Hoping to plan my first trip to the Alps this summer. Been debating how to get there. Both flying and driving have their pros and cons. I’m leaning towards driving as I reckon the airport hassle and limited weight restrictions and rental car space would be bit of pain.

For those that have done both options (with bikes) what was the “best” when you factor in costs, travel time, travel ease etc etc

Cheers

IMo driving is much more flexible in terms if what kit you can take and the bike is safer.

It may depend on where you are starting from, I am only 2hrs from Folkestone.

If you are on your own flying is cheaper assuming you don’t rent a car at the other end. If you have 2+ people driving is cheaper.

Where do you live and how long you staying out there?

I prefer to drive for flexibility and only ever drive to the Alps and can get to Alpe duez in a day. Flying anywhere seems to fill up a day anyway once you factor in the messing about.

I have just taken a bike to the US in a cloth bag using polystyrene loft insulation as protection, the bike+bag+tools+helmet weighed 22.6kg. Just below the weight limit.
My clothes fitted in hand luggage. So it cost no extra to take a bike.
A big pain in the arse was the connection busses if it’s busy, so it’s best if possible to leave somebody at the drop off and go sort the car.

If I’m going for 2 weeks or more, I always drive (Austrian Alps). I’m up near Liverpool and it generally takes me about 20 hours, it’s 1000 miles exactly door to door.

I (we) always drive now for our summer holiday (2 weeks). We used to fly but it worked out only marginally quicker, was more expensive (as long as you have 2 or more in the care to share costs) and having the option to take more stuff (spares, workstand, track pump) just works out easier.

Having said that if I was going on a weeks guided bike trip then I’d fly as they’d probably be able to organise transfers and have the spares etc.

Depend on priorities, cost of taking your bike on EJ £70+ I recon you probably put £80+ of wear & tear on brakes tyres suspension etc. this approaches the cost of hiring a bike.
Driving, 3 of us in a Golf estate did Bristol to AdH for the Mega at less than flying, 5 of us in a van did Bristol to Zermatt for a lot less than flying.
Flying – quicker but lots of waiting & security/weight/bike damage issues.
Driving – longer but you can take loads of spares, stop when & where you want.

I prefer driving, you’ll still need a transfer from Geneva if flying and the roads are better than the UK.

I generally enjoy the journey though with a stopover somewhere nice.

Drove from Edinburgh. The way down was… OK. The way back. Never again.

Drive. By far the best for me. (especially in a van)
Flexible, your own time/space/route/stop-offs/passengers.
Take what you want without the worry of it getting lost/damaged.

Flying left me worried about damage to my bike.
I hate airports – queuing, security, forced waiting, shite planes.
The hassle of packing it in the box – unpacking it – packing it again and unpacking it again.
Limited luggage allowance
Sat with the riff raff in the airport/plane.

Driving for me. I flew out this year for the first time in ages as I was going to Crankworx on my own. Way too much faff. Packing and unpacking bikes, weight allowances, transfer costs, hours and hours of wasted airport time. And to top it off, when I got there my very well packed box had popped and my fork had been grinding along the floor. Total nightmare.

Driving, in comparison is blissfully easy. Take everything you need. Spend as long as you like. The roads in France are like silk. Damn, I can’t wait to drive down this year!

I’ve flown and driven. The first few time were by car, from South Wales to places like Gap, Chamonix, and Innsbruk. We used to break the journey somewhere in France, camping overnight. The problem with this is that we had a load of camping gear in the car that we didn’t use for the rest of the trip. Tent, sleeping bags, cooker, coolbox- loads of space and hassle. Plus, in those days we used the N roads, slow and embued with the essence of France. Yeah, right! It took at least two days, sometimes three, dependent upon the final destination. The worst was when it took three days to get to Embrum in a clapped out Fiat Tipo with bikes, kayaks and camping kit. Never again we said.

So flying was next- what a hassle. Packing and rebuilding the bikes takes ages. And the prices! plus the fact that whilst the flight seems relatively short there is all the time lost before and after waiting around in the airport, parking and transfer fees, lack of flexibility…

So we tried driving again, spurred on by family living in Tours/ Poitiers. Pack car. Hit the M4, ferry, Autoroutes. BOOM- arrive in Mother in Law’s place about 11 hours later. A few days with the MiL, then off to Morzine, a long drive, 7- 8 hours, not all on A routes.

I can drive back to Carmarthenshire from Les Gets/ Morzine in about 13 hours in comfort.

So- my advice is to drive- but use the A routes. The tolls are cheaper than B+B. It is quicker, more flexible and allows you more luggage.

Thanks Guys. Sounds like driving is the way to go. I am worried about bike damage via flying, so much rather know that my bike will be safe. Taking spares is also a big plus. I’m 1.5hrs from Calais so could do it in a day (a long day) if catching the early ferry.

As said above very much depends on numbers. Sheffield to the col du telegraph was driven a few years ago in one push. 23 hours total with an hours nap on the Dover-Dunkirk ferry.

Camper and 5 bikes on a rack 2 adults and 2 kids make the drive cost-sensible.

Have also stayed in various formula 1 hotels and Aires over the years to break up the journey.

Top tip – stock up on spares from CRC, then if you dont need them you have 365 days to return them.

Price of spares in Alps resorts are eye watering.

I’ve done both, I prefer to fly despite the drawbacks.

Where you’re going has a bearing too. Morzine area is easy, there’s a shuttle service for not much money, Les Arcs was harder, there are airports fairly close but flights in summer are hard to come by and no scheduled shuttles from Geveva so it’s either a very epensive shuttle (less so if you’re in a group) or a hire car and that’s not gonna be cheap if you need something big enough to get a bike in.

Driving is a slog, it’s not cheap either £500 return per vehicle (from Cardiff at least) tunnel/tolls/fuel and it’s a full day gone.

Morzine you don’t need a car there, it’s fairly central and there’s loads of supermarkets, shops, bars etc – Les Arcs is spread out – if you’re not staying in Borg you’re going to either have to eat out or from. Spar type shop unless you can get into Borg for supplies.

Fly (though I do it all the time now)
Packing bike in evoc bag takes 20 mins if you know what your doing, same to rebuild.
Organise a proper transfer (do you need a car all week in a resort?)
Even better catered like the white room and tools etc on site.
Spares? Depending on what your doing and the state of your kit what do you need?
Book early and look at the back flight rather than easyjet for a more comfortable experience too.

If you are on the South Coast, consider the Newhaven-Dieppe Ferry.

The downside is only two or three sailings a day, so on your return you need to plan to arrive on time.

The upside is rather than 1-2 hours driving to Dover, then a wander around on the train and straight back into the driving seat, you can overnight on the ferry and snooze for 5 hours (I’d recommend a sleeping bag and bagging a place on the floor, rather than the reclining chairs) and then you arrive in Dieppe early in the morning and get a straight drive down to the Alps.

Total journey time from Brighton is about the same, but with the benefit of the rest on the ferry, which made it doable in one day for us.

We’ll be heading down to Verona in June for a weekend with Eddy Merckx.
We’ve allowed 2 days to get there and 3 on the way back as we might go to the seaside on the mouth of the Somme as it’s very pleasant.
We do have a Sanef tag which makes a huge difference on the Autoroute – mostly in reduced arguments and money dropped in unlikely places around the cabin.

Has anyone taken the train from London to Bourg-Saint-Maurice? That could be an option that I hadn’t thought about.

Change in Paris (could be a different station in Summer) I think and Eurostar are iffy about getting your bike bag on the same train as you.

Simplest one for me was always train to Manchester airport, not arriving knackered is great

yacoby – Member
Drove from Edinburgh. The way down was… OK. The way back. Never again.

This ^ Once you get out of the UK, the roads are great.
It’s a real anticlimax returning to the UK just to sit on the M25 for a couple of hours.

asbrooks – Member

yacoby – Member
Drove from Edinburgh. The way down was… OK. The way back. Never again.

This ^ Once you get out of the UK, the roads are great.
It’s a real anticlimax returning to the UK just to sit on the M25 for a couple of hours.

I don’t mind the trip home too much, I’m usually shattered and welcome the chance for a long sit down ha ha.

Plus I get home sick after a couple of days, especially now leaving the family behind, I’m usually fairly excited heading down, but I’m far more excited to get home.

Oh BTW, yeah the road are lovely, smooth, usually quiet, good lane discipline blah blah blah – but they lose their shine after the first, Oh I don’t know – 200 miles.

It’s 550 miles or so from the Port to the Resorts, for me it’s “oooh France, drive on the right, aren’t the roads lovely, oh another toll both, HOW MUCH?” – settle down “oh look, the vast almost flat, emptiness of endless fields”

3 hours later

“oh look, the same endless fields – oh a big silver cock”

3 hours later

“I would happily drive straight into a bridge now to escape the boredom” and just when I start looking for something big and heavy to drive into at 82mph – tunnel BAM massive mountains which seem to sneak up on you, great we’re nearly there!

2 hours later…

ah the final 50km, I’m doing 130km can’t take more than half an hour, but of course at that point, when you’re exhausted, full of service station junk food and irritable – you hit the tightest, twistiest roads you’ve ever driven, you’re on the wrong road of the car to judge the gap between you and rockface / concreate wall / long fall to certain death, and the wrong side of the car to judge the gap between you and the massive tractor or speeding idiot on the other side, if you did it 6 hours earlier it might have been a laugh but now you’d give yourself a 50/50 chance of making it there alive.

2 hours later…

It’s okay lads, I didn’t need the address, they don’t seem to use them in France anyway it’s building name / postcode, oh great the postcode is for the whole town, not the street – don’t worry, how big can Morzine be, and anyway I’ve got a photo of the chalet – there can’t be many that look as unique as this one… oh hang on…

Spot on P-Jay
Much prefer, Hello Mr Smith, how are you today? 3 bags to check? We have you in an aisle sorry it’s so far back. Have a nice trip.

I’ve done it all three ways- plane, train & van (VW Transporter, obvs!). When taking your own kit driving is prob the best, but I had four in the car to share the costs. The journey took one (very long!) day from London, but that was on the ferry so it should be quicker now using the Chunnel.

We took the overnight train which I think only runs in the winter. It’s hard work, you don’t really get any sleep, so your first day out there is a bit of a right-off anyway. Not massively quicker than driving by the time you have done the transfers and everything! Also, as above, I have heard that they are getting increasingly sniffy about luggage.

Flying is def quicker, and in many ways less hassle….until you have to travel with a lot of luggage, which is when it becomes a major ball ache!

P-Jay – Member

Oh BTW, yeah the road are lovely, smooth, usually quiet, good lane discipline blah blah blah – but they lose their shine after the first, Oh I don’t know – 200 miles.

It’s 550 miles or so from the Port to the Resorts, for me it’s “oooh France, drive on the right, aren’t the roads lovely, oh another toll both, HOW MUCH?” – settle down “oh look, the vast almost flat, emptiness of endless fields”

3 hours later

“oh look, the same endless fields – oh a big silver cock”

3 hours later

“I would happily drive straight into a bridge now to escape the boredom” and just when I start looking for something big and heavy to drive into at 82mph – tunnel BAM massive mountains which seem to sneak up on you, great we’re nearly there!

2 hours later…

ah the final 50km, I’m doing 130km can’t take more than half an hour, but of course at that point, when you’re exhausted, full of service station junk food and irritable – you hit the tightest, twistiest roads you’ve ever driven, you’re on the wrong road of the car to judge the gap between you and rockface / concreate wall / long fall to certain death, and the wrong side of the car to judge the gap between you and the massive tractor or speeding idiot on the other side, if you did it 6 hours earlier it might have been a laugh but now you’d give yourself a 50/50 chance of making it there alive.

2 hours later…

It’s okay lads, I didn’t need the address, they don’t seem to use them in France anyway it’s building name / postcode, oh great the postcode is for the whole town, not the street – don’t worry, how big can Morzine be, and anyway I’ve got a photo of the chalet – there can’t be many that look as unique as this one… oh hang on…

Post of the month 🙂

Have done Les Arc with bikes in a mates undergeared revvy French tissue box with wheels with broken AC in August on black friday, also a leggy comfy Volvo estate with cruise control, and the last trip was in my Transit van which gave me crippling shoulder pain.

All preferable to a germ and fart filled tin can at 30,000ft.

It’s not that bad 😉

I did end up ditching 3 inner tubes into the bin at SLC a couple of years back as I thought it was too close to call

Flying gets a lot nicer with the right bike bag (Evoc or similar)… max 20 mins to assemble and disassemble, damage is much less likely, and fairly easy to drag around airports (yay wheels).

Only worth driving if you’re going for a decent stint I would say. Don’t underestimate how ruined you’ll be after 15 hours of piloting your personal tin can…

Rush rush rush, just stopover somewhere have a nice meal
and a bottle of vino. Off you go again in the morning.

(That said I am flying this year)

A family of 5, with 5 bikes, driving is just sooooo much cheaper, even from Scotland.

Drive = £250 of fuel round trip, Tunnel free on Tesco Points, AirBnB super secret chalet past Paris two nights (there and back) at £60, plus we see family on way back up UK.

Fly with bikes = £500, plus excess baggage for bikes @£120-£250, plus hire car big enough to take 5 and 5 bikes £400-£500, plus time wise it saves a couple of hours max.

Fly and hire = £500, hire car £300, (decent) bike hire at £600.

All inclusive – = £350 ea for a week, plus flight…

Drive, use autoroutes, get an autoroute tag.

You can’t fly at night so can gain an extra day riding by travelling overnight. Yes its tough and you can feel like a roadkill badger afterwards, but its more riding.

Flying wastes daylight hours!

I much prefer driving, even in a 40 year old car with no air con and having to shout to hear each other.

Flying back can be a real killer, this is how it usually happens for us:
Get up super early (5/6am) for lift to the airport cos some idiot in your group decided to book a morning flight, despite hosts saying do not book early morning flights. Then you have 8+ hours to kill an Geneva airport, cos they is only one evening flight to your airport, then drive home, for us this works out longer than driving home.

Driving is fine if you can share it. I find myself more tired flying than driving. Driving also gives you more options, stay longer, go over to Italy, etc. You can take as many spares & tools as your car can hold! Very handy if you are not staying at a bike chalet.

We use a tag and usually leave Friday night, get the 12-1am chunnel then get to the Alps around Saturday lunch time. This gives you time to build the bikes, test them and chill ready for Sunday carnage!

I’ve done both numerous times with both MTB and road bikes – separate trips. (Hmm.. let’s see, flown probably four trips and driven probably 10 or 12).

Haven’t read what others have written but for me it’s driving every time. As i live in Surrey it’s a shortish trip to the Chunnel on Friday evening and then a long drive overnight arriving Saturday lunchtime. Takes about 12 and a half hours door to door.

it’s a long time in the car so travel with others to share the driving but for me the pro’s and cons are:

Driving:
– usually cheaper if you can share the cost
– you can bung loads of extra gear int he car. spare tyres, tools, workstands, full facer and open lid, you name it, it gets chucked in
– the beauty and joy of putting your bike on the towbar mounted rack at home and then taking it off the other end without any rebuilding hassle etc are priceless
– you are on an MTB road trip!

downsides to driving are:
– it’s very tiring
– if you drive overnight you miss a nights sleep (obvs is obvs)
– you discover the worst of your mates bad habits
– the year i drove my V70 and discovered the aircon had packed up was miserable (2015 and it was 42 degrees when we arrived)

Flying:
Upsides
– it’s much quicker
– you dont miss a nights sleep
– errr….that’s about it

Downsides
– dismantling and boxing up your bike before you leave, then rebuilding when you arrive then dismantling at the end of the week then rebuilding when you get home is a right royal PITA
– transfer from GVA to resort and then back again is expensive
– you are relying on Easyjet to look after your bike
– if your bike misses the flight and therefore you miss the transfer it’s not actually any quicker than driving as my son discovered last year
– it’s usually more expensive

probably more stuff that I’ve forgotten but that’s the main things.

To address your downside list…
Dismantling and rebuild is literally 20 mins with a proper bag and 3 tools, pedals off 8mm, rotors off 6 bolt t25, bars off 3mm for me (on the topeak rachet) mech maybe. Into bag strap in, zip up and go. Same at the other end.
Dont fly easyjet (others available)
Share transfer
Missed luggage airline delivers at their cost (again why budgets are off the list for me)

If you’re going to drive remember that French radio is shite. I only took 2 cassettes with me and regretted it immensely.

Also rush hour Genoble traffic in 42 degrees, with leather seats the heaters on full to to combat the rising temp gauge of a 20 year old Merc is unpleasant to say the least.

But the autoroutes with cruise control and equal amounts of coffee and Mojito Soleros have to be about the easiest way to cover big distances in a car.

Don’t underestimate how ruined you’ll be after 15 hours of piloting your personal tin can…

This with bells on. My Son / Wife call it drunk-tired.

The worst trip I’ve ever done down was 2013 I think. Unlike every year before I was going down for a family holiday rather than a Lads week so I was stressed before we started because I’d hate to drag them all the way down and for them to hate it.

My Car shit out on us a few days before we were due to leave – so instead of a Diesel Mondeo, we had to take my Wife’s 1.4 petrol Astra, it’s not a bad car, but it’s not exactly massive nor powerful, or quiet, also none of my bike carriers fitted it so I took a cheap Halfords hang-off-the-boot job.

We made it as far as the M25 when my Wife’s bike made a break for freedom, I managed to pull over with the front tyre about 10cm from the road, if it had touched the lot would have been torn off. Much swearing and zip-tying on the hard shoulder later we made the ferry. In the queue another Astra almost the same as my Wife’s shat it’s engine and was towed away, a bad omen if there ever was.

Safely in France and now it was the turn for the number plate to make a break for it. I’d removed it from it usual position and using the cheap halfords mount, mounted it to the back of the carrier – one little shift of the bikes and woosh, it was gone, last seen flipping through the air at 70mph. Do you know how to buy a UK spec number plate in France? No me either, because can’t – we’d spend the rest of the week without one. I really didn’t want to have to explain that to Le Police.

The rest of the motorway part was fairly mundane, but my mind was 1000mph, I picked a visual marker on the carrier and constantly checked that neither the bikes hadn’t shifted nor the straps – every 20-40 seconds, for about 11 hours, when I wasn’t doing that I was scanning the horizon for Le Police (because of the missing plate) whilst part of my mind was busy doing that, the rest was busy doing mental maths, the fuel gauge on the Astra is fairly basic, no trip computer or anything but I’d worked out fairly quickly that at the motorway limit we were doing 25mpg, which is very very bad at that sort of distance, at 70mph is was more like 35mpg which isn’t great, but I could make it work, so we did 70 instead of 82, which doesn’t sound much, but it adds about an hour and half to an already very long day. If you have children you’ll know that they’re not great on long journeys… “are we nearly there” started in the UK, by the time we were half way through France he was bouncing off the walls.

If you’ve driven to Morzine you’ll know that towards the Alpine end you need to drive up a very long, very steep bit of motorway, we’d already spent all day switching between air-con on and air-con off trying to help the economy but now it was VERY off and we were losing speed – we chugged over the top at 40mph… this was scary.

That year I found the Hotel with only one wrong turn, which was nice and despite an early close call with when my Son said Bonjour (something he’s been practicing for months) and was corrected with “bon soir” in a stern, clipped way the hotel was lovely, the sense of relief when I unloaded the bikes and kit and fell on the bed was like a wave hitting me, I strolled across the Super Morzine bridge looking for somewhere to eat and I lost it, I started giggling and stumbling, and crying with laughter – and nothing could stop me, I had tears pouring down my face, dribble on my chin and a wild look in my eyes, my Wife had to apologise to the waiter – everyone assumed I was drunk, high or both, but I was blind sober – hence the phrase in our house “Tired Drunk” my Son loves it, it’s better than “Real Drunk” (I should add my Son has never seen me ‘real drunk’ as I don’t drink much, but he recognises 3 pint Dad as Drunk) because I’ll laugh at anything and will give him anything in the whole wide world if it’s in my power to do so – I bought him a wooden carved Marmot for €50 because he asked, which turned out to be decent value, it’s not worth anything like that, but he still has it and cherishes it 4 years later, the same kid who hasn’t looked at his Xbox One S more than a couple of times since Xmas.

Anyway, yes, not to be underestimated, unless you live in the South East the drive to the Port is a decent drive for most people and that’s barely the kick-off, even in a nice modern car with built in Sat-Nav, climate control, cruise control and the best Thule has to offer so you don’t have to worry about your P&J tumbling down the road at 80mph it’s a mission.