a hire car to visit everywhere on my itinerary. Despite that, I'm absolutely obsessed with the idea of driving there, even though it makes absolutely ZERO sense (temporally, financially, energetically or for reliability). I've got an unshakeable desire to drive there instead of flying.

1. It takes wayyy longer to drive there
2. It will be exhausting driving all day for 2+ days
3. It's costs more

Make it make sense.

The only redemption would if I made a YouTube video called "I bought the cheapest Smart car on eBay and drove to Italy for a pizza " and hope it goes viral so that the monetisation pays for the suffering inflicted by driving.

[IanF]

A road trip in a nice GT car or a £500 banger for charity can be fulfilling (in very different ways!), but to drive a Smart to Italy doesn’t fall into either category for me!

[Jobbo]

They don't make sense but that is the fun. And if you do it in a Smart that's more of a challenge so the feeling of accomplishment will be greater.

[Mito Man]

There’s so much more exploration in a road trip. If you fly to Italy you will only experience that part of Italy, drive there and you explore every mile to Italy. Take detours along the way, pass through different cultures. It’s great.

[GG.]

Borrow one of your brother's cars. Don't do it in the Smart. You'll either end up dead or wishing you were dead.

[IanF]

Borrow one of your brother's cars. Don't do it in the Smart. You'll either end up dead or wishing you were dead.

A trip to Italy can only be done in one of SJ’s cars surely?

[dinny_g]

I drove 2500 miles through France and Northern Italy over 3 week with a 9 month old in the back in a Vauxhall Zafira.

one of the best holidays ever - I can't explain it either

[Gavster]

Borrow one of your brother's cars. Don't do it in the Smart. You'll either end up dead or wishing you were dead.

A trip to Italy can only be done in one of SJ’s cars surely?

He offered the dancing donkey already

I drove 2500 miles through France and Northern Italy over 3 week with a 9 month old in the back in a Vauxhall Zafira.

one of the best holidays ever - I can't explain it either

I love that. Maybe it's something to do with the fact it's not as easy as flying? Or a greater sense of freedom driving with the windows down through the countryside? I dunno.

It's like when we drove to the Ukraine border. I decided we had to get there as quickly as possible, so I elected to drive the van all the way through the entire night, until the sun came up the next morning. It utterly destroyed me and meant that none of us got any decent sleep for two days. I was jacked up on espresso, driving a slow, twenty-year-old minibus which had a saggy drivers seat, I took a wrong exit that added at least half an hour onto the journey. I was stopping to make coffee on a camp stove in service stations. However, the view of sunrise over East Germany is permenanetly etched into my life memories bank.

[dinny_g]

We were somewhat constrained by the nipper in that we couldn't do any stint of more than 2 or 3 hours without a break as it's not good for small children to be in a car seat for that long. But we settled into a rhythm with it.

Leave after breakfast - Drive for 3 hours. Stop for lunch for a few hours.
Drive on after lunch - another 3 hours - he'd sleep during this stint. Stop for dinner or for the night. On a few occaisions, we did another stint after dinner but only one or two.

At a constant 75 on the Autoroutes, you can cover 500 odd miles in a day without too much issue

We planned the stages around stops. Tried to avoid the services so would pull off into little villages and find cafe's

We did 3 days in Brantome, 3 in Carcassonne , 3 in Monaco, 3 in Stressa in Italy, a week in St Foy and few days in Reims.

funniest was my other half kneeling on the passenger seat and feeding Mini Dinny, who's still in his seat, a bottle of milk as we drive through the Mont Blanc Tunnel

[Sundayjumper]

Coffee stop

IMG_7270.jpeg (60.23 KiB) Viewed 310 times

[Swervin_Mervin]

It's because it's "travelling" rather than simply getting from A-B, surely?

And then there's the freedom aspect for me - I loathe airports and having to spend any amount of time in them is purely a means to an end, and it's time I'd rather spend doing almost anything else. Even sitting on an autoroute/strada/pista etc is infinitely more enjoyable and less stressful than time spent in an airport.

[Gavster]

They don't make sense but that is the fun. And if you do it in a Smart that's more of a challenge so the feeling of accomplishment will be greater.

That might be why these trips can be so memorable, even when they're awful. Memories are made through experiences, especially ones that are unusual. We've all driven home from work and not been able to remember the journey because its so familiar. Airports are the same. Once you're inside one, virtually all traces of the host country are removed. Conversely, driving through a country gives you a vista of a new place every step of the way, which might be why they're infinitely more memorable.

[Gavster]

funniest was my other half kneeling on the passenger seat and feeding Mini Dinny, who's still in his seat, a bottle of milk as we drive through the Mont Blanc Tunnel

You don't get those kinds of memories on Ryanair

[dinny_g]

I've also done 3 weeks driving around Queensland and New South Wales before we had kids - booked nothing, just rolled into town and found places to stay etc.

I'm 100% with you on the roundtrips. If I make to 65, we're going to take the tax free lump sum of my pension, buy a motorhome in America, rent out our house here to top our the pension and spend retirement driving around America - Summer in the north, winter in the south.

[NGRhodes]

Another lover of road trips, agreed with everything said so far.
For me its the freedom, choose your own adventure and the memories you create.

Often our days out at the weekend are mini road trips, a roughly planned route, stopping at a whim, detouring, getting back far later than planned.

[drcarlos]

Having watched Harry's recent trip to Spain I can see why you might do it but I personally want to do tours around Germany/Austria/Italy and Spain Portugal and I will take ferries for both (Dunkirk and Bilbao respectively), drive and take my time to enjoy it as that's part of the experience for me. Harry is making content so it's a means to an end, plus he's done it all before. Not usre I'd do it in a smart or a borrow Ferrari but can you twist and borrow the Aston or 996?

[DeskJockey]

It is the (perceived) freedom of the road. You going wherever your want, at whatever pace. I love driving holidays and for us it makes financial as well as environmental sense, when we're traveling five up.

Calculated that driving to my dad's instead of flying saves about £3-500 and a tonne of CO2 compared to flying.

[Marv]

If it's just a 3 days slog down expensive Autoroute or congested Autobahns, I'd probably rather take the aeroplane these days, TBH

If it's a gentle meander to Italy, via rural France, or Germany/Switzerland, passing through quant little villages, meeting locals and trying local food and the magnificent scenery slowly folding itself in front of you, as you journey forward each day, then flying wouldn't be a consideration.

[KiwiDave]

It's something I've started doing here more recently, I'd rather driver for 9-10hrs down the longer routes to get between Wellington and Auckland than fly and be door-to-door in 4. I'm especially enjoying it when I'm on my own too... Just the road and seeing things. Fucking great.

Driving around the Northern end of Scotland for a week, and driving UK down through to the Southern tip of Italy over say 2-3 weeks is still on my bucket list too. I've tried to do both a few times in the past 17yrs since emigrating but stuff has got in the way. I will make it happen.

[V8Granite]

That was our family holiday last year, drove overnight to a place just a few minutes bus ride from Venice, a day in Venice, next day drove to Bellagio (stunning) then stayed there 2 days, down into Switzerland, across to Luxembourg etc.

Absolutely fantastic and great memories.

If you’ve not done Venice then do it, Bellagio made Como look like a council estate, Italians are absolutely lively wherever we went and the food, scenery and people just made it for us.

Make it so, it’s not far really and modern cars make it so easy.

Dave!