Planning the route

There are many ways to skin a cat and, apparently, almost as many to get from England to Bulgaria.

When I first started thinking about emigrating there were a couple of decisions which I had to make and (while regular readers of this blog will already be aware of which decision I made) I did for a while weigh up the choice between driving myself and all my stuff over or getting a container and either driving a car, or flying.

MORE choices!

I was inspired with the container idea as one of my best friends was in the process of arranging a move to Australia, and indeed went last year, and the cost for him to do so seemed very reasonable. If it cost that much to get a container from England to Australia, surely it would be cheaper for England to Bulgaria?

Not the case.

So I decided that I would buy a truck (Thomas) and a trailer (no name... oh I'll have to sort that out!) and a roof box (don't be silly) and only take with me that which I could fit in these vehicles. Most of my stuff is whisky, books and records, but I do have a large desk and a hard wood dining table which I want to take.

I think that this decision point could be different if you are moving with a family, or want to take all your furniture and white goods with you but that was never my plan; I'm moving out there to start a new life not to drag my old life along with me...

Once this decision had been made I then had to choose which route I would take. It is here that I have some more advice for you. Lots of people have driven from England to Bulgaria. Lots. And they like to write about it (just like I am) so your best bet is to not rely on everything I am saying (my needs may be different to yours) but just go and talk to people. One of the best places I have found so far on the internet to talk to people about many things in Bulgaria (I have used it to ask about potential towns, and also met Chaz here who has helped me with architects) is MyBulgaria.info. You can easily search on there for multiple threads discussing the various routes and the pros and cons of each route. There are also some excellent facebook groups which you can go onto and I have learned so much from these people. This is my favourite.

The following is merely my thoughts based on the specific circumstances I am in.

The route via Romania

The most popular route by far, and the one which I considered first, is that going through Romania. At about 2000 miles (from my door to the school front door) it is nearly the most  direct route and it allows you to stay always within the limits of the EU. This is useful for passport and insurance purposes. The bad part with going through Romania is the roads are not good quality, and make Bulgarian ones look like super highways. Also, and this is the biggest issue for me, I have heard of too many attempted car-jackings for my comfort. I am going to be bringing my entire life with me and I do not want to lose it, particularly my whisky collection.

For these reasons I have pretty firmly decided against going the Romania route.

If you head north from Calais to Belgium then arch down Belgium,Holland, Germany you will avoid the French tolls, through Germany, Austria, Hungary and follow the western edge of Romania into Bulgaria across the bridge, North of Sofia, motorway from Sofia to Burgess now open exit at Yambol. Roads good all the way even the road south within Romania, the worst road is from entry into Bulgaria south to Sofia. Good luck.
- advice from a facebook post

The route via Italy and Greece

Having discounted the Romania route I was not sure of an alternative but a couple of people, E included, suggested travelling south through Italy and getting the ferry to Greece and then driving up across the new pass and new road which, fingers crossed, will be open by next year. This route has a lot to recommend it, not least the fact that my parents by now had been roped into driving with me and both my mum and I have the same dream; to visit Lake Garda.

This route has been shifted to accommodate a visit to that lovely lake and the idea was to get to Lake Garda one evening and spend the entirety of the next day enjoying that region, and only leave the day after to go on down the the ferry to Greece. The distance for this, including this detour, is about 2300 miles door to door so it is a longer way.

While I have not completely discounted this route yet it is now my second favourite because I looked at prices for ferries and it came to close to EU700 for the 8 hour crossing! Which is a large amount extra to pay just to visit Lake Garda. There is also the consideration of extra pressure on the drive that we will have to be at Brindisi for a particular time to achieve that ferry crossing which, if there were bad traffic or even if we broke down, could really effect our success.

trailers and caravans can be a real pain, impounding is quite possible, you are better off with a van, I know several people who had difficulties as they are supposed to have their own numberplate or at least documents which we do not have, make enquiries before you go with the AA or RAC at least, Also bear in mind that some of the countries enroute are dodgy, we had our motorhome broken into while we were in it asleep in Germany (EAST) and all our paper money stolen at a motorway service area, the thieves are experts! and some foreign police are happy to issue you with silly fines, not helpful at all, just because you are a tourist they aren't friendly. I have been via the overland route and via the Greek route (ferry from Italy) ----nicer not nessesarilly more expensive 12 hour ferry trip saves a lot of miles and can be cheaper than channel crossing
- advice from the same faceboook post

The route via Serbia

The final option which I have open to me (other than some I really don't want to do, including going through Bosnia and Herzegovina) is to drop down through Serbia to avoid Romania and the problems on their roads. The issue with this is Serbia is not part of the EU (the lucky beggars) and so travelling is a little more complicated when you include that on your itinerary. For starters (and this is covered in another blog post so I won't go into detail here) my rabbit Sassy is perfectly fine to transport across all the European countries however Serbia has no agreement to support this. The other thing is going to be how they feel about me transporting my substantial whisky collection through the country and finally I will need to make sure all my insurances are set up correctly for all the vehicles, including the trailer.

This definitely seems to add some complication to the journey but this is all stuff I can consider and arrange before I leave; indeed I am already on with it. The trip is almost exactly the same length as going through Romania (about 40 miles further) and by all accounts the standard of the roads (and driving on the roads) is better than Romania.

At the moment this is my favoured route.

we have driven over about 15 times and have done greece trip long way round and expensive we usually do the france belgium germany austria hungary route more often we use serbia although toll roads time and state of roads make it worthwhile we have done romania a couple of times but prefer serbia we go from newcastle to svilengrad near turkish border
- from the same (yes the same) facebook post

So what now?

As you can see above there are options and I have not finally narrowed them down. The one thing that I have done is bought the tickets for the ferry from Dover -> Calais so the date of my departure is set in stone. Which is very exciting. All the routes require me to get from England to the mainland and actually there was another decision point here; go to Calais or Dunkirk. I had some advice that Dunkirk would be the best idea and you can see logic to that for the routes going through Belgium (Romanian and Serbian routes) however there were two reasons I chose otherwise. First of all, I am still not decided between the Italian and Serbian routes. Secondly, and most tellingly, the ferry times for Calais suited the thoughts I have had for that leg of the journey.

I have a list of phone calls to make to various embassies to ensure I have the correct documentation and insurance and whatever other paperwork and fees they require and these will be done over the coming days. I also have to finally decide on my route and then book any other ferries which may be required.

All of this will be blogged about, I promise.

I'll leave this one here now for the moment.