OTish: Paging the DrivingAboutInEuropeisti

Thanks for your encouragement. I've been warned that the fines are a
bit draconian and that the mere idea of drink driving will lead to
jail but we're hoping that when we go it'll be too cold for plod to
leave the local donut emporium.

 

Driving in Naples is like standing on the central reservation on the
M25 in rush hour in your underpants.

Or something.

Paul.

 

No plans AFAIAA. We get back from hols the weekend prior to that (3/4
July) so we should be around enjoying (hopefully) the summer weather.

 

Well quite. Who wants to observe their speed to a tolerance of 5kph FFS.
I wonder how they came to such a grim state of affairs.

 

Hopefully it wasn't the wise heads of a coalition government.

 

Just a friendly warning, my driving/riding habits haven't changed over
the years, I usually make stately progress at the posted limit + vat,
odds of getting caught is somewhere between small and remote. In my
more than forty five years of playing around on or in motorized
vehicles I've
been caught three/four times, and never on a motorcycle.

An added point if you are riding a motorcycle, speed cameras do not
"see" motorcycles, because in Norway the rule is that a picture of an
offender has to show both the offenders face and the licence plate of
the vehicle at the same time. There are only cameras facing the
traffic, no pictures to be taken from the rear.

In winter local plod usually ignores motorcycles, because (in their
view) anyone insane enough to ride in the cold deserves being out there
alone. (Also partly because motorcycle fatalities usually don't happen
in winter.)

Plod will more likely be tending office or off in the forest to find
people playing around on snowmobiles.

 

:
different bits clipped
:

We've always gone Calais, Reims, St Dizier, Chaumont, Dijon/Besancon,
Lausanne, Martigny, Brig, Domodossola, then a bash across the autostrada to
Venice. Quite nice, especially through Switzerland and the first bit of
Italy; autostrada not so nice (four lanes of crazy Italians all doing 90mph
with ten feet between bumpers).

For what it's worth.

 

That was my initial route thought (we are driving to Umbria in August)
but have been informed it is best [1] to head for Germany and down
towards Strasbourg and Zurich and on to the Mont Blanc tunnel.

To the Italiam border from Calais - what's the driving time approx and
what proportion is autoroute?

[1] avoiding tolls

 

I have no defence.

 

AOL

 

Naples - a city populated by 1 million anarchists.

 

not tried it.

I can confirm that Milan is a mad place to try and ride a bike around,
though.

 

Naples makes Milan look like a town in the Cotswolds.

 

Now that sounds like a bloody wonderful holiday. Might have to tap up
the old man to borrow his TR4A for a nice trip somewhere next year...

I'm not sure Simon bought the Jag with inevitable service costs in
mind.

I think it was Ogden who said of fuel costs, etc, that he just puts
_some_ petrol in and forgets about it. I am much the same - bung some
in, don't get upset about a few extra pence per litre here or there.
Same goes for service and tyres, etc. You can't do anything about the
cost of things, so get them done and go ride/drive the damn thing!

Obviously a bit different if you're one of these 100 mile/day cage
commuters on a budget...

 

I've been a pedestrian in Naples, and I don't remember it being that
bad, no worse even than the likes of Florence.

Actually, the silliest place in Italy I've tried to operate a motor
vehicle (on a bike, and car on seperate occasions) was Sienna, because
in theory almost all of it is a "pedestrian zone" but that simple fact
(or law, if you have to be a pedant) doesn't stop anyone driving
through it, but the peds act as if the traffic doesn't exist. Each
time I was there I saw multiple ped/vehicle interfaces.

If you've never seen a hunchbacked black-dressed old crone knocked
over by a wrap-around-sunglasses-wearing mod-type on a lambretta,
you've not lived: the resulting argument is hilarious, even if (or
perhaps because) you don't speak italian.


But digressing slightly, the worst driving I've ever seen anywhere was
in Brussels.