10 day trip to europe

[smallzoo99]

My Wife and I want to take a 10 day trip end of september/early october from the UK to europe. We would like to end up in Switzerland ( Lausanne maybe )
happy to accept ideas. It will just be my wife and I ( I am 65 she is 55 ). We love culture, scenery, history etc

I put an initial route down..

Drive from Cheshire to near folkstone - Stay 1 night
Travel by car from folkstone on the eurotunnel
Once in France drive to Riems - Stay 1 night
Drive from Riems to Dijon - Stay 1 night
Drive from Dijon to Lausanne
Stay 3 nights
Over those 3/4 days take train journeys into Switzerland ?
After that drive to Poitiers ( stop on the way for lunch )
Stay 1 night in Poitiers
Drive near to Caen stay 1 night
Take Ferry to Portsmouth
Drive home to cheshire

What do you think of that..I need to add one or two more nights in different places or an extra night in one of the places I mentioned

Happy to scrap it all if you think its rubbish

On first glance I think that's a big itinerary, but doable.

Would you consider going from Reims via Nancy (great city) over to Strasbourg, Colmar, Mulhouse (charming towns and countryside), then to Switzerland. There are hundreds of hotels on the French and German side North of Switzerland, and as you say the train links are good from there.

The return journey sounds fine. Enjoy!

You've chosen some lovely locations but it seems that you are spending most of your time driving between places rather than enjoying being in them.
Do you enjoy driving, is that part of the fun for you? (Some people do enjoy it!)
If not, I'd recommend starting off by flying direct from Manchester to somewhere, then travel by train between two or three locations, then fly back from the last stop.
For example, you could fly to Zurich, train to Lucerne, or Bern, or Lausanne, then train again to Geneva, and fly back from Geneva.

flying is out for reasons I dont want to go into but thanks

Lausanne-Poitiers is quite a trek, at the later stage of a holiday. You will get to Poitiers exhausted and probably be leaving fairly early the next day.

Also, Lausanne may not be the best base for touring Switzerland with day trips. To Zurich and back is 5 hours on the train.

How about this:
Folkestone / Reims / Strasbourg / Basel / Interlaken / Lausanne / Dijon / Orléans / Caen. That's 9 nights, so you could have a 2-night stay (maybe in Interlaken to get up into the Swiss Alps). You could also skip Basel. It's about the same total mileage as your plan but with never more than about 250 miles in a day, plus you would have the car in Switzerland, which is always more flexible than the train.

Try going to Fodors.com They have some great travel forums and very helpful experience travellers there.

When I put that in Google maps it says part of the journey is a car transporter.. which part is that ?

Presumably the Channel tunnel. What happens if you tell it to start from Calais instead of Folkestone?