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where to start??!!

Hi all, I am new to this site so please excuse any errors i may make... Right....we are from Liverpool in England and are trying to put together a small trip to Europe in our trailer tent next August for 16 days and would ideally like to visit Austria, Switzerland, Germany and Belgium. I have the following questions... .Which ferry route would be the best (and hopefully cheapest!) To take...we were thinking Hull to Zeebrugge but the price is considerably inflated compared to Dover to Calais (and driving down through France to Austria first?).Ideally we would like to finish in Belgium. .Can anyone recomend any 'must see' places in these countries? .How hilly would our journey be (as we only have a 1600 Astra pulling our folding camper)? .Approximately how much would we expect to pay per night on campsites and are there any extortionate places to avoid?! Thanks in advance
Vicky .How many nights in each country would you recomend?

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33818 posts

Welcome, Vicki, You have plenty of time to put this trip together so you have plenty of time to plan the route and where you would like to go. The difficulty we have here is that posts are limited to 2000 characters each and it is really hard to do whole guidebooks for one town let alone 6 countries (you left out France and Luxembourg) in that space. There are loads of good books, your library may have several of them. You probably won't find Rick Steves books, but the Rough Guides, the Lonely Planet books and the Michelin Green books will likely be there. Can I suggest a good read through these, maybe watch some of the Rick Steves videos on YouTube and decide what towns and cities interest you. Once you have that would be a good time to come back with specific questions which will elicit plenty of answers. Your trip, however you put it together, over that distance in that time, will be busy. You will need to be moving quite a lot, leaving less time for seeing what you are visiting. In the meantime, eastern and southern Belgium is quite hilly, as is France on the other side of the border, and Luxembourg in the same area - the Ardennes. The Eiffel region of Germany as well as several other areas in Germany are reasonably hilly. Switzerland is in many parts hilly or mountainous. Most of Austria is very mountainous. There are lots of tunnels in Austria which help flatten it out but many are toll tunnels, and with the trailer that will add up quickly. They are expensive just for a car. In addition you will need Vignette stickers for highway travel in both Austria and Switzerland for both the car and the trailer. I look forward to watching your trip planning develop.