Road trips: distances, tolls and the day you lose

Most of the road trips described as perfect fail in the same place: the leg between the second and the third day, where the map says three hours and reality is five. A road trip does not break at the stops, it breaks on the legs.

Before looking at stops, you have to close the arithmetic of the route.

Real time, not map time

Map time is straight line time with perfect traffic. A real route needs three things added:

• The compulsory stops: fuel, lunch, tickets. A short stop is twenty minutes; with a proper coffee, forty.
• The legs you cannot drive at night. A mountain pass or a border crossing may have opening hours.
• The error margin, which in an unknown country is not ten per cent: it is twenty.

The practical rule: put twenty per cent between the map time and the time you plan. If a leg comes out at more than six hours, the trip needs two days for it, and you need to see that before booking the accommodation.

Tolls change the budget, not the route

A toll almost never changes where you go, but it does change what you pay and, sometimes, how long you take: some toll roads are faster than the free alternative. When both routes are equally good, take the toll: it is money that buys time.

And watch the tags: some countries charge for the same stretch under different names. A plan that does not account for the exit toll ends up spending budget that was never counted.

Borders

If the trip crosses a border, add the time of the checkpoint. It is not a couple of minutes: it can be an hour, and in high season more. And there is more: fuel changes, insurance changes, and sometimes the rules change.

In a day by day plan, a border crossing should fall on a day with nothing else scheduled ahead of it. If it falls after a full day, that day falls.

Sleeping on the route

The decision of where to sleep changes the trip more than it looks. Two nights in the same place reduces the legs and gives you a day of margin; sleeping everywhere reduces the hurry but multiplies the transfers and the work of packing and unpacking.

The rule: if the total driving of the trip is more than five hours, two nights in one intermediate place usually beats splitting it into three.

What you really need to check

Before closing the route, check four things: the real time of each leg, the tolls, the border opening hours and how much fuel you will need to fill up. With those closed, the stops are chosen by taste, which is how they should be chosen.