Four weeks drive from London to Greece and back
 

Hello,
In July/August, I am planning to take a family drive holiday for four weeks through the following countries.

Strarting from London then towards Germany, Austria, Hungary, Croatia, Greece, Italy, Switzerland, France, UK

Planning to stay at various places for a few days before driving to the next destination and visit a few places where and when possible i.e. water parks (To keep the teenagers busy), etc.
I am thinking of booking the accomodation while on the move...

To start the conversations, I guess the first question is:
Do you think four weeks is enough for this drive?

I am sure more questions will follow.

Many thanks

That's a tricky one to answer! The short answer would probably be yes, but it's the compromises you'd have to make that might make you rethink. For instance, you'd have to go through France first, and then all of the other countries you've listed, which gives a total of 9 countries (excluding the U.K.) in 28 days, so roughly three days per country, which for me, isn't a lot of time, although some of those you would just zip through quickly to get to the next one (e.g. France in the beginning, as you say you'll visit it later), so that will give you more time in some of the other countries.

If I were you I would use some route planning software (e.g. Tyre) to put a basic route together. It will then tell you how much drive time you have, and then you can factor in how much you're willing to drive per day, and then where and for how long you want to stop in places. You'll soon see if you've got it about right or not. This is how we plan all of the countries we visit, as we are on a timescale to get to Mongolia at the right time weather-wise this summer (one year into an around the world trip). Try and add a little contingency though, as there will be times when you're too knackered to move on!

Thank you for the details...
May be four weeks in not enough and I can reduce the trip to as far as Montenegro and then from there to get a ferry to Italy.

Thank you

I've done that trip several times on / in some pretty awful machinery and yes, you won't have a problem getting there and back in a month. The problem is likely to be whether the driving is seen as an integral part of the trip or just a means of getting from one place to another. If it's the latter then (particularly with teens) you're likely to hear many increasingly vocal variations on the theme of "are we there yet?".

You might keep younger teens distracted by videos, games, music etc but older ones are going to get extremely bored (and then fractious) if they're just dumped in the back of the car while the adults make all the decisions. By 18/19 I and many friends of similar age were doing these trips for ourselves and, one generation on, my children were also arranging their own travels in their late teens. If you can make the travelling something they have a stake in it's likely to make the miles pass easier.

From about the age of five until she started travelling herself my daughter absolutely hated long car journeys. We did try to get down to southern Italy once but had to give up when she became refused to leave an overnight campsite near Pisa. She wanted to go home and that was it. My wife spent the next three days doing sing-along nursery rhymes with her while I drove and our son sulked in the back because she'd ruined his holiday. By the time we got back we needed another holiday!