New Start Neil
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Hi all,
We're going to go and visit some relatives of mine who live in Southern Spain (not far from Malage airport) and It will be me, SWMBO and my 12 year old Son (who gets bored quickly!) and I suddenly started to wonder about driving down there.
Now, although I have driven abroad (US & Europe) many times over the years, I've never done a "door to door" journey like this.
I looked at taking the ferry over to Santander (from Plymouth) but I don't fancy 24 hours on a boat, so I'm thinking of driving to Folkstone, getting a Eurotunnel train to Calais and then driving down from Calais to Spain.
According to distance-calculator.co.uk it is 1044 miles from Calais to our destination and at 70 mph this should take..... 15 hours.
I can't decide between:
Costs:
The flights (Easyjet) work out to circa £670 return (including luggage costs and Speedy Boarding).
The tunnel journeys are about £71 each way for the car and the 3 passengers and then I've factored in about £250 each way for fuel (so roughly £640).
I'm thinking although the car would obviously take longer, but we would get to see things and places on the way that we wouldn't by plane and it would just be a bit of a "different" experience.
Being a total n00b at this, is there anything I haven't factored in that would make a difference?
Have I over/understimated the driving time, is distance-calculator right in it's 15 hour estimation, etc etc.
All suggestions/advice welcome.
Cheers.
We're going to go and visit some relatives of mine who live in Southern Spain (not far from Malage airport) and It will be me, SWMBO and my 12 year old Son (who gets bored quickly!) and I suddenly started to wonder about driving down there.
Now, although I have driven abroad (US & Europe) many times over the years, I've never done a "door to door" journey like this.
I looked at taking the ferry over to Santander (from Plymouth) but I don't fancy 24 hours on a boat, so I'm thinking of driving to Folkstone, getting a Eurotunnel train to Calais and then driving down from Calais to Spain.
According to distance-calculator.co.uk it is 1044 miles from Calais to our destination and at 70 mph this should take..... 15 hours.
I can't decide between:
- Booking a hotel in Folkstone for night before the tunnel journey. Get a horribly early (4am ish) train to Calais that arives circa 6am and then ploughing on with the rest of the journey, arriving at our destination in Spain at about 9pm.
- Drive to Folkstone and get a later train (1pm ish) that arrives at Calais at about 3pm. Drive at least half of the journey until say 9/10pm, find somewhere to spend the night to break up the journey and then carry on with the rest of journey (6 or 7 hours depending on previous day's motoring) the next morning, arriving I would guess early afternoon.
Costs:
The flights (Easyjet) work out to circa £670 return (including luggage costs and Speedy Boarding).
The tunnel journeys are about £71 each way for the car and the 3 passengers and then I've factored in about £250 each way for fuel (so roughly £640).
I'm thinking although the car would obviously take longer, but we would get to see things and places on the way that we wouldn't by plane and it would just be a bit of a "different" experience.
Being a total n00b at this, is there anything I haven't factored in that would make a difference?
Have I over/understimated the driving time, is distance-calculator right in it's 15 hour estimation, etc etc.
All suggestions/advice welcome.
Cheers.