HOME/EUROPE
EUROPE · SEPARATE ARCHIVE · IN BUILD
A second archive for the other side of the water — built to the same rules as the British one and kept entirely separate from it. Fourteen to twenty-eight day expeditions, an honest 90/180 day counter, the ferry and tunnel routes that actually carry a 5.98 m van, and a Europe Matrix of its own. The United Kingdom archive is untouched: nothing here dilutes it, and nothing there has changed.
01 / WHAT EUROPE IS
The British archive is finished and correct: twenty-two files, 354 species, seven calculators, a trip engine that reads the lot. Europe does not touch any of it.
Europe keeps its own files, its own trip engine, its own species matrix, its own points and its own ranks. A British count is never inflated by a continental one. Your van profile is the single thing they share — because the van is the van.
Nothing here runs under a fortnight. The crossing costs real money, real paperwork and a day at each end, so a four-day European file would simply be a worse British one. Britain owns the long weekend. Europe starts where a fortnight becomes worth the water.
Every file will carry FACTS VERIFIED with its date and STATUS: PLANNED · NOT YET DRIVEN until it has actually been driven, exactly as the British files do. No invented prices, no scraped sailing times, a correction link on every page.
No account, no sync, no server that knows where you went. The 90/180 counter and everything after it saves to this browser and nowhere else. No ads, no tracking cookies, no third-party trackers — the same as every other page here.
02 / THE CROSSING
Before any of the driving, there is a boat or a train, a height limit, a length band and a booking that wants making early. The crossing planner covers the routes that genuinely carry a motorhome from Britain.
Dover–Calais and Dover–Dunkirk by ferry, or the Channel Tunnel from Folkestone — the shortest water, the most sailings, and the longest drive on the far side. Best when the destination is south or east and you are happy to cover ground.
Portsmouth, Poole and Plymouth to Normandy, Brittany and northern Spain. More expensive and far slower, but an overnight cabin removes several hundred miles of French motorway and lands you where the trip actually starts.
Hull to Rotterdam or Zeebrugge, Harwich to the Hook, Newcastle to IJmuiden. Overnight crossings that put you in the Netherlands or Belgium at breakfast — the sensible approach for the Rhine and everything north of it.
Holyhead, Fishguard, Pembroke, Cairnryan and Liverpool. The Common Travel Area means no Schengen days, no passport stamp and no clock running — which is precisely why Ireland is the first file in this archive.
03 / THE 90/180 CLOCK
Since 2021 a British passport holder may spend 90 days in any rolling 180 inside the Schengen Area. It is not a calendar year and it does not reset on the first of January — it is a window that moves with you, which is why people miscount it.
On any given date, count backwards 180 days and add up every day you were inside the zone. That total must not exceed 90. A trip you took five months ago can still be sitting in the window today.
The day you enter and the day you leave are each a full day, however few hours you were actually there. A fortnight that looks like fourteen nights is fifteen days on the clock.
Ireland is in the European Union but not the Schengen Area, and the Common Travel Area governs travel there instead. Days in Ireland do not touch the clock at all. Nor do days back home.
Schengen is not the same club as the EU. Norway, Iceland, Switzerland and Liechtenstein are all inside the zone, so a Norwegian fortnight spends the same 90 days a French one does.
This is a planning aid, not immigration advice. The counter here does the arithmetic honestly and shows its working, but the only record that matters is the one held at the border. Rules change, and long-stay visas, residency and work all sit outside what any calculator can tell you — check the current position with the relevant authority before you rely on a number.
04 / LENGTHS + RANKS
Europe uses the top of the British ladder and none of the bottom. No file is ever stretched to reach a tier — where a country cannot honestly fill one, it travels with its neighbours or it waits.
Every file also states its own compression. A twenty-eight day route that genuinely works in eighteen says so plainly, so the headline is the full expedition and the short version is right there for anyone who cannot take a month off.
Continental points and ranks are entirely separate from the British ones. Nothing you log here moves a British rank, and nothing you logged there appears on this ladder.
The twelve month stamps are the one thing the two archives share. Three species logged in a calendar month lights that month whichever side of the water you were on — because going out in February is going out in February.
05 / EVERY FILE, BUILT
This was a roadmap. It is now an index. Every file below is published and researched to the same depth as a British one — 441 days of route across 18 countries, 937 hours of driving, and 2,333 Matrix entries filed against them. The order they appear in is the order they were built.
06 / THE SHAPE OF EACH FILE
One bar per day, its height the driving hours that day, every file on the same scale. Days at sea and transit days are marked apart. These are read from the day plans themselves — nothing here is estimated, and a flat file really is a flat file. The Netherlands asks 16 hours of driving across a fortnight; Southern Italy asks 81 across four weeks.
07 / THE PATCH WALL
One patch per expedition. It fills as you log entries on that file — bronze at forty-eight, the same figure every medal uses, and gold when the file is complete. Nothing here is stored off your device.
Log an entry on the Europe Matrix or in the Trip Engine and the wall starts filling.
FOUND THIS USEFUL?
Everything in the free archive today - the expedition files, the Nature Matrix, the seven calculators and the Trip Engine - is free forever. In future, we may offer paid expansions for people who want more. They will add to the free archive, never take anything away from it.
But if a file saved you a wasted weekend, or the Matrix put a puffin in front of your children, you are very welcome to stand us a coffee. It goes on diesel, ferries and the next expedition — which comes back up here, free, for you.
Fuel for the Nebuchadnezzar£10 · ONE PAYMENT →Entirely optional. One payment, never a subscription — and you can set any number up to ten at the checkout if you are feeling especially kind. No perks, no supporter tier, and absolutely no hard feelings either way.