Last updated 18:00BST.

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TODAY: a major redevelopment of Dover Port and seafront gets the go ahead.

Also, P&O slims down operations at Dover. The price of Czech vignettes actually comes down. All state roads in Serbia damaged by May’s floods have now been repaired.

Fine-free week in Belgium, minor traffic offences to be let off with a warning. Aftermath severe floods Montpellier region, South of France. On-going cancellation P&O Pride of Canterbury services, Dover-Calais.

Calais Migrant Crisis: Govt wants to actually raise fines for stowaways.

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CHANNEL DELAYS: P&O Pride of Canterbury sailings cancelled all day, tech problem (see more). DFDS Dover-Calais delay 30mins.

Eurotunnel car shuttle delay 90mins UK + France, incident in process of being resolved. Freight France + UK, 90min wait on terminal + 3.5-5hrs transit time.

WEATHER ALERT: Amber alert storm north Italy. Yellow fog Germany, Netherlands.

WEATHER: fine + dry but showers South, rain North.

GOTTHARD TUNNEL: no queues.

MONT BLANC TUNNEL: ‘traffic is fluent’.

MAJOR TRAFFIC DELAYS: A16 westbound at Dunkirk, road works, delay down to 40mins.

A7 northbound Hannover-Hamburg, road works, accident Berkhof delay still 1h25. A3 eastbound Frankfurt airport, lanes closed delay 1h25. A9 northbound to Leipzig, road works at Weissenfels delay down to 45mins.

A1 northbound from Bern, earlier accident, delay still 45mins.

A22 Brenner southbound into Verona, earlier vehicle fire, delay still 1h45.

Earlier: A2 westbound into Bottrop, earlier accident delay down to 10mins. A1 southbound from Bremen, road works, persistent delay currently 10mins. 

See Travel/Traffic/Weather for more.

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Port of Dover green-lights its £120m Western Docks Revival Project. Cargo operations will be shifted from the eastern edge of Eastern Docks, above, to the Western Docks at the other end of town. This frees up ferry capacity, safeguards 140 jobs and creates 600 new ones according to Dover Harbour Board. The plan might also include a new marina at Western Docks, plus cafes and restaurants. This is on top of the work currently on-going at Eastern Docks to streamline traffic flows and create extra truck parking. Contracts for the Revival are out for tender now with the work due to finish in Spring 2017.

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roundup: CZECH REPUBLIC. Buy road vignettes in the Eurozone and, thanks to the exchange rate fixed on 1 October, ten day and annual stickers are now cheaper than last year – down to €11.50 for the 10 day from €12, and to €55.50 from €56.50 for the annual. The monthly remains €16.50. CROSSING THE CHANNEL. Fifty-five managers are to be made redundant to be replaced with steward level positions as P&O cuts costs on its Dover-Calais route says KentOnline. SERBIA. All the state roads damaged in the May floods – of a total length 142km – have been repaired reports inserbia.info.

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Eastern France is where it is at. A keen driver enjoys the Road of the Ridges ahead of the Rallye de France.

Also, Lithuania asks Brussels to intervene on French weekly rest rules. Ukraine cancels the Kerch Bridge contract. Momentum builds for Adriatic-Ionian motorway. Benelux domestic hauliers allowed to carry shipping containers. Slovak radar guns cost £25k each.

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Road of the Ridges, Vosges, France. Photo Wikipedia.

A keen Continental driver gives the D431 into Mulhouse his seal of approval.

Porsche-911 driving Chris Pointon came across this very interesting road while out and about in eastern France.

D431 is actually the southern part of Route of the Ridges (Routes des Cretes), fifty five miles through the Vosges Mountains between Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines and Cernay.

It tops out at the 4,406ft Col du Grand Ballon, not massively high in the scheme of things but high enough to close in winter.

Built as a military road during WW1, just below the ridge on the French side to protect it from gunfire – on what was then the border between France and Germany – it lost its strategic significance when Alsace was ceded back to the French in 1919.

Route of the Ridges is actually a succession of roads – D48, D148, D61, D430 and D431 – with panoramic views across the Rhine, in places, as far as the Black Forest.

During the summer it is notoriously crowded with walkers, cyclists and cars hence a 70kmh speed limit in parts. So far the authorities have managed to resist a blanket limit along the full length.

Eastern France might not be top of every Petrolhead’s bucket list, yet, but it should be. The roads around Mulhouse, Colmar and Strasbourg are sufficiently good to hold the WRC Rallye de France, see a stage map here. We made an enjoyable first foray into the region earlier this year on Route Nationale 5 from Geneva to Dijon.

At 390 miles, Cernay is a comfortable day’s motoring from Calais. There are some pretty good roads in between too says Chris. See ‘Infrasilver’ on YouTube or @Chris_Pointon on Twitter.

Watch Chris’ video of ‘Road of the Ridges’ here.

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roundup: FRANCE. Lithuania says the new French drivers’ hours rules break EU rules. It has asked the Commission to setup a working group to address the issue says Freight Business Journal. Hauliers face fines of €30,000 if drivers spend 45 hour weekly rest periods inside vehicles. SLOVAKIA. The €620,000 spent on fifteen radars and ten video-radars for traffic police was four times over the odds, for some reason, says TheDaily.SK. BENELUX. Hauliers based in Luxembourg, Belgium or the Netherlands are now able to carry shipping containers up to 13.72m cross-border following a deal signed by foreign affairs ministers in Rotterdam yesterday says wort.lu. Such loads were previously subject to special permissions. The UKRAINE government has formally cancelled the contract to build the Kerch Bridge between Crimea and Russia. The agreement was signed – seemingly out of the blue – by deposed former President Yanukovych last December. The cancellation is a technicality since Russia will press on with the project anyway. A single contractor for the twelve mile fixed link is expected to be appointed next month says RIA Novosti. BOSNIA. ‘The Adriatic-Ionian motorway is the most important infrastructural project in BIH and the region,’ transport minister Damir Hadzic told an intergovernmental meeting in Montenegro yesterday. Work starts soon on Corridor 5C from Medjugorje to the AIM junction at Capljina he says as reported by Sarajevo Times. Over 100km of AIM will pass through Bosnia.

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Jaguar Land Rover doesn’t have much luck with the fashion industry. Victoria Beckham’s attempts to spruce up the Evoque were universally derided. Then launch-model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley earned a splash in Car magazine for thinking the new Land Rover Discovery Sport was a Range Rover. Now Stella McCartney has sprinkled the pox all over the new Jaguar XE.

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The EU wants Austria to stop ‘discriminatory’ tolls on the B108 Felbertauern road on threat of legal action. It might make an interesting test case for the upcoming German ‘foreigner vignette’.

Also, as the 140 year old Harwich-Esbjerg ferry route comes to an end – the last service between the UK and Scandinavia – a catch up on the latest from Norwegian Seaways and Regina Line.

And, popular support is building to abolish the wincingly expensive Storebaelt Bridge toll in Denmark. Major works start on the A7 Hamburg-Kiel. Landslide risk closes Georgia’s Military Highway again. A massive sinkhole in Crimea claims six lives.

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EU TELLS AUSTRIA: FELBERTAUERN TOLLS ARE DISCRIMINATORY

Obvious impact on German ‘foreigner vignette’ dispute.

Photo via felbertauernstrasse.at

The EU wants Austria to end discriminatory tolls on the B108 Ferlbertauern Strasse.

For locals, and people who work in the area, it costs just €4 compared to €10 for everybody else. Four axle trucks pay €80 each way, for instance, compared to €30 for locally-registered drivers.

The Commission says the difference is ‘disproportionately high in the case of private cars and distorts competition between operators in the case of commercial vehicles’.

The investigation was started after a German tourist brought a formal complaint early last year.

A decision had been expected in May. The boss of the road operator, and others, had speculated the delay was due to the dispute over the German ‘foreigner toll’. Austria has been one of its most vociferous opponents. Former transport minister Doris Bures said in July she would ‘exhaust all legal channels’ to defeat the plan.

The Commission says it will take the case to the Court of Justice of the EU if no satisfactory response is received within two months.

The B108 is one of a number of roads across the Alps in Austria with tolled sections where drivers do not need the national vignette window sticker. Others include parts of the A9, A10, A11, S16 and the entire A13 Brenner motorway (see more here).

Felbertauern Strasse is midway between the A13 and the A10 Tauernautobahn in central west Austria. It runs for 36km from Matrei in Osttirol and Mittersill, rising and falling around 1,000m, on the direct route between Munich and north east Italy via Kitzbuehel and Lienz.

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After 140 years, the last Harwich-Esbjerg service departed yesterday, the final ferry link between the UK and Scandinavia. All hopes are now on the proposed Norwegian Seaways and Regina Line routes (see comments below). We are yet to hear back from Regina Line about rumours the company has leased a former Brittany Ferries cruiseferry Pont l’Abbe for the route (latterly the Moby Corse operating between Toulon and Bastia, Corsica). Finally, Norwegian Line operations director @PaulDWoodbury tweets from Stavanger today ‘ahead of discussions in a final effort to fund & ultimately re-establish a UK/Norway ferry link’. Photo @Harwichanddov

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roundup: DENMARK. Popular support is building to abolish the Storebaelt (Great Belt) Bridge toll. The 18km crossing between Funen and Zealand (Copenhagen) islands, opened in 1998, takes 12mins to drive and currently costs €33 each way for the average car. Added to the €46 toll on the Oresund Link between Copenhagen and Malmo it makes driving between Sweden and Denmark very expensive. Storebaelt was described earlier this month as a ‘state money making machine’ with income set to hit DKK380bn (£40bn) over the next fifty years. The Liberal Alliance party will make abolishing the toll a demand in upcoming budget negotiations. The ‘Bridge Toll, No Thanks’ facebook page has more than 9,000 likes. GERMANY. Widening work kicks off today on the A7 north of Hamburg. The 60km stretch between Schnelsen, at the A23 junction in northern Hamburg, and Bordesholm, at the A215 junction to Kiel, will be mainly three lanes, with some four lane sections. The work lasts until 2018. GEORGIA. With heavy rainfall expected in the new few days, and two serious landslides so far this year, the Lars checkpoint on the Georgia-Russia border in the Darliali Gorge – formerly the Georgian Military Highway – is closed for the time being. CRIMEA. Six people died and two were seriously injured on Saturday night when an eight metre square sink hole suddenly opened up on the TO106 Simferopol-Nikolayevka highway on Saturday night in the south west of the peninsula.

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Driving Kuhtai – Cow Mountain – Austria. A gentle ascent from the east, to a reasonable height, lots of cows, and a steep descent in the west. All within a few minutes of central Innsbruck. Highly recommended.

In pictures. See map below.

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Blockade: Turnout low. Few truckers present. A20 briefly blocked.

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Dover was thronging with people Saturday lunchtime but few of them were there for the ‘Dover Blockade’.

Police were very visible around the town. Within minutes of parking in the shadow of the County Hotel @DriveEurope was approached by two officers wanting to know if were involved with the demonstration.

There were few if any signs of protestors by that point they said. The meeting place in the west of Dover indicated by the organisers was also deserted.

Meanwhile the Eastern docks area was also quiet save for media, police and some locals who had turned up in support.

Twenty minutes after the advertised start of the blockade a group of protestors – estimates varied from 30 to 60 – marched down the A20 towards Eastern Docks and came to halt at the entrance to the roundabout.

There was no obvious sign of a trucker contingent and certainly no vehicles involved.

Johnny English, from Blackburn, admitted the turnout was disappointing. He was also clearly annoyed the event had been written off by the media as a far-right demonstration.

After blocking the entrance to the roundabout for around thirty minutes the protestors were asked to move on by police. After a brief attempt at a sit-in, they moved off peacefully around the roundabout and back down the A20 towards the town centre.

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For more on the Calais Migrant Crisis see here.

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Luxembourg considers its own vignette road toll as it emerges the subject is under consideration for the whole of Europe. Plus, more details on the upcoming German ‘foreigner vignette’.

Also, an exciting pair of Porsche 911s will contest next month’s Rallye de France. New road signs to tackle rise of new road signs in the Netherlands. Minor traffic fines may not be issued in Belgium next week. More money for Italian roads. New fuel rules increase freight rates at Stena Line.

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LUXEMBOURG CONSIDERS VIGNETTE ROAD TOLL

Calls for Europe-wide approach but EC says no. More details on German foreigner vignette.

Bausch (centre) and Dobrindt (centre left) at an earlier meeting, to open the new Mosel bridge between Grevenmacher and Wellen in June.

Luxembourg is considering its own vignette road toll.

The news comes after an ‘informal meeting’ of three EU transport ministers in Munich yesterday with the architect of the German ‘foreigner vignette’ Alexander Dobrindt.

Afterwards, Luxembourg infrastructure minister Francois Bausch told wort.lu, ‘We need to think about how to deal with this, in order to avoid Luxembourg coming in second.’

He also called for a ‘Europe-wide solution to road taxes’ since, apparently, ‘an increasing number of countries are considering such a move’.

It also emerged that, in border areas, the German foreigner vignette will only apply to motorways and national highways, and that it will be made ‘less discriminatory’ for foreigners by changes to the payment system and German road tax. A revised bill is due in October.

Earlier this month Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel described the German road charging plans as ‘contrary to the idea of Europe’. He also hinted the Duchy would introduce its own version though this was later strenuously denied by his spokesman in a long twitter exchange with journalists.

However, a few days before, following another ‘informal meeting’ of transport ministers in Milan – of all EU countries this time – outgoing European Commission Transport Commissioner @SiimKallas tweeted, ‘Yes to more road charging for stable infrastructure funding; in fair terms. No to single EU-wide road tax.’

It seemed a strange comment to make at the time since road charging was not on the agenda, and was not referred to in the statement issued afterwards.

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Super-fast French rally driver Francois Delecour will race Tuthill’s Porsche 911 GT3 RGT at the French round of the World Rally Championship in Alsace next month. With the car also allowed more power the entry will be a big step up from last month’s Rally Germany where Tuthill secured the first WRC championship finish for a 911 in twenty years. This time the team is targeting a top 15 spot. Delecour tried to enter a 911 in the WRC in 2007 but, he says, was barred by competing manufacturers jealous of the attention the car was sure to get. Fellow French rally driver Romain Dumas will also rally a 911 in France, a higher powered 4.0GT3 RS… With just a few days until the Paris Motor Show there’s still no hint of a long-rumoured road car rally-style 911, the Safari.

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roundup: NETHERLANDS. New road signs will tackle the ‘unrestrained growth’ in road signs say the transport minister. What she means is new standardised signs will be brought in next year to tidy up ad-hoc notices used locally. Read up on the current crop of Dutch road signs, in English, here. BELGIUM. Minor traffic fines may not be imposed next week as part of an on-going dispute over retirement benefits between police and employers. However, speed cameras will still operate and serious offences will be prosecuted. Will update. ITALY. Roads agency ANAS will receive a windfall €1.552m to spend on modernising and upgrading safety on its 25,000km network reports Agi.it, part of the ‘Sblocca Italia – Unblock Italy’ major infrastructure spending initiative. We hope they mean €1.5bn, we did ask, but even that will not go very far… CROSSING THE CHANNEL. Freight rates will increase by 15% next year as new low-sulphur rules due 1 January add €110,000 per day to the fuel bill Stena Line said in a statement today. There’s no word yet on how passenger fares will be affected.

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Quality: the display Porsche Cayenne survives the bombardment at Donetsk airport, Ukraine, in pretty good condition. Photo via @RolandOliphant

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The Swiss government votes for a new Gotthard Road Tunnel though if citizens get a chance their view is unlikely to be as favourable.

Rome plans a massive congestion zone, France cracks down on smoking in cars, and Jersey on drinking, while Germany deploys new tactics in an attempt to rescue its EV strategy. Volvo Trucks unveils a new viral video.

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GOTTHARD II ROAD TUNNEL APPROVED

Opposition fierce. National referendum likely.

The southern portal of the A2 Gotthard Tunnel. Photo @DriveEurope.

After a three-hour televised debate the Swiss parliament last night backed plans for a new Gotthard road tunnel on the north-south A2 motorway.

However, the new tunnel will not increase capacity on one of Europe’s major routes across the Alps, at least at this stage.

It will be built merely to allow refurbishment of the existing 10.3 mile tunnel opened in 1980. Like the original, Gotthard II will be single lane in each direction only.

Opposition is fierce and will likely result in a nationwide referendum. The Alpine Initiative campaign has until January to find the necessary 50,000 signatures and will likely do so easily.

Renovation and building starts in 2020, is expected to take a decade and cost $2.9bn.

In theory the new tunnel could be filled in afterwards, or used as an access tunnel for emergencies.

Whether to open it on a permanent basis would also have to be put to a national vote.

Over six million vehicles pass through each year, a sixth of them HGVs. Delays can easily reach two hours at peak holiday periods with waits of thirty minutes not unusual at other times.

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ROME. The entire area inside the anello ferroviario, railway beltline, significantly bigger than the existing ZTL – Zona Traffico Limitato (Low Emission Zone) – will be made a congestion zone from 1 January 2017 under plans revealed today. Residents will have a limited number of free passes while ultra-low emission vehicles, and the disabled, will be exempt. It’s the latest step in Mayor Ignazio Marino’s efforts to reduce the number of cars in the city following the pedestrianisation of the area around the Colosseum last year and, this summer, around the Spanish Steps.

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roundup: FRANCE. Drivers carrying children under the age of 12 will be banned from smoking, one of a range of measures announced today to cut down on the evil weed says thelocal.fr. In Europe it is currently only illegal to smoke in a car (with under-16s) in Cyprus though bans have been proposed in the UK, Ireland, Netherlands and Finland. Meanwhile, JERSEY is considering dropping the blood alcohol limit from its UK-standard 80mg/100ml to Continental-norm 50mg in an attempt to tackle its ‘100,000 alcoholics clinging to a rock’ image/reality. GERMANY. Norwegian(lite)style support for electric vehicles proposed today as the government seeks to rescue its stated aim (from 2011) of seeing 1m electric cars on the roads by 2020: a ten year exemption from car tax, free parking and €180m in federal R&D grants to the auto industry. Currently just 21,000 EVs are registered in Germany despite BMW’s big bucks foray into the sector with its ‘born electric’ i sub-brand.

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‘Under the hood it’s a sports car’: Volvo Trucks is hoping its new ‘The Casino’ short – filmed in San Remo – will prove as big a viral hit as its genius predecessor, ‘Epic Split’. Unlikely, but still worth watching. The idea this time is to demonstrate the ease of its I-Shift double clutch transmission. The behind the scenes is good too.

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As Luxembourg definitively bans dashcams we round up the rules in other European countries.

Also, a quick look back at the Rallye Legend event in Austria. A close-up of Belarusian pilots practicing highway take off and landings last week. A road more or less linking Sofia to the European motorway network is just three years away, hopefully, while there’s some mystery about the route of a new road between Vienna and Brno..

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DASHCAM RULES AROUND EUROPE

Banned or discouraged in more countries than you might imagine.

Dashcams – dashboard-mounted video cameras – are an increasingly popular way to keep a record of what happens out on the road, either as evidence to be used after accidents, or just great road videos uploaded onto YouTube.

Footage from Russian drivers who took to the devices early on, and with a vengeance, keeps the internet shocked and amazed on a daily basis, most famously when the Chelyabinsk meteor exploded last February (see above).

The problem in Europe is that data protection laws mean the devices are either banned or subject to legal grey areas in many countries.

Since 2012 dashcams have not been permitted in Austria on pain of a €10,000 fine or even €25,000 for repeat offenders.

On Tuesday, the Luxembourg parliament made it absolutely clear that drivers are not allowed to use dashcams in the Duchy, even to the point that if footage proved a driver’s guilt or innocence it would probably not be admitted as evidence.

In Germany it is also unlikely that dashcam film could be used in the event of a dispute according to the ADAC though privately recorded video of a scenic road trip is okay (Jalopnik went into the German situation in more detail here).

The ADAC says similar problems may also arise in Belgium, Portugal, Sweden and Switzerland.

While dashcams are allowed in most other European countries – so far, at least – in France cameras must not obscure the view of the road and in Norway the camera screen must not distract the driver, and the film may only be used for private purposes.

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Rallye Austria Legends: a two day event last week on the roads around Spital am Pyhrn and Trieben, just off the A9 in central Austria. The impressive line up included most of the classic rally cars – Lancia Delta, Audi Quattro and Sportquattro, Porsche 911s – and this Ferrari 308 GTB, one of two. See more at arboe-rallye.at

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roundup: BULGARIA. The vital, short stretch of motorway linking capital Sofia with the Serbian border – and hence the rest of the European road network – will be open in three years it was announced today. The 55km project will be funded by loans from the European Investment Bank, rather than EU grants, for speed. Just one section will remain to build, Hrabarsko-Sofia, about half the total, to be finished by 2020. CZECH REPUBLIC. Meanwhile, the 135km road between Brno and Vienna will be upgraded by 2018. The existing A5 Nord Autobahn from Vienna will be extended another 20km by 2017. The remaining 15km to the Czech border will be two lanes, as will the final 50km to Brno. It isn’t clear why A5 wouldn’t just be extended to the existing D2 Brno-Bratislava – it is only an extra 15km, mostly on the Austrian side, and all three cities would then be linked by motorway..

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Belarusian pilots practice highway take-off-and-landing on the M4 Minsk-Mogilev motorway near Chutor (ХУТОР) on 10 September with Su-25 + MiG-29 fighter aircraft:

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In the past few days, air quality concerns have seen a rash of announcements on new vehicle restrictions, in Paris, Madrid, Barcelona and Lisbon.

Also, photo: despite some traffic issues in capital Nicosia, the literally ground-breaking Cyprus Rally was hailed a success.

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NEW PARIS (and MADRID, BARCELONA and LISBON) POLLUTION MEASURES

Speed limits reduced tomorrow, and new truck toll discussed.

Paris: new ‘High Occupany Vehicle’ (HOV) lanes.

Air pollution in Paris is back in the headlines again following the ‘crisis’ in March.

After a record spike in particulates was detected last week, levels are expected to be raised again tomorrow (Wednesday 24 September). Resident’s parking will again be free and drivers have been advised to avoid the Ile de France (Paris) region.

Speed limits are likely to be reduced, to 110kph on motorways and 60kmh on the peripherique ring road.

In the wake of last week’s pollution it was reported on Monday that the city will start to charge truck tolls using the equipment installed for the currently suspended ‘Ecotaxe’ system.

From 1 October, truck movements will be registered on the peripherique and other motorways in the Ile de France region.

Next January the system will go live, charging an average €0.13 per km.

With the scheme yet to finally accepted by the city council – a vote is expected on 29-30 September – it is not clear how and when the system will apply to foreign registered trucks.

The city says the ‘modest charge’ is designed to discourage international freight traffic from the Paris region.

Meanwhile, the council will install a new network of high-occupancy priority lanes for taxis, buses and car-poolers.

From January, the hard shoulder on the A1 between the Charles de Gaulle airport and the city centre will be a new ‘express road’ during rush hour with parts of the A6 and A86 ring to follow in the second half of the year.

By 2020 there will be a total of eleven express routes covering the major roads.

See below for new anti-pollution measures announced this week in Madrid, Barcelona and Lisbon.

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CYPRUS RALLY. Police say they were not consulted over the arrangements for the special city centre stage in capital Nicosia on Friday afternoon according to the Cyprus Mail. Part of the route ran through the United Nations-controlled buffer zone between the Greek Cypriot and Turkish areas of the city leading to major road closures and hours’ long jams for locals. Despite this, the rally was billed and hailed as the biggest shared event in the country’s troubled recent history. Eventual winner Yazeed Al-Rahji survived damaged steering on the city stage, and a rally-long dice with second placed Kajetan Kajetanowicz, to claim his first victory in the European Rally Championship, the eighth winner in nine events so far this year with two rounds remaining. Ford Fiestas took the top three places. Skoda driver Esapekka Lappi retains his title lead despite not competing in Cyprus. The ERC moves next to the Valais, Switzerland, 23-25 October. See fiaerc.com. Photo @UKinCyprus

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roundup: Madrid has announced two new neighbourhoods in the city centre will be off limits to almost all but resident’s traffic from 1 January; just trucks making deliveries will be entitled to enter side roads in Sol and Palacio in the southern part of the city and then only between 10-13:00. Regular traffic will be able to use major thoroughfares and access parking garages says El Pais. Ultimately the entire city inside the M-30 ring road will be a Low Emission Zone (LEZ) though further measures will have to be confirmed by the next administration. Parking charges already vary by vehicle emissions. Meanwhile, during pollution alerts, Barcelona will raise road tolls by a quarter and cut public transport fares by half reports thelocal.es. Lisbon will also tighten its LEZ by banning all vehicles made before 2000 from the very centre of the city and all made before 1996 from the urban area says Portugal News. As now, historic vehicles will be exempt.

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The world record for the most countries visited in 24 hours was broken at the weekend, by car (mostly), in Europe.

Also, a fixed link between Italy and Sicily is back on the cards. There was a rash of unfortunate incidents at the weekend, on ferries to Italy and Sweden, and mountain roads in Bulgaria and Switzerland.

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RECORD RUN: 19 COUNTRIES IN 24 HOURS

World record for ‘most countries visited in one day’ broken.

Record breakers: from left to right, Gunnar Garfors, Tay-young Pak and Oystein Djupvik. Photo via @Garfors

Congratulations. The same team that equalled the world record for the most number of countries visited in 24 hours back in May – seventeen – beat it at their second attempt this weekend.

Gunnar Garfors, Tay-young Pak and Oystein Djupvik, all from Norway, drove through 19 countries, starting in Greece and ending in Liechtenstein, between midnight Saturday and midnight Sunday.

The trip included two flights, Skopje-Belgrade and Vienna-Dusseldorf, but was mostly on the road.

In chronological order: Greece, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Kosovo, Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, Slovenia, Austria, Hungary, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Switzerland, Liechtenstein.

After beating the previous record in 21.5 hours, the nineteenth country was wrapped up this time with 30 minutes to spare.

With a couple of Balkan countries not included, does it mean there is scope for this record to be broken?

Gunnar Garfors has form as a world record traveller. In 2012 he visited five countries on five continents in one day. In 2013 he became the world’s youngest hobby traveller after visiting every country in the world.

A book of his exploits ‘198’ has just been published in Norway. The English edition is scheduled for release next year.

For more on the world record challenge, including the tracking map, see garfors.com.

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Ponte Stretto: a bridge across the Strait of Messina, linking Sicily and the Italian mainland permanently for the first time, is back on the agenda after the original project was cancelled during the financial crisis. The boss of construction company Salini Impreglio tells ANSA he has discussed it with PM Matteo Renzi and even promised to forgo the cancellation fee due from the last time. Renzi is likely to be open to the idea as part of his ‘Sblocca Italia’ initiative to revive stalled infrastructure projects. Construction is likely to take six years. The route is currently served by high frequency ro-ro ferry between Messina and Villa San Giovanni. The crossing takes twenty minutes with return tickets including car costing €37-73.

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roundup: WEEKEND NEWS. Two people were injured when the Denmark-Sweden, Helsingor-Helsingborg ferry crashed into the pier on the Swedish side last night. The Captain managed to warn passengers in time. Pictures show a substantial gash at the front of the boat. Meanwhile, the Minoan Lines Greece-Italy, Patras-Ancona ferry ran aground briefly near Corfu yesterday afternoon. All 692 passengers were safely evacuated. Early on Sunday morning, a bus overturned on Bulgaria’s Hainboaz Pass – the Pass of the Republic – route 55 between Veliko Tarnovo and Gurkovo in the centre of the country. One woman died and two people were injured. The driver is said to have lost control in the wet. Finally, a British man died on the H28 Fluela Pass in east Switzerland on Saturday night according to thelocal.ch. The man, one of a pair on biker tour of European, crashed in the Chant Sura area towards the eastern end of the pass.

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