What actually fits
Every European file states a full length and an honest compression — the Nordic Quest is twenty-eight days that genuinely works in twenty-one. The engine ranks on whether your window clears the compression, not the headline.
01 / HOW IT WORKS
Four inputs, and it shows its working.
The British engine ranks on distance, days and season. This one adds two constraints Britain does not have: a legal day limit, and paperwork with a lead time.
Ninety in any rolling 180
It reads the trips you have logged in the 90/180 counter, works out what is left, and refuses to recommend a file you cannot legally complete. Ireland is exempt and the engine knows it.
Roads with dates
Some of the best driving in Europe is shut for half the year. The engine flags a file whose passes are closed in your month rather than letting you plan around a road that is under four metres of snow.
Can you even go yet?
A Crit’Air sticker is posted to you. If you are leaving in nine days for France, that is worth knowing now. The engine states the lead time for whatever your chosen file needs.
02 / YOUR BRIEFING
Tell it four things.
Nothing is sent anywhere. The Schengen figure is read from your own counter if you have used it, and you can override it here.
The engine will not flatter you. A file that does not fit your window says so and stays in the list with the reason, rather than quietly disappearing — the same rule the British engine follows. Everything it knows comes from the published files; nothing is invented to fill a gap.
03 / YOUR CLOCK
What the ninety days look like.
Read from the 90/180 counter in your browser. If you have not used it, this assumes a clean slate.
90DAYS LEFT OF YOUR ROLLING NINETY
Ireland does not count
Ireland is in the European Union but outside the Schengen Area, and the Common Travel Area governs travel there. A month in Ireland costs nothing against a French trip later in the year, and the engine ranks it accordingly.
Norway and Switzerland do count
Schengen is not the same club as the EU. Norway, Iceland, Switzerland and Liechtenstein are all inside the zone, so a Nordic month spends the same days a French one does.
Arrival and departure are full days
A twenty-one day file spends twenty-one days, not twenty. The engine counts it the way a border officer would.
A planning aid, not advice
The arithmetic here is honest and shows its working, but the only record that matters is held at the border. Check the current position with the relevant authority before relying on a number.
04 / WHAT IS IN SEASON
The Matrix, filtered to your month.
A sample of what is genuinely in season in the month you chose, from across the whole European book.
05 / LEAD TIMES
What has to be ordered before you can go.
Updated for whichever file the deck puts first. The full country-by-country detail is on the access stack.
FOUND THIS USEFUL?
Buy the crew a coffee, if you’d be so kind.
Everything here is free and always will be — the expedition files, the Nature Matrix, the seven calculators and the Trip Engine. Nothing sits behind a paywall, and nothing unlocks if you pay.
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.