Cost of driving from U.K. to Playa Flamenca

Sail to Santandar or Bilbao & an easy 8 hours drive then of about 500mls motorway to Torrevieja. 10 gallons fuel maybe. 

We are driving from Lytham St Anne's to Ontinyent, on the Northern Costa Blanca, today and using the Eurotunnel. It is 1452 miles, will take 23 hours and we are doing it in one hit by driving in shifts.

We have a hybrid car and we will spend approx 250€ on fuel, depending on the forecourt costs today, and approx 100€ on tolls.

Our route from Calais will take us through Rouen, Tours, Bourdeaux, Pamplona, Zaragozza, Valencia, Ontinyent.

Loads of reasonable places to stop overnight if you choose to break up the journey.

We've done the ferry route a couple of times and we found the costs to be not too dissimilar to driving the whole way, but that was when petrol was cheaper than it is currently.

We just did more or less the same route 8 weeks ago and have recently received my French toll invoice. We were charged €105. From memory the Spanish tolls were between €20-30 on top.

Prior to travel, I worked out the actual one way cost of the journey, including the Euro Tunnel costs was around €500.

The only thing that fluctuates is the fuel cost and the recent rises have had a noticeable impact.

Really depends whether your going to travel via France or take the boat direct to Santander or Bilbao.

Driving through France could save a little money but once you add the additional hotel costs, tolls, fuel and of course the extra time, There's not that much in it. 

You need to ask yourself if you're happy to do a long drive and save a little money or a short drive and get to your destination relatively stress free. 

We've done both quite a few times and personally I would vote for the UK to Spain ferry......but then again I do most of the driving!

We used the Santander ferry and were initially impressed. 

However, the last time we were due to use them we got a message when we were on the outskirts of Santander telling us our Ferry was cancelled. Eventually got through to their Customer Service and was told earliest they could book us on a Ferry was in two weeks time! Not at all sympathetic and no compensation. We drove through France, had an overnight stay and still got home about the same time as we would have from the Santander Ferry.

The time before that the cabin was absolutely filthy.

The time before that we were 4 hours late into Santander.

Also the internet has been incredibly slow and makes it nigh on impossible booking things on websites, or even browsing was tedious.

So we will never use the Ferry again. We didn’t find the drive through France and Spain tedious with some good music and company of my charming wife! 

Sorry to hear of your trials and tribulations involving the ferry. We had a similar cancellation during Covid which meant we had to matriculate our car onto Spanish plates and fly home.

I'm only referring our experiences back to the pre Covid time and hoping that this would become the new normal. However, glad to hear that you have good company & music on your travels. Never say never.

We drove down to PF about 4 weeks ago. Ferry from Portsmouth to Bilbao around £750 return without a cabin. We booked a cabin for both ways and it came to around £1100. Filled up with £70 in UK and a small top up near Alicante to make sure we had enough. No probs at all with the ferry and the crossing was very calm, arrived on time in the ferry port. ( We did have a 2 night stop near Valencia as we have never been up that way).  All in all it was a great journey with no probs at all