This summer we are planning to go away for a family holiday to Croatia. We are staying on a campsite with two other families with similar age children to our eldest two. We are staying at a beachside campsite close to the UNESCO World Heritage site of Trogir. Our friends are flying but we have decided to drive and make an adventure of the journey there and back home.

https://amadriaparkcamping.com/en/about-trogir/

We’ve booked the accommodation direct with the campsite (although they do have Eurocamp and other company pitches on site).

• Why a Road Trip?
• Planning a Family Road Trip
• Outward Journey
• Tips for Family Road Trip Planning
• Next Steps

Why a Road Trip?

We have wanted to holiday in Croatia for about the past five years but logistically we considered it too far to drive and too expensive to fly with a family of six.

Our eldest daughter will be 17 in the summer and this may be the last family summer holiday that we all go on together. So Susie suggested that we do something really special that all the kids will remember for the rest of their lives (hopefully with fondness).

We love to visit new places and there are so many amazing destinations around Europe that we would just not get to visit on a regular fortnight break or package holiday. This road trip gives us an opportunity to go to attractions, cities and countries that we have always wanted to visit but never had the chance to before.

As well as a lot of driving and sight-seeing, we also have the benefit of a beach holiday with great friends to look forward to, as we make our way through central Europe.

Susie and I work hard but we also love going on holiday and love looking forward to holidays that we have booked months in advance. Planning this epic trip over several months is all part of the excitement. We want the children to be a part of this too and to be well travelled with an open-minded view of other countries, people, culture, giving them a sense of adventure for when they plan their own trips in the future.

Planning a Family Road Trip

I won’t say we’re planning this with military precision, but it does involve large European road maps spread out on the kitchen table, stickers, google maps, YouTube videos and a detailed ‘live’ spreadsheet, recording dates, destinations, travel time, distance and costs!

We initially started talking about a road trip when we got back from Lake Garda last July and have been developing the idea ever since. The biggest obstacle to start with was that I’m only entitled to take a maximum of two weeks off work at any one time. With Susie working term time only in the education sector this was not an issue for her.

I broached the issue with my line manager in September armed with the government policy of unpaid parental leave which entitles parents to up to 18 weeks of unpaid leave for each child with a maximum of 4 weeks unpaid leave in any one year (per child) – https://www.gov.uk/parental-leave/entitlement

Luckily, I have a very supportive employer and after negotiating the length of time to be taken as annual leave and parental leave I was delighted to be granted my request of three and a half week’s leave in the summer, with only a small proportion being unpaid.

After confirming dates with our friends for when and where we were going to meet up in Croatia we booked the campsite accommodation and that gave us the anchor point of the Road Trip. We have given ourselves ten days to get there and eight to drive back home.

To choose where we are going to stop on the way we first had to look at the map and get an idea of the rough route that we would be taking. We then looked along the route at countries, cities and other attractions that we might like to visit.

Our first stop was an easy choice – Efteling in Holland – as we’d booked to go to Holland in Easter 2020 including a trip to the Efteling theme park, a trip which was subsequently cancelled due to the Covid Pandemic. We’d been really looking forward to that trip and want to visit the fairy tale themed attraction before the kids get too old to appreciate it.

https://www.efteling.com/en/park

Planning the rest of the journey we’re following a few loose rules, including trying to limit the time driving each day to no more than 5 hours. This might seem like a long journey but we would usually drive about 14 hours in a single day to get to the west coast of France or two full days of 12-14 hours driving to get to Lake Garda in Italy which we’ve done three times.

As well as Efteling we really want to take the opportunity to visit Prague, Bratislava, Vienna and Budapest on the way, even though this will result in us travelling much further east than the campsite in Croatia. Luckily these four capital cities are relatively close to each other geographically which will reduce the journey time between them.

Road Trip Itenerary

The Outbound Journey

Our itinerary includes the following destinations:

• Overnight ferry from Harwich to the Hook of Holland
• 1 night 2 days at Efteling Theme Park, Holland
• 1 night stay on a farm in a converted stable in Germany close to Dortmund
• 1 night stay in a village close to UNESCO World Heritage city Bamburg, Germany
• 2 nights stay in Prague
• 2 nights stay in Bratislava
• 2 nights stay in Miskolc Hungary
• 1 night stay in Zagreb, Croatia
• 7 nights stay on the beach at campsite in Trogir

The outward journey is working out at about 3,200km and 35 hours travel time, including the 12 hour overnight ferry.

Homebound Journey

We’ve now finalised our route for the drive home. After leaving the camp site in Trogir we’re heading for –

• 2 nights in Slovenia visiting Ljubljana and Lake Bled
• 1 night in the Austrian Alps close to Castle Neuschwanstein across the border in Germany
• 2 nights in Heidelberg Germany
• 2 nights in Aÿ-Champagne and a tour of a champagne vineyard

We’ve booked to catch the Channel Tunnel from Calais on our last day travelling back to Leicester.

Tips for Planning a Family Road Trip

We’re still in the process of planning the 8 day homeward bound portion of the trip with the route, accommodation, attractions, and crossing back to the UK still to be finalised. Some ideas for planning independent holidays by car that we’ve found useful include the following:

• Get the whole family involved in planning.
• Use destinations that you really want to visit as anchor points on your trip.
• Research the areas that you intend to stay before booking.
• Be flexible.
• Have a budget for the whole trip.
• Use a holiday notebook or create a spreadsheet to keep track of your bookings, ideas and notes.
• Get inspiration from travel shows, friends, travel blogs etc.

Get the whole family involved in planning the route and where you want to visit. This will help to get everyone excited for the trip and feel that it is a real family endeavour.

Have a destination, or destinations, in mind that you really want to visit and uses these as anchor points for the rest of the journey.

Research the places that you are travelling through and add any stops that look interesting to visit. For example, no one had any particular ideas about places in Germany that we wanted to visit so we decided to look for accommodation near Nuremburg which is on the route. After some research into accommodation in the local area we chose instead to stay near the UNESCO World Heritage city of Bamburg (to the north of Nuremburg) which, having watched a few YouTube travel vlogs about, we now really want to visit.

Get inspiration from travel programmes, friends, travel blogs, etc. I really wanted to visit the large outdoor thermal spa Szechenyi Bath in Budapest after watching an episode of Celebrity Race Across The World on the BBC. Harry Judd and his mother visit the spa and it looked amazing. However, when I researched the website and reviews it turns out that it isn’t recommended for children under 16 years old.

Researching other thermal spas in Hungary we’ve found what looks like an even better one, in the city of Miskolc which is open to children. After some further YouTube videos we’ve decided to spend two nights here instead of Budapest and use the affordable Miskolc tourist pass which include the thermal spa, public transport, museums and other attractions. https://www.miskolcpass.com/en/miskolc-pass-tourist-cards

Next Steps

Our next steps are to continue planning the homeward journey and as we get closer to July no doubt Susie will produce packing lists for clothes, toys, games and food. We always plan to travel as light as possible but end up being crammed in the car with packing cases and a full roof box. This time we are not planning on taking the roof box at all so will need to be more ruthless.

I’ll update the post as we get closer to the date and finalising the trip. Please share any thoughts on places to visit along our route or any tips for travelling light. You can leave comments below or on the Facebook page.

About us

After the shock of finding out that we were expecting twins in 2015, one of the first things that we realised was that …we’re gonna need a bigger car!

We’re a family of six with two girls and two boys aged 16, 13 and 9 year old twins.

Follow our blog and social media posts for inspiration, ideas, tips and hacks for non-package family holidays and as we prepare for this summer’s adventure.