Good afternoon
My family are going from England to Vienna on a holiday soon, with a stopover in the Rhineland. Which route would they take out of interest?

E40 to Gent, either via Antwerp+Heerlen, Brussels+Heerlen or Brussels+Liege* to Aachen, A4 to Koln, A3 to Passua, A8-A25-A1 to Wein.

You might want to bypass Koln on the A61-A48 route, which adds 7km.

Other than through Belgium and if you want to bypass Koln or not, there's only one sensible route.

*via Liege is 2km more and simpler, but a bigger place and not as nice at Aachen. The Antwerp and Brussels via Heerlen are the same distance and not much to choose between them.

Dankeschoen, actually my family are travelling by coach and will be in that minority who will be using the Channel ferry over the tunnel. I had a feeling you would cross Belgium ans travelling through France and then Germany would take longer and, of course, the tolls would add to the cost of the holiday.

Travelling to the Rhineland last year by coach, that is the route we took: Calais-E40-Brussels Ring-Aachen - Koln - Mainz.

I recall our route at least in one direction included a brief transit of the Netherlands

I've always preferred to avoid Brussels, and go via Antwerpen, Eindhoven, Venlo, Duisburg, Essen, Dortmund - lots of good roads stuff to see in the Ruhr area as well - Ab-Kr Kaiserberg is the German equivalent of Gravelly Hill, and the Ruhrschnellweg is a great bit of urban motorway....

I've been jammed up more in Antwerp than in Brussels. Last year on a trip to Koeln I took the A25 from Dunkirk down to Lille, then across to Liege. Boring, but different.

For some reason on the brussels route I allways seems to go out via Liege, but back via the route through the netherlands and then onto Lueven E314. However most times I've stopped off in Aachen for some shopping and the link from the centre to the A4 is better than to the A44.

SJ

I traveled on the A3/E40 last year from the German border to Brussels and I must say that was the most boring motorway I've been on, and I've been on the M40! Wasn't helped by it being 11am on a Friday and there being zero traffic until Brussels either. Of course once I got to brussels (where I got lost in the city centre and gave up trying to find a car park!) I was stuck in a queue on the R0 from E40 to E19.

I think if I was going through Belgium I would go via Lille->E42 as well just to avoid the jams on the brussels ring!

I am returning from Frankfurt on Sunday. Still a little undecided about which route to take - viaMichelin gives three options:

Frankfurt - Maastricht (N) - Brussels - Calais (600 km)
Frankfurt - Hahn Airport - Liege - Brussels - Calais (614 km)
Frankfurt - Luxembourg - Arras - Calais (621 km)

Another variant that I have used in the past is
Frankfurt - Aachen - Liege - Charleroi - Lille - Calais (629 km)

The difference in driving time varies from 6h21 to 7h05.

In short, lots of options.

Option 1 is the A3/A4/E314/E40 option.

I do like the A3 between Frankfurt and Koeln, D3, up and down, quite fast and the fact that you may be doing 130, but the ICE will still zoom past you. and some nice service stations.

A4 from Koeln to Aachen is slowly becoming more D3, except for the part thats going to become an opencast mine where they are doing an off line upgrade.

After Aachen its the link through the tip of the netherlands and then the E314 which is fine,D2 a bit dull, but not E40 Leige to Brussels dull which does not help its dullness by being dead, but with a naff surface.

Like I said, ive been in a couple of jams on the Brussels ring, but nothing massive, never M25 style and its over before you know it. After that its the blast to the coast and the traffic gets less and less and is D3 as well until you pass the Ostend junction and then its not bad all the way to the ferries/tunnel.

SJ
SJ

I checked viaMichelin for an answer to the original question. They gave two routes:

Route 1 - via Belgium & Frankfurt - 1473 km (1367 on motorway)
Route 2 - via N France & Stuttgart - 1543 km (1331 km on motorway)

Route 2 also had €48.20 tolls.