Spain / road / ferry

[Renegade_Master]

Planing a trip to Costa Del Sol by road, apparantly from Calais to Marbella via Paris, Bordeax, Biaritz, Burgos, Madrid, Granada , Marbella is a about 1350miles

Someone today suggested taking ferry (S'Hampton or Portsmouth I think) to Bilbao is preferable. Ferry takes 1.5 days ? apparantly then Spain from then on no France.

What does the team think. This is a Happy post.

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[tr7v8]

Other option is to use Santander Ferry which shortens the journey big time, previous boss used to use that route.
Have a play in Autoroute, hit route, then planner, enter destination(s) and hit find directions.
Become a member of the Ferry Travel club if you're looking at using ferries more than once or twice a year as it'll save you a fortune.

Jim
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[coliholic]

My brother's done it a couple of times and reckons it's excellent.

Ferry leaves around midnight, P&O from Portsmouth I think and gets in early morning two days later, so sort of a day and a half on board. Cuts your driving distance down to about 700 miles and about £300 for the ferry so not too bad.

Biggest downside for you though Clive, is I'm pretty sure you can't take your Rotweillers on board. Got a sneaky feeling that there was a TV news prog about this last year, someone turned up with their guide dog and they wouldn't let 'em on and I'm pretty sure they don't take animals. Bit far for dogs to swim behind. Best to check?

Other route is Brittanny Ferries Plymouth to Santander, but that's a bit of a trek to Plymouth.

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[DepSol]

I did St malo to biaritz etc etc but went via Cordoba as we stopped to visit family.

Dont go via Cordoba worst road in the world. winds more than monaco. French toll roads are a doddle and make the journey very easy and are very cheap, Spanish oads have less toll roads and going through Madrid was hell with so many lanes and everyone cutting each other up.

Good Motels just outside bieritz 1.5 miles from the macdonalds as you are going in. make sure you get traffic news for the mountain pass an also traffic news via granada to malaga.


<hr width=100% size=1>Dom

2003 is going to be a good year for me

 

[steviewhitts]

Plymouth to Santander takes c.22 hours. Ferry departs Plymouth either midday Sunday or midday (ish) Wednesday. Check out Brittany Ferries website for details. Brittany Ferries is now licenced to take dogs under the Pets scheme although you will need to check on the requirments like micro-chipping the dogs etc. Cost is high though - Brittany Ferries dont come cheap I'm afraid. Expect to pay over £600-00 for peak-season crossing only (return).
Good luck and be quick if you want to go during school hols - they might already be booked up.
Cheers
Steviewhitts.

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[banus]

Plymouth Santander is a doddle. 24hrs on the boat get plenty of sleep/food/drink.
i did it late last year. Flat out took me 8 hrs to Banus but that was about 220k per hour on my own. with swimbo, toilet stops,tea breaks etc expect about 12 hours for the trip. Madrid is a doddle if you know how to doit. I would do it again just because I enjoyed it so much. easyjet from Bristol £50 and 2hrs 10 minutes is much easier. cheers
Jeff

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[tcm]

Hmm. From Calais, this requires 14 hours of seriously nailing a v8/v12 german motor car towards 150 and cruising at 130, lots of sarnies and 2 dozen cans of red bull. Paris will slow you down heavily unless tackled late at night but has wider roads north and south than the reims/troyes alternative to Lyons, so leave calais at midnight for Paris boulevarde peripherique eastabout just before 2 and onto a6 at porte d'orleans to Lyons (centre, notthe rocard est) just after 4, then folow marseilles and bercelona to spain around 6.30 - wider roads and flatter than via bordeaux, then vaguley coastal but fast tollroad A7 all the way to Murcia with final 250miles on non-toll but still quick roads. On no account permit any music as this will slow you down trying to hear it over the wind roar, so pretend you have lost the front, and turn off mobiles beeping which send alarming welcome messages as you move through the coverage zones. Headlights on all the time. No, they do not clock you between toll booths. Saturday night/Sunday morning best as there are very few lorries and light southbound traffic. Limit stops to every 5-8 minutes every two hours - and if your fuel range lasts any longer than two hours you aren't doing the miles quickly enough. You need to get passengers ready to rush in and pay for fuel while you run on the spot and fill up, the loo, then another red bul, then run back to the car and off again. Note that you drive from night into day, hence a natural tendency for your body to wake up. Do not listen to any directions from passengers, although at elevated speeds they tend not to make any noises whatsoever.

 

[coliholic]

Sounds a good plan only one minor problem tcm. If I remember right, he wants to do this trip in Luton box van with two dogs on board too. So maybe a bit slower?

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[tcm]

Re: plan b

oh well. In that case I would ahem take a plane and let someone else do the entire drive on their own. tee hee.

 

[danielj]

Re: plan b

P&O only £300?!?!!?

My father and I are contemplating the trip down to marbella this in his car, purely for the driving pleasure of the new roads down there. I went to P&O's website recently and for like a 10 day trip return during August it was £1000 +/- a 100 or so and that was one for one of the lowest cabins. Even in the paper we saw an ad for a deal to bilbao for like £600+ but when I checked again the website it was still sky high. We haven't contacted a travel agent yet so not sure what they can muster.

On second thoughts are ya'll quoting one way prices?

A £2 depreciation per mile we definately don't want to spend the time or money to drive all the way from Calais

Anyway... I just checked brittany and it's about the same (£1000+).

I'm sure it's an awesome drive but is it worth the hard earned ££££??

Still a little time to decide...


Daniel

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[danielj]

Re: plan b

P&O only £300?!?!!?

My father and I are contemplating the trip down to marbella this summer in his car as we are probably going to visit there anyway and we want to take a nice road trip, espeically along the new spanish roads down there. I went to P&O's website recently and for like a 10 day trip return during August it was £1000 +/- a 100 or so and that was one for one of the lowest cabins. Even in the paper we saw an ad for a deal to bilbao for like £600+ but when I checked again the website it was still sky high. We haven't contacted a travel agent yet so not sure what they can muster.

On second thoughts are ya'll quoting one way prices?

A £2 depreciation per mile we definately don't want to spend the time or money to drive all the way from Calais

Anyway... I just checked brittany and it's about the same (£1000+), plus it's a longer drive to plymouth.

I'm sure it's an awesome drive but is it worth the hard earned ££££??

Still a little time to decide...

Daniel

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[jhr]

This seems a little unambitious when, for a few quid (or so) extra you could buy a McLaren F1 and shave several hours off your door-to-door time. I disagree about silent passengers at elevated speeds; in my experience, they make quite a lot of incoherent and distracting noise. However, perhaps this is an idiosyncracy, specific to those who think they are about to die in a horrible and pointless manner.

Sending luggage, kids etc. ahead with the au pair in a mass-market diesel estate should help "average" the fuel costs across the 2 vehicles, thus containing expense. Well, that's what I'd tell the wife, anyway.



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