Happy New Year to all!! Could you please help? We have a fwd 7 metre long motorhome, and are hoping to travel to Sicily mid to early March 2010? Any advice about routes from Calais would be very welcome. Also any info about ferries from either Villa San Giovanni or Reggio di Calabria to Messina. Our proposed route is from Calais, Belgium, Luxembourg, Saarbrucken, Basel, Lucerne, Milan, Bologna, Rome, Naples, Sicily. Any tips or hints gratefully received.
The only tips I can give you is don’t stop around Naples, and when leaving Sicily try to do it in the morning as the queues can be heavy later.
Ferrys are frequent and you can buy tickets at the port of choice.
The roads are not great after Naples, I don’t know if they have finished all the road works, but I would doubt it!
From Luxemburg you could go via Epinal and the RN66 to save a bit on tolls, not many trucks due to weight limits imposed a few years ago. it is a little shorter as well about 30km
Hi DonB, 
If you click the link below, you’ll see a typical ferry available from Reggio-di-Calabria to Messina.
If you scroll when you land, you’ll get an idea of the crossing times and prices.
http://www.gotaormina.com/en/how_to_arrive/ferries_to_sicily.html
Those ferry boats might look quite small, but several artics can fit comfortably on them at the same time.
Here’s a pic of one of my Sicily crossings, the truck I was driving has a white cab and red tilt trailer.
jimti is spot-on about the time of day to travel (and Naples, 
) but if you’re on your hols even queueing can be fun. 
Maybe it’s different now, but I found that there was plenty of space at Reggio-di-Calabria, but Messina can suffer traffic problems and the waiting area for vehicles was much smaller.
If you’re travelling in the football season, Italian football fans are great fun on the ferry.
Buon viaggio!!
last time i was in genoa the shipping line grand navi veloci do sicily not sure about sailing times though.
if it’s not too expensive would save a bit of driving
what about a bit of adventure and catch a ferry to corsica from the south of france then another to sicily?
Unless you’ve a good reason for going through Saarbrucken, avoid it, it’s ALWAYS busy.
Go Lux’, Perl, Saarlouis, but then drop straight down to St Avold and onto the autoroute. Just after the Aire de Saverne take the junction and head south. you’ll miss Strassburg too, which is also busy. You can then get onto the N83/D83 to Mulhouse. From that junction at Saverne, all the way down to Mulhouse your in the Alsace wine making country, very nice wines. There are plenty of places to park a camper for the night around there too. Try the bus park at 68340 Riquewihr(Google maps link). It’s empty at night, I’ve parked there in my wagon, waiting to load in the morning. It’s a lovely little Medieval town, with the old walls and several fantastic old buildings and some very good restaurants too. Theres also the castles on the hills above the vinyards, for protection against those pesky Germans. The biggest one is the Haupt Konigsbourg, a bit further north.
Cross into Swiss at the French St Louis crossing, rather than the German Weil am Rhein border. Don’t forget your Vignette for Swiss.
We regularly do Zeebrugge to Basel in under 9 hours driving (via a drop near Saarlouis its slightly longer than 9), in a wagon. So you should get either into Swiss if you’re pushing on, or for a nice easy days drive, down to the wine region between Strassburg and Mulhouse, as suggested above.
Thanks guys, you’ve all been very helpful! Happy New Year! Safe driving. DonB
Well. we’ve got home safely! thanks very much for the information and advice, especially Simon! Your suggestions for Saarbrucken and Strasbourg worked very well. And the roadworks from Naples on down are just as bad if not worse as everyone says! Looks like another ten years worth there? Don B
Glad you had a good trip 
I hope you’ll be posting some photo’s
Yes, I will post some pics. If you can tell me how to do it!
DonB:
Yes, I will post some pics. If you can tell me how to do it!
You’ll have to load them onto your computer first, which should be straightforward with a digital camera.
You also need to open a free account with an on-line photo site.
Photobucket is one of several.
You then upload your pics to the site from your hard drive. Have a look at the settings and tweaks available on the site first. You should be able to set it to save all uploaded pics in a set size. 800 x 600 (ish) is a good size for displaying pics in a forum web page.
Once you’ve done that you’ll see a set of links in 4 different styles below each pic, to copy and paste into different types of pages or messages. You want the bottom one of the 4, called IMG Code, to put into our forum pages. It already has forum image tags built into the link, so there’s no need for you to click any buttons. Just copy the IMG Code for a pic, paste it onto your ‘post a reply’ page and write your caption.
There are more comprehensive instructions in the Photo Forum if you need more detail. Or you can ask here for more help if you want it.
The best of luck
Here we go then. First pic is our white motorhome on the ferry to Messina
Then we have the beach at St Vito. Pretty good for March!
Paddling in the Med.
Camping in the car park about two thirds of the way up Mt Etna. From here you can catch the cable car and when that gets to its highest point you can get a Unimog with a guide which takes you to the top where you can walk round the craters and smell the sulphur.
This computering lark is fairly easy really, init ?
You got some pics loaded and into a post anyway, it wasn’t too much trouble I hope.
DonB:
Camping in the car park about two thirds of the way up Mt Etna. From here you can catch the cable car and when that gets to its highest point you can get a Unimog with a guide which takes you to the top where you can walk round the craters and smell the sulphur.
Do you think you could get a wagon up there, if you were weekended on Sicily and fancied the trip?
It would be worth the drive if you wanted to see it, but possibly not if you’d be stuck in your cab self-catering with no shower or washing facilities.
Good pics too.
Simon, You would have no trouble with the road, this one is the one that goes up on the southern side of the mountain to the Refugio Sapienza. It’s probably the best road in Sicily because they have to rebuild it every few years when the volcano misbehaves… All the big tourist coaches get there with no probs. We went up on a weekday in April, so it wasn’t too busy up there. But it would not be a good idea in high season. All around the parking area there are hotels and cafes and tourist shops. On the lower part of the road, before you get to the lava fields, there are hotels and guest houses. From the parking area you buy a ticket for the cable car, and then the Unimog if you want it or you can walk on up. The air is thin up there and there is always some snow. Take walking shoes with good soles, because when you get up to the top the rocks are very warm and trainers start to melt. I kid you not!