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What is your idea of a long journey? An hour, three hours, eight hours, 50 miles, 200 miles, 500 miles?
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I think of anything over about 200 is a long journey in the sense that I'll think about stops and timings before setting off. Max I'd contemplate, and then only with a second or even a third driver, would be around 13/14 hours.
In real life in the UK longest is off the Western Isles ferry at Uig or Ullapool home to Northampton. Proabaly 600 mile with 200 to cover before seeing a motorway - 12hrs. On the autoroute in France we've pusghed as far as Valence from an 07:00 start in Calais. Fourteen hours and around 700 miles, couldn't have gone much further.
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If we're talking about the UK in isolation then travelling North to South or vice versa you can cover really quite long distances reasonably effortlessly if you time it right. Going East to West or the reverse is much harder and while the distances can be shorter the journeys can seem and be much longer.
Vast mleages can be achieved comfortably in continental Europe due to lower traffic densities in the main so what would be a hard fought 200 miles going across Britain would be a doddle in parts of France.
A long day is when you get to listen to Alex Lester twice in the same round trip...
Last edited by: Humph D'Bout on Fri 23 Sep 11 at 13:56
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For me, a long journey would be one where you wouldn't want to drive back on the same day.
Anything under 8 or 9 hours is no more effort than a working day. As Humph says, quite a large mileage can be covered in that time if you do it right :)
With my family all living 100 miles away, the kids and I can do 250 miles on a Sunday without considering it too much.
Last edited by: Dave_TDCi on Fri 23 Sep 11 at 14:16
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Bourg St Maurice-Zurich-Calais-ferry-Dover-London was a long journey (during the winter, so quite a lot of snow about on the first leg). Took me about 20 hours though I did have some help with the driving on the first leg and a good snooze on the boat.
I reckon after work London to Dundee is a very long way too.
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I consider anything over 250 miles or 4 hours is long journey.
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For me it's more about the time rather than the distance. Anything over 8 hours is above normal for me so I'd call that a 'long' journey.
Having said that, if the kids are in the car anything above 2 hours seems like a long journey!!!
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>> I consider anything over 250 miles or 4 hours is long journey.
>>
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Now I am retired that is about it for me too, I don't drive for more than six hours in a day (preferably four), I don't have to. If a journey takes an extra day or two it is not a problem. You can still cover a lot of distance in that time, old doesn't mean slow!
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I wouldn't want go far in a C'arp either...
:-)
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>> I wouldn't want go far in a C'arp either...
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>> :-)
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Don't knock it until you have tried it. :-P
At least it isn't a daddy's van :)
Last edited by: Old Navy on Fri 23 Sep 11 at 18:42
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I'm sure it's lovely...
:-)
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...I reckon after work London to Dundee is a very long way too...
London to Dundee is a long way before or after anything.
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Lets have a little side bet on what Rattle thinks as a long journey?
Evens on 15 miles?
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>> Lets have a little side bet on what Rattle thinks as a long journey?
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>> Evens on 15 miles?
>>
Where's the Grin smiley?
My long stuff - 1300kms in 13 hrs. Including stops. And starting back < 24 hrs later. three drivers.
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i would think over 8 would be long journey and about the time i'd think of arranging a decent meal and a ten mins walk around before restarting for another few hrs
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Anything over about three hours for me, although I agree with the above it depend a bit on the type of road and how busy it is.
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Actually I should qualify my earlier comments. Depends on what you are driving too. That wretched Espace I had ( on the occasions it kept going for more than 3 hours ) put my back into kinks. It was like trying to drive while sitting on a bar stool fixed to a spring. Don't like sitty uppy vehicles of any description for a long run. Much better for me anyway to be in a lower slung car with plenty of thigh support. Seat squabs are critical and if too short you get aches.
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Just driven up from Antibes to Bourges - smidge under 500 miles in 8.5 hours with 3 x 20 minute stops. Amazing scenery through Provence, Auvergne made it interesting and perhaps less tiring than it might have been but wouldn't have wanted to do any more. Not as easy as I thought it would be as the roads were much busier than I'd like and 2 lanes means you're constantly overtaking and going back to the inside lane and then despite best efforts to anticipate traffic flow getting stuck in the inside lane making it quite hard work. 300 miles tomorrow and 350 on Monday on less busy roads (M25 excluded!) will be a breeze.
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My most recent long journey was by motor-bike from Le Touquet de Paris home last summer - 633 km according to Google - with the ferry crossing it took 9 hours - I felt fine when I got home and could have done it the next day again - more credit to the bike than me, perfectly suited to that trip.
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I suppose riding a motorbike you feel more alert,driving a car can make you feel sleepy with not enough stops.
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Now i am middle aged anything over 6 hours these days i class as a long journey.
Have done Rochester to Brockenhurst in the New Forest and back today to take some urgent documents to my parents who are on holiday there. Left home at 0800, 260 mile round trip, traffic was light both ways even around Clackets and at J12 for the M3 on the 25 which is rare.
Pug 207 Auto returned 43mpg doing 80mph most of the way. I couldn't help thinking how a journey like that in a supermini sized car would have been hell not so many years ago, but the 207 is smooth and quiet with good suportive seats.
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>> Seat squabs are critical and if too short
>> you get aches.
Couldn't agree more. The sports seats on my BMW were great with their pull out front section, perfect for longer legs. The Avensis on the other hand is built for long distances in terms of refinement, but the seats have squabs that are too short. Can't drive it for more than 2 hours without getting numb and needing to stretch the legs, but I could sit in the BMW for for a ten hour drive from Essex to Fort William apart from small breaks. Although if I drive to Scotland these days I stay in a B&B 'oop north' halfway up and drive the rest of the way the next morning. Much less tiring and more enjoyable.
I still havn't experienced the pleasure of a Volvo seat, but give it time...
How long a journey feels depends on your mood, the traffic conditions, the weather, and the standard of other drivers around you. It's a real pleasure to be driving in the company of swift, confident, but safe drivers and makes the journey much easier.
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I've been driving an eggbox ( Lancia Miura ) with a 1.3 diesel engine around northern Italy for the past short week. All those journeys felt quite long. Pitiful thing had a stupid device on the steering. Took me two days to realise why I was changing lanes like Mr Bean. There's a "city" mode switch hidden on the dash which had been left in the "on" position. Effect at motorway speeds was sphincter twitching to say the least.
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I was just thinking about the extending squabs, the X1 has the "Sport Seat" option and consequently the extending squab. Brilliant.
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All very well but I'm still not sure about those chrome side thingies. Bit WAGish perhaps for a man of a certain age...
:-)
Last edited by: Humph D'Bout on Fri 23 Sep 11 at 17:36
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I've ripped them off now.
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Probably for the best. Perhaps you could make a garden ornament out of them?
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I have an American friend who takes great delight in ribbing me about the British conception of long journeys!
She calls it "Small Country - long way syndrome", just because a journey of 300 miles will almost take us from one end of the country to the other, we see it as long distance. Her husband commutes daily from New Mexico (home) to Las Vegas (work) every morning and evening - 250 miles each way! They will also think nothing of doing a drive of several thousand miles, over the course of a couple of days!
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Has he got a Nectar card?
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That would be 10 hours on the road, so if he's doing 8 hours work that's 18 hours a day - leaving 6 hours for sleep etc....
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...and assuming he's doing it 5 days a week x 48 weeks of the year ( shouldn't think he'd be up for much driving at weekends would you? ) he's doing 120,000 a year.
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>>Her husband commutes daily from New Mexico (home) to Las
>> Vegas (work) every morning and evening - 250 miles each way!
sorry devonite, I find this hard to believe. at 100mph average, 5 hrs in the car out of every 24? with the US limits?
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Apparently it takes him 2 - 3 hrs depending on traffic, very few sheriffs about once out of towns so can "get a head of steam up in places"
slightly exaggerated the distance tho! 114. odd miles each way!! nearly 250!! daily oops!
Corrales NM - Las Vegas NM (not the one you were thinking of?)
Last edited by: devonite on Sat 24 Sep 11 at 02:10
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Did someone mention Volvo seats? Well, sorry if this disillusions you but, good as they are, I can't imagine wanting to sit in anything for ten hours at a stretch. That said, I do still prefer mine to anything else I've driven.
Their best trick is that the squab has not one height adjuster but two: one for'ard and one aft. (Arrr!) So a long-femured driver like me can set the front edge high for maximum support, while a shortie can lower it to avoid cutting off the circulation. (With manual adjusters like mine it's a bit awkward to get enough weight off the seat for the springs to move it upward, and definitely not to be attempted on the move; perhaps a point in favour of electrics.)
Lesser seats (Toyota, I'm talking to you) adjust only at the back edge, which leaves me feeling the seat is trying tip me out.
More important is that the backrests are big enough to support up to the shoulders. I'd probably never even have tried a Volvo back in 2002 but for the Passat's awful, short-backed seats that left my neck and shoulders unsupported and aching. (No LW radio for TMS either, another long-journey essential. Curious when Audis and Skodas of the period both had LW.)
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Once did on across Europe blast did 8 hours in the drivers seat of a 405 with 190k+ on the clock still spot on, the comfeist car I've driven.
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Handled too those 405s. I had one as a hire car at a time when my daily driver was a Mk2 Golf GTi 16v. The Pug was at least as nimble. Interior made of cream cheese though.
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I did a round trip to Bude today = 100 miles, that was enough for me these days,
Once did London & back in one day - that was too much.
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Put about 100 miles on a 'test' car today - Hyundai Elantra.
I thought I'd try a different route to my normal test route - mistake! 25 miles of potholes and road undulations! Could be a place to try out AWDs and 4x4s, but not one for road cars. I'll learn from my fail!
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Longest trip that I can remember was last year on my trusty Yamaha Fazer.
Started off in the morning in Dijon, France with the intention of finding somewhere to stay near Calais for the night. Got to Calais and we decided to catch an early ferry and then rode home to West Yorkshire.
Taking the route that we did, it was a little over 700 miles in one hit. The worst bit was riding from Dover up the country in the dark with drizzly rain until past London.
Was absolute bliss when my head hit the pillow !
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The Fiat 500, Leaping from loosely connected concrete slab to loosely connected slab that passes for Autostradi here in Sicily, for 180 Miles seemed like quite a long way to me
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The longest road journey I have been on is Sydney to Perth, by (not so) luxury coach. Leaving late Friday afternoon, arriving early Monday morning, with hugely swollen ankles.
For the return journey I caught the 'red eye special', full of loud drunken Antipodeans.
When I was 18yo I drove from Bradford to Skye in my trusty sky blue Polo, RWX 566R on Boxing Day. I followed the snow plough through Glencoe and just managed to make the second, and last, ferry from the Kyle in order to join friends camping near the Sligachan Hotel. Not a huge distance by todays standards, but in a 900cc car, with awful conditions over Rannoch, it was an epic journey at the time. Nowadays I don't bat an eyelid driving down to the Dolomites for a ski trip.
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Fate has intervened - at 830 last night I got a call that involved a 500 mile dash to France to rescue a mate - we were en-route by 1.00 having provisioned the x1 - crossed 5 hours later to France as I'm writing this just finished driving and am knackered !
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Your mate is very lucky to have a mate like you :)
PS the longest I've driven is probably Caernarfon to Benllech or perhaps Sarf Manchestoh to Warrington.
Longest journey by road would have been Manchester to Paris, but that was in a coach. Longest in a car is possibly Cockermouth or Porthmadog.
Last edited by: RattleandSmoke on Sat 24 Sep 11 at 18:30
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When I was much younger, in another life and before agoraphobia set in, I drove from S.London to South of Barcelona in two days which I suppose was about 800 to 900 miles.
There were dual carriageways then, that I remember and I stopped o'night in Limoges but the second day was long and did not get to Comaruga until nearly midnight. I'd been driving an open topped Austin Healey Sprite and boy, was I knackered.
We were so late that we could not get the keys to our villa until the next day and so found beds in an hotel near the railway.
I have looked at Google maps at Comaruga today and it looks so much more develped than it was in the '60s!
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Hey Rob, anything I//we /any of us can do to help or are you sorted?
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Back in the 80,s when i worked for a London courier co, started at 08.00. 10 hours around the West End (had a few breaks parked up) at 18.00 Portman Sq called for a job on the radio and ended up with a parcel that had to be in Aberdeen by 10.00 am the next morning.
Clapped out Renault Extra diesel max speed with the wind behind about 65 mph.
Now that was a marathon.
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One parcel? My god the delivery charge must have been a fortune!
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>> One parcel? My god the delivery charge must have been a fortune!
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If i remember it was about 5 parcels from one of the oil companys (computers) going to there Aberdeen depot. They did not trust sending it by Red Star ( memorys) as far to fragile.
That one job paid me about £350, less diesel, which back then was serious wonga, God knows what the oil companys bill was.
Great fun, the things we did in our yoof.
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>> Great fun, the things we did in our yoof.
My record was 3x Bedford to Heathrow jobs in one working day, as well as a few shorter runs around town in between, plus morning and afternoon school contracts - then a parcel to Preston in the evening. I covered 987 miles inside 24 hours, 4am one day to 4am the next.
The office didn't want to give me the Preston job because the other drivers were getting jealous of how much I'd already made that day... but because it was a Friday night (lucrative around town) not one of them would do it!!
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because the other drivers were
>> getting jealous of how much I'd already made that day...
That covers much of the UK's transport world and why it's never been as good as it should have been, drivers end up squabbling amongst themselves for the pettiest of reasons.
Divide and rule wins.
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Non-stop? I drove from Norwich to Edinburgh, 379 miles, completely watertight and without once stopping the engine or getting out of the car. I was incredibly lucky with traffic lights and other holdups. That was in the smaller engined of the two MG roadsters of the time but I must have driven down top the last pint of fuel. I have done Poole to Peebles, 405 miles but with two stops.
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Many years ago (1978 I think) i shared the driving with a colleague for an overnight run from Chiswick via dover & calais to Copenhagen. We took just under 12 hours for just over 900 miles IIRC, stopping only to change drivers, in a Fiat 131 estate to collect some newly released manuals for work.
Was also my first time over 100mph, on a German Autobahn in the dark.
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>> Non-stop? I drove from Norwich to Edinburgh, 379 miles, completely watertight and without once
>> stopping the engine or getting out of the car
I managed 390 miles non-stop in a Maestro van once (Shefford, off j13 of M1, to the first roundabout on the A80 at Stirling). I got over the Scottish border having not dropped below 65mph since joining the M1, so I thought I'd keep going at cruising speed for as long as I could. I was squirming a bit from Glasgow onwards though ;)
Last edited by: Dave_TDCi on Mon 26 Sep 11 at 17:49
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I cringe at these marathon journey stories.
It's a cardinal sin for a lorry driver to drive tired and the amount of driving time is strictly limited to 9 hours with at least a 45 minute break after 4.5 hours to ensure that doesn't happen.
I fail to see how a tired car driver is any less dangerous and I think, siting the Selby car/train accident, the courts agree with me.
What do the forum members think?
Pat
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So do I, If you want to fall asleep and commit suicide that is your choice, unfortunately you may take out a few people who would be victims of your stupidity.
Last edited by: Old Navy on Mon 26 Sep 11 at 18:38
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Agreed. It is common sense for even the professionals to limit their driving. It is even more imperative for amateurs.
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Fully agree, Pat.
I would normally only do 2-2 1/2 hours before I stop for a break, might consider 3 hours if that's the total journey time.
Apart from the tiredness/concentration issue, I find my bladder tends to govern time between stops these days!!
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I think my non-stop record is Iffy Towers to banking brother in the West Midlands.
About 200 miles, mostly motorway.
Can't remember how long it took, but it was long enough for me to resolve not to do it again.
Apart from the safety question, I find I'm still driving mentally for some time after my arrival, so any time saved is effectively lost.
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I agree too - now. But I also recall Mulhouse to Poole, about 600 miles, although with various stops including a ferry. Driving is of course easier in France than here.
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Pat's right about tiredness. My limit was defined by the time from my old house to my mother's house - 135 miles that took typically 150 minutes. Any longer than that and there's a planned break for a leg-stretch and a drink and/or reverse-drink as required. Change of driver too if there's the option.
I vividly remember 600 miles in a day from the Dordogne to Cherbourg before the A20 motorway was completed. We left before dawn and still barely made the 1730 sailing. It wasn't a good end to our holiday and we would plan it very differently today.
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the longest single stints I have done is My place to greenock, 459 miles, 7 hours with two wee and coffee breaks, and My place to Mulhouse, 580 miles, 9 hours but with a break on the chunnel, and a lunch break,.
Both longer than I would prefer,.
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I did about 650 miles in one hit a few years ago. Managed all the way from Dijon to Calais in the blistering Sun, to be met by the most horrendous drizzly rain and spray at Dover.
The rain eventually beat me, I was on the SuperScoot and couldn't see the road signs and lanes properly. Gloves like wash leathers. Stopped at a cousins and blagged a bed......the following day was just as bad.
Ted
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On the way home tomorrow, first leg from Rouen to Calais then an early ferry to Dover ( bargain at 33 quid) and then a leisurly drive M25 clockwise to the M40 and then North - should be able to liberate the dog from Kennels by tea time - full story to be related on Saturday !
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...full story to be related on Saturday !...
Pleased 'it' is working out.
Don't forget to relate the full tale - I'm sure we are all more than curious.
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Back in the '80s, I did UK midlands to the Ruhr with wife and kids. I was the only driver. It rained all the way and was well into night when we arrived. Towards the end of the journey I was sure I'd seen a helicopter land just up ahead, despite regular stops, every hour towards the end.
I partly blamed the yellow headlamp converters (remember them?). I had to replace the wiper mechanism shortly after getting back, it'd worn out!
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Galicia to Tuscany starting 7.00 a.m. (hopefully) tomorrow - 2065 km spread over 3 days
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Driving or ferry lancara ? Doesn't look a bad price for two plus car on the ferry.
Last edited by: gmac on Thu 29 Sep 11 at 12:40
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Longest distance I have driven in Australia was from Sydney to Bathurst (about 200km). Longest round trip on the same day, Sydney to Newcastle (165km each way). The longest distance I have driven in the UK was Aberdeen to Oban and for round trips, Abroath to Galashiels and return in the same day (about 105km each way).
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Long journey? - Bromptonaut
