WHICH COSTS LESS ?! Fly or Drive to the Alps – VW California v Plane !

WHICH COSTS LESS ?! Fly or Drive to the Alps – VW California v Plane !

Hi everybody I’m JT welcome to another video from me here at camper van journey and in this video I want to tell you all about the difference in cost between flying and driving to the French Elves okay so I’m going to put together two videos which will cover the costs of our of our recent trip to the French Alps this one is specifically focused around the difference in cost between flying to the French Alps and driving to the French Alps and our driving was done

In this our trusty Volkswagen California camper van so sit back and enjoy hopefully this provides you with some information that is useful um and uh helps you if you’re considering planning doing the same trip if you got any questions or queries drop me a comment below i’ be very happy to answer any

Queries that you’ve got if I can if you got any tips again please drop a note below be great to hear any pointers uh for future trips that but for those of you who haven’t seen uh our videos covering our recent trip uh just to recap we’ve recently returned from

Spending uh just over a week in the French Alps staying in a town called Bor Sam re uh where we stayed in a hopia lodge one of these beautiful lodges here uh this is a Pine Lodge on a the hopia Campsite in the town of Bor San Marice

Where the ski resorts of lar Nestle at the top and we had a fantastic time away enjoying some great skiing all week uh it’s I think the third time that we’ve been now and each time we’ve driven down in our Volkswagen California uh this time our friends came

With us uh who were flying out and so it was very interesting to sit down and compare the two lots of travel costs for our friends who flew versus US driving and see how much the difference was going to be so let’s break down the numbers see what it looks

Like have a look at the comparison and uh there’s some interesting numbers to D Gest as we run through so I’ll start with the um the flying cost First of all so our friends live in Salsbury were traveling at uh on the Saturday for their week stay opted to fly from

Bournemouth to Geneva and there’s three of them two adults and a child traveling and the tickets that they organized and were booked some time ahead of traveling uh came in at 1,265 for the return trip which is around about an hour and a half flight and then flying into Geneva from where

They would need to travel on to Bor Sam our friends opted to take an uh to drive themselves and pay for parking at the airport in Bournemouth which cost them 80 for the week and uh arriving at the other end in Geneva to get from Geneva

Airport to uh Bor Sam they opted to hire a car for the week uh which would give them the practicality and versatility to be able to get around a little bit as well uh from where we were staying so the higher car uh a mid-range High car

Was coming in at three just over 350 um fuel for the high car was £36 for the week and uh because of the way that they booked their return flights the return flights were coming back on Sunday uh our accommodation uh finished on the Saturday so they’ve uh opted to

Book on their return Journey um an extra night’s accommodation at a hotel in Geneva before catching the flight back my friend Stuart is an experienced flyer so I think um it would be safe to say that he did a lot of research in terms of putting together the best best value

For flights accommodation and the high car package to to make sure that they they got a a good deal all around um but if you toss all of those items up we come to a total price of 1,855 for the three of them to make the

Journey so how does that compare to what we spent driving down in our Volkswagen California now this is where it gets interesting and there’s a lot more maths going on so please bear with me if it gets a little bit more detailed and a bit more numbery um but I’ll run through

It and I’ll try and break it down as simply as I can so it all makes sense but as I said any questions or queries drop me a note in the comments and I’ll definitely come back to you so we um obviously taking the van meant we

Couldn’t fly but it meant that uh we had two options one was to go on the ferry one was to go on the euro tunnel personally I think it’d be absolutely bomy to get a ferry this time of year um definitely not something that would be

Top on my list to do and if I suggested that declare uh she’d say that she wasn’t coming so we opted for Euro tunnel we booked our outward ticket for £127 um relatively cheap and we got a cheap Transit by opting to take a later

Departure time so we try and it suits us to leave here sort of late evening it’s about 2 and a half hours Journey from Salsbury to uh the Euro tunnel terminal um and then get a departure later in the evening helps keep the cost down as well

So if you got flexibility to do that that’s a good way of saving a little bit of money so £1 1227 was the outward uh cost for the Euro tunnel ticket now the journey from door to door in terms of distance was 735 mil um in round numbers out 735 M

Out 735 mes out back means you’re going to use a lot of fuel now we were able to drive pretty economically I think we got about 38 miles to the gallon for the trip roughly um but in total we made six fuel stops on our outbound and return trips and uh

Including filling up with a full tank of fuel in the UK before we left and filling up in Bor Sam Marice before we returned we spent a total of 3286 on diesel now diesel fuel in France is actually more expensive than in the UK at the moment it averages out by the

Time youve converted it to about 158 a liter where in Salsbury it’s currently about 152 153 a liter um so a little bit cheaper but multiply it up and it all counts it all adds up um and the top tip if you’re fueling up in France is just

As the same in the UK don’t do it on the auto route if you can avoid it auto rout diesel prices were around €2 a liter and which is about 180 over here um if you can drive off a Junction Drive most the most Auto rout Junctions will have

Within four or 5 kilm um access to a local fuel station if even better if it’s a supermarket or Hypermarket then you can save 50 cents uh per liter uh on your fuel by by doing that top tip don’t forget so the fuel expenditure again just a recap was £

30286 now because we were traveling down on Thursday and our cabin accommodation didn’t start until the Saturday Thursday night driving down we stopped in an auto route air for the night which was free but on Friday night we were aiming to stay an extra night at the cutopia

Campsite for which there was a cost the cost was 25 quid so £24 32 for for us to stay uh for a night at the copia campsite where we had all the facilities available so that was hookup shower facilities uh access to their Lodge and lounge and electricity showers everything for 25

5 our Auto rout toll fees which is one of the reasons why I had to delay putting this video together has just come through on the bill from emovis the tag company that we use and that came in for our total journeys of £ 17298 that’s converted from Euros now

That is quite expensive and we did drive basically we took the fastest route um using Auto routes from point A to point B uh we could have opted to not use um the chargeable Auto roots or come off and use the nroads it would have taken us longer um we just we decided

That we would we just wanted to get from A to B as quickly as possible so we ought to to stick to the to Route charges so that came in at £ 17298 so which is always if you’re traveling in France can be a bit of a kicker with the cost

But the convenience the practicality the efficiency the directness um the level of traffic everything about French auto routes is so much better than the motorways in the UK that uh if you budget for it and you’re prepared for it I still think it’s it’s worth it but if you’re taking

A more leisurely route you’ve got a bit more time to travel down then clear you could save that money by not going on the toll route by not taking the toll routs directly our Euro tunnel return trip was £60 so when I was totting it all up and

Seeing some of these quite large costs par particularly for the uh for the fuel and for the auto route I was beginning to think that actually driving down was going to come out to be quite expensive but uh the tossing it all up together the total cost for driving so including

The Euro tunnel out all of our fuel all of our tolls the additional night uh camping at the cutopia campsite the total cost for driving came in at £787 16 so if I subtract that from the cost that our friends spent on flying and all the ancillary costs associated

With that then the saving for driving having a camper IR Adventure was over $1,000 so £ 1,067 Now flip that round another way that was enough to cover the costs of our cabin accommodation um or it was enough to cover the costs of our ski passes which were expensive it was

Basically a significant saving that if you are in a position to travel if you are in a position to drive it is a cost effective way of doing but it to make it work and this is the key key thing we left a day earlier than our holiday was

Due to start we left on Thursday night when holiday wasn’t due to start till Saturday and we were able to travel back um on leaving on the Saturday travel back on a Sunday to arrive early Sunday morning to arrive back in the UK on Sunday so we had some flexibility with

Our with our timings that enabled us to take advantage of some cost savings now some people might turn around and say well your flights were very very expensive and they were expensive but uh finding cheap flights at half-term going to a popular destination because it’s skiing time is going to be very very

Difficult when I was putting planning this video I knew that there was going to be a difference in the price um but I didn’t expect it to be as great as it was so I think it’s a big thumbs up for the camper van it was very much anent

Venture driving down and we had a great trip as hopefully you’ve seen if you watched any of the videos of our experience so far so if you haven’t um remember to jump on to the channel pages to find the videos of our trip away skiing um using our California to get

There hope you enjoy them please remember to drop us a comment below and be very happy to answer any questions or queries you’ve got you got any tips again it would be great to hear from from you but uh thanks very much indeed for watching now in the upcoming video

I’ll put together a summary of what the whole trip cost so you can get a feel um for how that compares because again interestingly the way that we traveled taking the camper van staying in a hopia lodge organizing all of our bits um independently it’d be interesting to see

How that compares to a traditional ski and ski out accommodation uh up in one of the resorts cuz I think there’ll be quite a difference in the cost saving there as well so I hope you found this video useful if you did please give us a

Thumbs up and drop us a comment it really really helps the algorithm and uh if you could consider subscribing that’d be amazing really trying to get to 5,000 subscribers um just as our next Milestone so if you can help us do that that would be great thanks very much

Indeed for watching we see you on the next video very very soon

FLY or DRIVE to the ALPS – Which is CHEAPER IN OUR VW CALIFORNIA?!
We drive to the ALPS in our VW California Campervan, our friends travel by plane. How do the cost’s compare…as we travel to Bourg St Maurice in the French Alps?
#campervan #vwcalifornia #alps #skiing #huttopia

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We are JT, Harry, Claire, Sam and Ben, oh and Hunny the Dog. We discovered campervanning in 2015 when we bought our first Volkswagen T5 Combo after seeing many at our favourite campsites. We were staying with our tent, and dreaming that one day we would have our own Campervan. After much research, we bought and converted our own T5 Kombi to suit our requirements, check out the video on the channel. We soon discovered that owning a Campervan is a way of life and it is not just about amazing trips round Europe, it’s as much about great days out and family time…

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00:00 Introduction
01:57 FLYING BREAKDOWN
04:34 FLYING COST SUMMARY
05:00 DRIVING COST BREAKDOWN
10:51 DRIVING COST SUMMARY
11:26 HOW MUCH WE SAVED VS FLYING
13:11 OUTRO