Driving to Niederau (Austria) from Dunkerque

Firstly I would imagine Dave Mac would be able to help on this one and would imagine him to be the first viewer because its a Niederau trip, so hello Mr Mac.

After a shed load of shite my family and I have had this year we have decided to take a nice ski break in December.

Because of limited funds we have decided to drive to Niederau (love it or hate it) from Dunkerque.

I have winter tyres and snow chains so I feel these may as well be put to proper use unlike our UK winters.

Anyway the main question is good stopovers on route to stay. We want to avoid all tolls even it does put an extra hour on the journey.

We have children so would probably be looking at a couple of stop offs on route and on the return home afterwards.

I thought about a half way stop off in Koblenz but then it means I still have a 5 or so hour drive to Niederay afterwards. Obviously I would rather be wide awake and fit for the drive through the snow up the winding mountain roads so don't really want to do anymore than a 3 hour drive to the resort.

If I wasn't taking the children then I would probably just take 2 hour driving shifts with the Mrs and not stopover anywhere (I am nuttynutnut afterall).

Another question would be who offers the cheapest breakdown cover for these type of trips?

Don't think you will have problems if using Snow tyres, I have never had to use snow chains since using snow /winter tyres.
You can't travel completely without tolls as you now need a vignette in Austria it's not too expensive ,I bought one two weeks ago and it was about eight euros for 8days. But I believe the fine for not having one is quite high. Sorry can't help much with the route. I used to drive that sort of journey without a sleep over, but I think it's much safer to stopover and drive when fresh.
Enjoy your trip. Andyd

If you have Google just type in something like 'route Dunkerque to Niederau'. It's amazing what will pop up.

We drove to Soll from Calais last season and the only incurred cost was the Austrian Vignette. Fairly straightforward route, Calais, Belgium (then depending on preferred route you can go through either Holland or Luxembourg as well), Germany and Austria. It took us about 10 hours from Calais, but we did hit some nasty traffic before Munich.

If you wanted to route in from further west, Memmingan in Germany is a nice little town, and would probably only leave a two hour drive to N. That's the only place I have stopped at (on route to Madonna Di Campiglio in Italy), so cannot really offer other suggestions.

Regarding the route/time/toll issue, it is of no consequence how many times I have done this route, I still use the AA Route Planner. You are given the option to choose the route with/without tolls.

Using toll roads 653.3 miles. 9hrs 42min.
Avoiding toll roads 652.2 miles. 9hrs 51min.

Year on year, there are road improvements and changes, so what I did some years back is irrelevant. Using the above data, toll road avoidance does look the favourite.

I think I can recall the approximate ages of your children,from 2/3years ago, and my guess is they will cope well. On this basis, I would plan in a 20min stop every 2 hours, plus a driver change, and one longer mealstop. This indicates a total time of under 12 hours.
It might be worth considering arriving in Dunkirk in the evening, driving through the night, when the kids will sleep, arriving early morning.

Hi, never driven to N so nothing to contribute there. But, I would think carefully about driving the night while the kids are asleep (as per Dave's suggestion).
We did this once and they arrived refreshed and we were knackered!
We were dead on our feet and I had to trawl them round the village while my husband slept (he had driven and I had snatched a few kips).
We lost the whole of the 1st day that way.
After that we stayed either stayed somewhere en route or just got a really early crossing and arrived early evening.

Of course I don't know how old the kids are, they might be old enough to explore while you sleep off the miles.
Dids

Or Viamichelin.

Yep, Michelin good, also.