Tolls to Bayeux

Thirty bucks, about. Thirty-five, max.

If you go to Via Michelin, you can get a route that will have no tolls but it will take you an extra hour and a half. The quicker way costs 23.20 Euros in tolls.

The previous post illustrates the faux savings of depending on software.

Assume that Irv/Michelin's tolls are correct. And we'll work the whole problem in dollars so that's about thirty-one bucks.

Without looking at VM, the toll-free route has to leave the freeway around Mantes then head west through Evreux, Lisieux, and Caen.

Using the freeways, I can leave the rental car lots at Roissy and be in Bayeux right at three hours later.

Going the toll-free way, I'd be lucky if I made it right at five and I know the roads cold. It's doubtful if a person who doesn't know the area could pull that off, but we'll assume they could.

The toll-free way burns two more hours of gas and at very low mpg but we'll leave that alone as well and pretend it burns at a highway rate of about two gallons per hour.

A couple months ago I was paying about $6.75 per gallon. Multiply that by the four gallons above and you get twenty-seven bucks.

So, what you've done is thrown away two hours of vacation to save four bucks. It's probably closer to an even wash since some pretty generous assumptions were made in the calculation chain.

Add to Ed's reply, the fun of driving behind a local farm machine on the backroad. Been stuck there many times.

Yeah, well, that won't be a factor up there since only something like eighty percent of the land of Basse-Normandie is agricultural.

For comparison, only five or six US states are in that range: Iowa, Kansas, etc.

The farm trucks alone were why I stuck two extra hours on a much more direct route. A manure spreader or cotton picker would really make it miserable.

Thanks to everyone for the info.