We’ve known for some time that we wanted to do our first big trip down to Italy. Paul has been there years ago but I never have, and based on the fact that everyone you meet says ‘oh yes, it’s fabulous and you must go to x, y and z’ we felt this was a definite destination.

But how far is it and how long will it take? Armed with our shiny new European road atlas and Google Maps we plotted a route that took us down through France, across to Venice via Switzerland, and then around the whole coast of Italy and back up (including a detour to Sicily).

How far? – 4717 miles and 99 hours and 9 minutes of driving – wow!

We have 8 weeks so some decisions will need to be made as to where we go, as we want to see Italy properly and don’t want to spend all our time driving – suggestions please via the ‘contact us’ page…….