This is a tour length of about 6000 miles and visits 24 European capital cities. You can reduce this distance by around 1000 miles, still visiting 22 capital cities, by not visiting Copenhagen and Bucharest. Taking Rome off the map would reduce the distance by about another 600 miles and would perhaps be a better tour as it would allow you more time to spend in each of the other capital cities if you are limiting your tour to 90 days. Even so, visiting 21 capital cities in 90 days, plus all the driving, doesn't give you a lot of time in each city. Getting the driving distance down to 4446 miles still means you're going to be spending roughly 14 to 18 days on the road depending on how many hours you wish to drive each day which means you only have 3 to 4 days in each capital city.

The picture changes completely if you are able to stay away for a much longer time. By breaking the tour into two sections of roughly half - each of 90 days with a 90 day stay in Albania in between (which is outside the Schengen zone), you can complete the full 6000 mile tour and spend more time in each city, as well as having a nice long break in beautiful Albania. This gives you a total touring time of 270 days. For this tour, I've decided to go in the reverse direction to that in the original map - mainly to make the most of the best weather conditions.

During the first half of the tour, you can visit the first 14 capital cities, then drive into Albania within your first 90 days, then spend 90 days in Albania, visiting Tirana, the capital city (15), after which you can visit cities 16 to 24, before getting back to the UK before your 90 day limit expires. By taking the detours mentioned below, your tour distance will be about 6650 miles in total.

You will need to get the timing right for this tour as you'll be away for almost nine months and there will be a lot of climate variations to consider when travelling through these different latitudes.

Map of the complete tour:

Maps above and below courtesy of URL: https://mydrive.tomtom.com/en_gb

If you are able to travel for the 270 day time period, my suggestion would be as follows - bearing in mind the likely weather conditions:

Leave the UK around the middle of September and follow the route below for your first 90 period inside the Schengen zone. The only variations I would add to this route of capital cities would be to head across Italy after visiting Rome, to the Adriatic and follow the coast, through Venice to Pula in Croatia as well as a diversion to visit Dubrovnik. This route is about 2800 miles.

This will take you as far as Albania, where you can spend the next 90 days, taking you through the worst of the winter weather and enabling you to visit the capital city, Tirana. You will then leave Albania in about the middle of March and head for Athens, following the route below.

Capital Cities - in order of being visited in the two-part tour

from Calais to:

Paris, Luxembourg, Berne, Vaduz, Rome, Ljubljana, Zagreb, Sarajevo, Podgorica, Tirana.

Tirana to Athens, Skopje, Sofia, Bucharest, Belgrade, Budapest, Bratislava, Vienna, Prague, Berlin, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, The Hague, Brussels.

Then back to Calais.

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