Best route to Italy

[BrianA]

Up to you Brian, you could as we do in France and leave the toll roads to users who want to be at their destination as quickly as possible, or take the 'D' roads. We found the 'D' roads fairly quiet, very driveable and scenic around the month of May but obviously more villages and towns which didn't faze us, depends if you're in a hurry to get there or happy to do less daily miles and more camping sites.

Happy to look at D roads, Dave. What route do you use ?

[Blackpool Belle]

Another vote for meandering through Belgium, Luxembourg then down past Metz & Nancy to Colmar using toll free autoroutes & D roads. Into Switzerland via Basel then Lucerne, Interlaken & the St Gotthard tunnel over to Lake Maggiore.

This way does involve the 2 vignettes for car/caravan in Switzerland if you use the autoroutes, but in May there wasn't much point in doing anything else as half the Alpine passes were still closed. Its a very pretty route virtually all the way, plus cheap fuel in Luxembourg - always a bonus!

[DaveFL2]

Don't keep a log Brian, but basically we left 'Gandspette' and took the D341 running parallel to the A26 motorway.
Carried on east towards Charlieville-Meziers.
Then south towards Reims using the D987, D977.
South towards Langres using N44, N4, N67.
Dijon then Dole using D974, D905.
Still south to Lons-le-Saunier and D1083 towards Bourg-en-Bresse.
From there it was the D470, D436, D1084 running parallel with the A40 motorway east.
and finally D1508 into Annecy.
All in all it took us about 9 days because of our 'doodling' and from there it was straightforward heading south towards the expensive Frejus tunnel into Italy, and if I remember rightly it was about €45 one way.
In Italy we stuck to the motorway as the tolls were reasonable, but more so we found the signage on more minor roads a bit harder to fathom out.

As I said, it all depends how you want to travel, how much time you have and if you are happy to drive on the more minor roads. We stopped many times to look at the scenery, a bite to eat in a quaint village and exercise ourselves and our dog.
The Italian lakes were always our destination but it took us nearly three weeks to reach them.

[BrianA]

Don't keep a log Brian, but basically we left 'Gandspette' and took the D341 running parallel to the A26 motorway.
Carried on east towards Charlieville-Meziers.
Then south towards Reims using the D987, D977.
South towards Langres using N44, N4, N67.
Dijon then Dole using D974, D905.
Still south to Lons-le-Saunier and D1083 towards Bourg-en-Bresse.
From there it was the D470, D436, D1084 running parallel with the A40 motorway east.
and finally D1508 into Annecy.
All in all it took us about 9 days because of our 'doodling' and from there it was straightforward heading south towards the expensive Frejus tunnel into Italy, and if I remember rightly it was about €45 one way.
In Italy we stuck to the motorway as the tolls were reasonable, but more so we found the signage on more minor roads a bit harder to fathom out.

As I said, it all depends how you want to travel, how much time you have and if you are happy to drive on the more minor roads. We stopped many times to look at the scenery, a bite to eat in a quaint village and exercise ourselves and our dog.
The Italian lakes were always our destination but it took us nearly three weeks to reach them.

Thanks Dave