Camping
Working out a realistic driving time with a caravan
Route planners calculate for cars. Towing means 40 to 60 per cent more, plus an hour for arrival and setting up — how to arrive at a number that holds.
Published Reading time 8 min Updated
The short formula: car driving time × 1.5, plus one hour for arrival and setting up. If you want it more precisely, break the leg into sections — but the rule of thumb sits closer to reality than any route planner in its default setting.
Because route planners calculate for a car. They do not know your outfit, they do not know the speed limits for trailers, and they do not know that you will still be manoeuvring for 45 minutes at the destination. The number shown there is therefore not slightly too low but systematically too low.
What the surcharge is made of
Four items that add up — and none of them is opinion.
1. The speed limit
Outfits have their own maximum speeds, and they differ considerably from country to country. In Germany it is usually 80 km/h, correspondingly more with a 100 km/h approval. Anyone who calculates with 130 and drives 80 has missed the leg by 60 per cent before setting off.
Look up the limits for your countries before planning. They often depend on the permitted total weight of the outfit, they change, and in some countries the fines are severe. Motoring organisations publish country lists for this. A table in a blog article is the wrong source for it — including this one.
2. The gradient
On a climb it is not the limit that constrains you but the engine. A pass road a car takes in forty minutes takes a good half as long again when towing. And the descent likewise, because you do not let it roll but brake in a low gear.
Rule of thumb: every longer climb costs another 50 per cent on top of the car time, in addition to the speed-limit surcharge.
3. The breaks
With a trailer you do not drive six hours at a stretch. That is not a regulation but concentration: manoeuvring, mirrors, crosswind, lorries overtaking. Allow a real break of 20 to 30 minutes every two hours.
On a six-hour leg that is two breaks and therefore around an hour that does not appear in the route planner.
4. Arrival and setting up
The most frequently forgotten item, and the only one that does not scale with the distance — it comes with every change of site, whether you drove 80 kilometres or 500:
| Step | Duration |
|---|---|
| Checking in, being assigned a pitch | 10–20 min |
| Manoeuvring and positioning | 10–25 min |
| Steadies, levelling ramps, getting level | 5–15 min |
| Electricity, water, waste water | 5–10 min |
| Awning (if one is coming along) | 20–45 min |
Without an awning you land at 30 to 70 minutes, with one at 50 to 115. An hour is the honest average, and it applies again on the day you leave.
A worked example
Suppose the route planner says 4 hours 30 for the leg (car, 480 kilometres, of which 380 motorway and 100 country road with one climb):
| Item | Time |
|---|---|
| Car time per the planner | 4:30 |
| Speed-limit surcharge (motorway share) | +1:40 |
| Climb on the country road | +0:20 |
| Two breaks | +0:50 |
| Arrival and setting up | +1:00 |
| Realistic | 8:20 |
A relaxed afternoon has turned into a full day — and one that has to start at eight in the morning if you want to be standing before dinner.
This calculation is exactly why a caravan route tolerates fewer legs than it looks like on the map.
Checking it against your own last trip
The rule of thumb is a starting value. Your own number is in your last trip:
- Take a leg where you still know the departure and arrival times.
- Subtract the breaks you definitely took.
- Divide the kilometres by the remaining time — that is your real travelling average, including everything.
- Calculate future legs with that number.
For most outfits the value lies between 60 and 75 km/h across a mixed day. That sounds low and is the reason why 500-kilometre legs look so harmless in the planning and eat the day in reality.
What this means for planning
Three consequences that follow directly from the numbers:
Five hours is the sensible upper limit for a leg when towing — pure driving time, without setting up. Above that you arrive and have nothing left of the day.
Every change of site costs half a day. That is why few, longer stays pay off: two nights are the minimum, three to four the comfortable measure.
The journey out is the longest driving day of the trip and is nevertheless the one planned least often. If it runs over eight hours, an intermediate stop belongs in it. A stopover site costs 25 euros; an eleven-hour day driven through costs the mood of the first three days of the holiday.
And then the number belongs on the leg
A driving time somebody estimated in their head does not help the group. It helps when it sits on the leg — calculated for the vehicle that is actually driving, not for a car nobody has with them. Then everyone looking at the plan can see whether day 2 is feasible, and the debate "that's not far" never starts.
How a caravan route is built overall — choosing a site, the season, the order, and the nights that should stay visibly open — is covered in Planning a caravan holiday. Anyone travelling without a trailer but on two wheels will find the corresponding numbers under How many kilometres a day on a motorcycle?.