Many of you may already have holiday plans. Are you travelling by plane? Or will you go by car? When you’re travelling by car I have good news for you… because in today’s travelpost I share with you heaps of tips! My husband hates flying, so when we go on a holiday, we always go by car. This definitely has many advantages, but before departure, you have to keep several things in mind:.

1.Check up of your car before you leave

Make an appointment at your garage to have a check-up of your car. Tell them about your travel plans and how many kilometres you intend to travel. They can adapt the check-up to your travel plans!

2.Try to travel as light as possible

Fuel costs a lot of money. The heavier the load, the more fuel your car will need. It might be tempting to just take a whole lot and more just because you’ve got the space to take it with you, but the lighter you travel, the less fuel your car will need!

3.Roofbox

Apparantely your car uses 10% more fuel if you put a roofbox on top of your car. So you better only use a roofbox when needed and once at your destination it might be worth it to remove the roofbox until the day of your departure!

4.Car documents:

• Make sure they’re all in your car.
• Take copies or pictures on your cellphone or camera just in case they might get stolen/lost.
• Make sure the documents are all valid.
• Check your insurance documents as well!
• …

5.Garage/service station at destination

We always check where there is a garage and a service station at our destination just in case… OK, you could easily browse the net for this, but I just like to look it up in advance just to be on the safe side…

6.Traffic rules

Check if there are special traffic rules in the country of your destination as well as the countries you are travelling through:

• speed limits
• safety vests
• snow tyres
• …

7.Spare tire

Check whether your spare tire is ok!

8.Check the tire pressure

Here’s a link to a site which tells you a bit more about this as I am not the car mechanic you think I might be 😉 But I do know that when driving in the mountains for example, your tire pressure should be lower.You can check and adjust your tyre pressure at the service station.

9.Car sickness

Does someone from your travel company gets car sick?! Make sure to have little plastic bags within reach just in case… You might also get a prescription for medication against car sickness. Ask your general practioner for advice!

10.Waste

Make sure you have a plastic bag for your waste… your car might end up as a garbage dump otherwise!

11.Kids

If you’re travelling with kids, make sure to have plenty of things to keep them occupied.

• Tablets/games
• Books
• Car games (I spy, car bingo,…)
• Window stickers : I used to buy stickers you could stick on the car windows. Every 50 or 100 km (depending on how old the kids are, how long the trip is,…) I gave them a sticker they could put on the window. I also told them how many stickers they had to collect before arriving at our destination. That gave them an idea of how long we’d have to ride.
• Once I had made a quiz for the return journey. The quiz was all about our holiday. I had told them in advance that I would make a quiz, so during our holiday I sometimes told them things about the places we visited and I said ‘make sure to remember all this for the quiz!!!’. That way, they paid attention during our more boring visits (in their eyes anyway) ànd we had much fun doing the actual quiz on our way home! And of course I had bought little gifts for all the participants 🙂
• Don’t give them too much different stuff to eat and drink. Keep it simple. You definitely don’t want sick kids at the back seat of the car!!

Do you have any more tips? Feel free to share them, we can all but learn from eachother!

Love, Kathleen