What’s the Longest Trip You've Ever Taken?

In 1992 I had a six month paid sabbatical from work. We took the boys out of school from Whitsun to the end of August, so much of it was holidays anyway. In those days schools looked a little beyond attendance records and were happy with our proposal. Both boys had projects to do whilst away. We set off from Dover and down through France and Belgium to our first site at Bad Ems in Germany where we stayed a week right on the river. Our next stop was Staufen im Breisgau. We explored the Black Forest and took the train into Freiburg. We then moved into Austria which started a bit of a love affair with that country staying at Natterersee surrounded by mountains for the first time. Then onto Salzburg and Vienna. Then into Italy to Venice and Lake Garda followed by Florence, Sienna and Pisa before moving back into France where we stayed at a couple of sites on the Mediterranean. Next was Spain and a site near Barcelona. The idea was to attend some of the Olympic events but that proved difficult due to lack of ticket availability. We did hear a whisper that we might get a view of the rowing at Lake of Banyoles so we took a drive out. A lovely young lady explained to us, is the most perfect English, that if you turn up on the day there is free space around the the lake but away from the official stands. We were up very early and arrived at an empty car park, it was somewhat more chaotic when we came to leave! We saw Steve Redgrave win one of his many Olympic Gold Medals so it was worth the trip. We also visited Barcelona. Spain was our turn round point and we started heading north stopping at many places en route before the return journey via Calais and home. It was the longest trip we have undertaken, even to this day. I think we covered about 4000 miles  and I still have the diary I kept with all the costs involve and the then multitude of currencies we had to deal with. 

David 

Edit:- I thought I would add that the majority of the sites were booked through what used to be called the Club's Advance Booking Service. That might seem strange these days when we have things like  ACSI but back then, not only were we pretty inexperienced every country had its own currency prior to the Euro. Booking through the Club allowed us to pay in Sterling and removed the complication of paying for each site individually. I have also added a photo of the route we took.

When I retired in 2007, we went to North Cape, via Holland, Germany, Sweden, Finland, and finally into Norway.

On our way back we came down the Norwegian coast, visited relatives, a detour to Lofoten, spent a few weeks with my family near Bodo,  continued south down the coast, saw more relatives, right to the most southern part, then headed inland and up to Oslo, to even more relatives.

Then south into Sweden, ferry to Germany, and back to our homeward ferry  via  Berlin, other areas of Germany, and Holland.   About 3 months in all, and quite a few thousand miles.

We have done many memorable trips in our 44 years of owning a leisure vehicle. Our first caravan was an Eccles Topaz, it was a 3 come 4 berth with a canvas hammock. Second hand of course. We bought to explore southern England as at that time we lived in Aborfield. Shortly after buying it we took it to the New Forest for Whit weekend. Our friends lived on the Isle of White so we had a day out to see them. 

Just 2 months later we were posted back to Germany to Detmold. We ventured to Denmark to visit Legoland. The following summer saw us in Italy after spending some time in Bavaria and Austria.

While living in Germany we used to get away as often as we could but summer was always 3 weeks either in Italy or Spain. The boys loved camping and one they were old enough would prefer to sleep outside the caravan in a small tent.

Now that we are retired and have no constraints on our time we still travel to Spain, Portugal, France and many other European countries. These days it's no longer 2 long days drive to get there, more like 2 weeks or even longer.

The longest trip we have done so far was just over 12 weeks, 11 weeks of that abroad and the rest in the UK making our way to the port and back. 

We took the tunnel from Folkestone, drove across the north of France to the Alsace, ventured into Germany for some shopping then drove down the east of France along the Alps. Down to Provence then the med, along the foothills on the French side of the Pyrenees. Visited a few places like Cap Breton and Saint Jean de Luz. 

Next was the north coast of Spain, we intended to go all the way along but the terrible weather defeated us. We turned back and made for Burgos. After several days we were back on the med again where we enjoyed fantastic weather. We made it as far Murcia where we stayed 10 days before turning round working our way back up the med coast,then up through France back to Calais.

Since then we have successfully visited the Pico's and driven all the way across the north coast of Spain, down into Portugal and back into Spain along the Algarve. 

Our longest trip was 4,600 MLS.

There are still so many places to visit, I just hope we continue to be able to do this for as long as we can.

Longest trip we have done was in summer 2014. We took the van on the ferry to Bilbao and then spent an excellent 6 weeks travelling back up through France staying in the Pyrenees for a week then a few days in Bordeaux are then Navarre then a week in Brittany and finally a week in Normandy before coming back to the UK and spent a week making our way back from Portsmouth to home. Excellent trip and we had lovely weather the whole time. Not taken the van abroad since but not ruling out doing it again