Pub2Pub's Driving Tours - All the answers...

If you're on this website, you’ve probably seen or heard us talking about the Pub2Pub driving tours.  Perhaps you’ve seen the pictures too, and read the trip reports.  There’s a reasonable chance you’ve considered joining one of the drives.  But unless you’ve taken the plunge and booked onto one, there’s a good chance you may have some unanswered questions about what we do. Here, we’ll attempt to answer them, by belatedly adding in a Frequently Asked Questions section to the website.  Because of course, six years after launching the business is the optimum time to do so…

Six Years?  Is that how long this has all been going?

In a word, yes.  We launched Pub2Pub Adventures back in 2018, after getting back from the Pub2Pub Expedition.  Of course, that’s not the whole story.  Just as we were getting going, we were forced to shut down for three years by the pandemic, meaning it was only in 2022 that we ‘properly’ got things going in their current form.

So, what is this current form?

In 2024, we ran six trips, but we're expanding that to nine trips in 2025. These drives fall into three distinct categories - adventures, grand tours and driving holidays. Here's a little more information on each of these categories:

First off, the full-on adventures. This is a new category for us in 2025, and through it, we're looking to facilitate the sort of bucket list experiences which car enthusiasts dream of. You can expect long distances, challenging driving and amazing rewards from this category, which we're launching in 2025 with the Snowstorm Rally, up to the Arctic Circle.

Next up, we have the grand tours.  These are designed as driving holidays with a hint of adventure about them.  Typically, they last around nine days, and cover 1500-2000 miles across Europe in that time.  For 2025, the Eagle Rally, French Revolution, Beer Italia and Trafalgar Tour all fit into this category. 

Additionally, we’ve recently been developing a series driving holidays - tours where the average daily mileage is around half that of the grand tours, at around 100 miles per day. These are designed for those cars – or drivers – whom want a more relaxed holiday experience, or wish to dip their toe into the world of European road trips gently, rather than diving straight in.  In 2025, the Normandy Classic, Brittany Steers and Chateau Pub2Pub fit into this category.

So, to sum up our plans for 2025, there's something for everyone there.

How are the trips run?

For every Pub2Pub tour, a detailed itinerary is produced, containing all the information you’ll need to undertake the journey.  This itinerary is built around giving a variety of different options for each day, enabling you to shape the drive into your perfect trip.  So, for each stage of the trip, you can expect to be presented with a variety of roads to drive, places to stop at, attractions to tour, and suggestions for lunch stops.  This means that rather than the trip proceeding in one big and unwieldy twenty-car convoy, which gets split up at junctions, overwhelms every café it stops at and makes toilet stops an impossibility, the days proceed in a series of smaller, likeminded convoys and individuals, with everyone coming together to share their experiences in the evening.

The itineraries also contains navigation instructions in google maps and GPX format, all the information about the hotels you’ll stay in, opening times and prices of attractions, suggestions for restaurants for dinner, and plenty more.  Basically, in there you'll find everything you need to know, to make your trip as stress-free as possible.

What do I get for the entry fee?

The trip entry fees cover a car and up to two people, sharing either a double or twin room.  Included are all the hotel rooms (at a minimum of three star standard), the channel crossings, breakfast every morning, the loan of a two-way radio to chat with other cars on the trip, the full itinerary and on the road support from the Pub2Pub crew.  And naturally, the camaraderie and friendships which come from sharing an epic experience with like minded people are included, too. In fact, we throw that in for free.

Tell us more about the on-the-road support?  What does that entail?

Currently, every Pub2Pub trip is escorted by Ben, the company founder.  With him, in some suitably charismatic old car, there travels a large range of tools and equipment, including a full metric and imperial tool kit, trolley jack, axle stands, spare fluids such as oil and coolant, a 'bodge kit', and other means of assistance.  A wide range of generic repair equipment is also carried, along with a stock of spare parts for Rover V8-engined TVRs, which increases in size every year.  This means that if you have any issues on the road, you won’t be alone; support will be nearby.  Additionally, the escorted nature of the trip means that if there are any issues with hotels, road closures or suchlike, support is on-site, rather than in another country, via a phone call. 

Why don’t you charge more?

Strangely enough, this is the question people ask most often when on the actual trips – why aren’t our prices higher?  To illustrate the value for money offered by the Pub2Pub trips, here’s a comparison with one of the UK’s best known organisers of car tours. Both Pub2Pub and the larger company offer a trip down to the French Riviera – ours is the French Revolution, lasts ten days and costs £1,750 for a car and two people.  Theirs is an eleven day trip, and costs £2,800 for two people.  Both trips use similar hotels, and on occasion, actually stay in the same hotel - great minds think alike, I guess.  The two trips also follow broadly similar routes, though I would modestly claim that ours enjoys the better driving roads.  Anyway, here are a few of the differences:

• The Pub2Pub trip uses the Eurotunnel, while the rival trip uses the cheaper Dover-Calais ferry

• The Pub2Pub trip is fully escorted, the rival trip is completely unescorted

• Both trips include breakfasts, though for balance, the rival trip also includes 5 dinners (We like to provide flexibility here; independently stumbling upon a great restaurant is one of the great joys of travel)

So, while not an exact comparison, our trip is not only fully escorted; all things considered it’s also approaching £1,000 cheaper, too.  How's that possible?

Firstly, Pub2Pub is a very focussed company.  We don’t waste money on a fancy office, blingy website, or lots of staff.  We don’t splash out on trade stands at big shows – and then pass on the costs to our customers.  We don’t buy expensive advertising in magazines; our marketing strategy is based around the word of mouth of satisfied customers, as well as talking to interested people through this website, and via social media.  In short, right now we’re not about fancy brochures and trade stands; we’re all about providing quality trips at a great price, keeping our overheads to a minimum, and growing the business through people’s recognition of this.

What sort of people come on the trips?  Do you have a ‘typical’ customer?

If there’s one thing we’ve learned from running these tours, it’s that everyone is different.  There’s no one-size-fits-all customer on our trips, with everyone from a few mates in an MX5 to retired couples in supercars joining our runs, and everyone in between.  Our customer base literally spans the cliché eighteen to eighty years, and stems from every walk of life.  As for the cars, naturally given our roots, TVRs are very much in evidence, often accounting for over half the entry list on a given trip, though all interesting cars are welcome, and due to the kind of people we attract, there’s no snobbery whatsoever – Fiesta ST or Ferrari, MG B or McLaren, it doesn’t matter what you drive, you’re welcome to join us on the road.  And once on the road, as the camaraderie builds and the new friendships begin, the further you travel, the less important what car you’re in becomes.

What are your plans for the future?

At this stage, we’re on a good path.  Since our relaunch in 2022, we’ve doubled the size of the business and the customer base in two years, going from running three trips a year in 2022, to six in 2024.  We’re looking to keep the momentum going as we roll into 2025, filling out our range of adventures, grand tours and more relaxed holiday trips and in doing so, making Pub2Pub Adventures a one-stop shop for European driving tours.

And hopefully, that answers your questions.  Though, if there’s anything more pressing which you’d like to know the answer to, feel free to get in touch by emailing ben@pub2pubadventures.com . And if you're tempted to see what all the fuss is about, you can see our range of 2025 driving trips here, and if there's anything there which appeals to you, feel free to join us on the road.

And finally, a big thanks to everyone who has helped us get Pub2Pub Adventures to where we are today, and hopefully, we’ll be seeing you on the road soon…