Why I chose to drive to Spain, instead of fly!
This year, instead of making my June pilgrimage to the Costa Brava, in the north east corner of Spain, by air, I decided to drive.
The decision not to further line the pockets of Michael O’Leary wasn’t ‘driven’ by a dislike of Ryanair, in fact, the budget airline has always served us well on our regular flights to Girona over the years. It was driven by two other factors.
First of all, my sister, Belinda, is an artist and on one drunken night/early morning on one of our visits in the previous year, she had promised a painting to a good friend and restauranteur in the Catalan tourist resort of L’Estartit (above), about two hours north of Barcelona. Her art can sometimes be quite sizeable and Primo (our restauranteur friend) had a large wall to fill, so taking her work by air was not an option.
Secondly, I have a pathological dislike of the way some car rental companies put pressure on you to buy unnecessary add ons and insurance on arrival – something I have experienced at Girona airport and something I get annoyed thinking about. My theory is that this is a money-making exercise, driven by commission and bonuses, and not at all necessary.
In fact, in a recent car hire survey by Which?, under half of people arriving in Spain felt under pressure to buy more insurance at the car rental desk and 86% said they were worried about getting ripped off when hiring a vehicle. You can read my blog post, with advice and tips about hiring a car on holiday here.
Add to this that I hate waiting and not being in charge of my own destiny. This includes queuing at the bottom of those sweaty steps, having paid an extra few quid to be front of the queue. You then wait in a badly ventilated staircase, pressed up against other annoyed travellers (including grouchy babies), as you wait for the previous passengers to disembark before you can lug your carry-on up the stairs to your cramped seat, wait to be served rubbish food and pressurised into buying a scratch card (ah, it appears I do have a dislike of Ryanair, after all).
And, if you’re driving when you get to the other end, you can’t even order several over-priced miniatures of gin (which you never get enough tonic to dilute – which isn’t necessarily a bad thing), in order to improve the experience and blot out the sounds of infants crying
Granted, driving instead of flying means missing out on a 4am Aperol spritz, but it also means you can be in charge of your own destiny and that the holiday starts from the moment you put your suitcases into your car and lock your front door.
Even if you hit traffic, you can turn off the motorway and take a break at one of France’s many excellent ‘aires’ or motorway services. Plus, you don’t have to be weighed down by what you can and can’t take on board your flight or having to pay extra to put a suitcase in the hold. Pack all your toiletries. Bring all the wine home. Make a holiday out of the journey.
Tips and advice about French roads can be found in a previous blogpost here. Apart from the obvious necessity of making sure your car is roadworthy and fit for the journey, here are The Sun Lounger’s 10 tips on driving to Spain from the UK:
- Forget the ferry and take the tunnel
If you’re wondering what’s best, the tunnel or ferry, the answer is, hands down, the tunnel, now called Le Shuttle.
On your outward journey, you’ll be eager to get moving and I find the ferry journey just too lengthy and too much of a faff to get on and off. Plus, there’s the scramble to get a seat, if you haven’t reserved one (we’ve had to sit on the floor for the entire crossing during peak season) and then there’s the frantic queuing at the top of the stairs to re-join your vehicle.
On the way home, you’ll be eager to get back too, so at just 35 minutes for the crossing, the ferry doesn’t compare to the tunnel.
Granted the ferry can be a cheaper option, but there’s a reason for that. It’s simply not, in my opinion, as good, as fast or as convenient. Plus, if you are travelling with pets (see my blogpost about travelling with pets here), it’s so much easier to keep them in the car and roll on and off Le Shuttle.
Quite often, I have found that when you rock up at Folkestone to board the train, if you are early, they will put you on an earlier crossing, meaning you will be in France – and ready for the holiday to commence – even sooner.
- Don’t trust your car’s sat nav
While I always have my car’s sat nav on too, as it projects on to my windscreen and reminds me of my speed, it’s also good to download Waze, as not only does that tell you if there are police en route and when there’s a speed trap, it notifies you when there is traffic ahead and recommends alternative routes, which my car’s sat nav does not.
Always believe the arrival time Waze gives you and not what your car tells you – unless yours takes traffic into consideration, that is.
- Think wisely about when to travel
French roads are a million times better than UK ones and driving the 956 miles from home in Cambridgeshire down to L’Estartit, we only encountered congestion once, around Lyon, as we neared our overnight stop off. We latterly found out that was because it was a public holiday and everyone was leaving work and heading off on their holidays too!
I should have planned better. Mind you, it wasn’t as bad as the time we stupidly set off to drive through France once, unaware it was what the French refer to as ‘le weekend noir’ – when office and factories had shut down for the holidays and we travelled bumper to bumper for 26 hours, double the time it normally takes from Calais to L’Estartit.
- Invest in a toll tag
One of the wisest decisions I ever made for driving in mainland Europe was getting a toll tag, which speeds you through the toll plazas at every péage, where there can often be lengthy queues at peak holiday times. If you’re travelling on your own and in a righthand drive vehicle, getting out and running found to the left to insert your debit card, isn’t the best option and a tag negates the need to do this. It also helps if you have a sleeping passenger in the front seat.
There are a few brands of tag, some of which cost €10 to register for (mine was free when I applied). I have an E-Movis tag and it cost me €110 each way in tolls this June, which was debited from my bank account via direct debit at the end of the month. The tag can also be used in Spain and Portugal.
A word to the wise, while French roads are brilliant, many French drivers are not. Their way of letting you know they want to overtake is by sitting centimetres off your bumper at 130kph, edging towards the central reservation. It doesn’t matter if there is a car in front of you, not going fast enough for you to get by. The driver behind you, flailing his or her arms, is obviously in much more need to get where they are going than you are!
- Don’t let AI plan your route
This blogpost was going to be solely about the fun and adventures of letting ChatGPT plan my route but, I was so dissatisfied with the results it gave me after several attempts I made, that I gave up.
Mind you, I don’t know why I trusted it in the first place. I had once before asked it to create a business profile picture of me for LinkedIn purposes and what came back was way more Martine McCutcheon than me.
I know that AI has its uses and I don’t want to appear my age when I say that I am not a huge fan. Yes, I like to send my kids an occasional AI meme of one of them being arrested by the police or swept off their feet by Superman, and one of my children just sent me one of aliens abducting my dog (I could only watch it once as poor Pablo looked so unhappy with his kidnapping). But my love for AI stops there.
When I asked ChatGPT to find me a character hotel, less than 15 minutes from the motorway, approximately six hours from Calais and costing less than €150 per night, the sorry examples it sent me were not up to scratch. I got fed up with asking it to refine my search, gave up and booked my own accommodation.
- Plan your overnight stopovers
We toyed with breaking the 12-hour or so drive from Calais to L’Estartit into three blocks of four-hour drives (I don’t count the 2-2.5 hour journey from home to Folkestone in that time), having two overnight stopovers each way. However, that would lengthen the holiday to 11 days (with one week in Spain) and both my sister and I didn’t want to be away from our dogs/children/partners for that long.
I enjoy driving, love French roads and am used to driving for six hours at a time, so we decided to have one stopover instead, cutting the holiday down to nine days.
When I put my destination into Waze, it gave me two options for routes, one which goes to the west and the other to the east of Paris. I always opt for the one which takes me to the east, avoiding Paris altogether, having been stuck for hours on the ‘peripherique’ around the French capital in the past.
After my disappointing flirtation with ChatGPT, I decided to simply book an hotel I’d stayed in twice before, the last time being about eight years ago – Hôtel de la Tour (above) in Châtillon-sur-Chalaronne, in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, not far from Mâcon and slightly north of Lyon.
The last time we stayed at Hôtel de la Tour, just before we arrived, I had an email from the manager, saying the hotel was actually going to be closed when we arrived, but that they would leave us the keys to the entire hotel and we were still welcome to stay. We enjoyed pretending it was our French country house and were grateful at not having to change our plans.
I loved the hotel then and love it still. There are actually two hotels under the same umbrella – Hôtel de la Tour, which is smack bang in the centre of this very picturesque Burgundian town and Les Jardins de la Tour (below), ever so slightly out of the centre of town and where I thought we were staying, having stayed there previously.
We swept into the car park of Les Jardins de la Tour to find out we’d actually booked Hôtel de la Tour, so had to drag our suitcases less than 10 minutes through the town, across the cobbles to the latter. It was no hardship – although others have complained about it on Tripadvisor/Google reviews, having made the same mistake.
Both historic buildings are gorgeously renovated and very beautifully and tastefully decorated. To our delight, we had been upgraded to a fabulous, roomy suite with bathroom in the tower (or turret) of the building itself, a vast bed and oodles of space. The hotel is in the centre of the town, which is awash with medieval, timber-framed buildings. Expect some noise from the traffic and street.
Breakfast was superb, the staff lovely and our sleep very good indeed. It was well worth the very reasonable €117/£101) we paid. We loved it so much and service was so good that we booked Les Jardins de la Tour for the return leg of the journey (€103/£89). I recommend a cocktail by the pool, under the wisteria.
Sadly, we had to be up too early to have breakfast at Les Jardins – but are sure it would have been spot on.
I would have liked to have booked directly with the hotel, but couldn’t seem to do so via their website, which wasn’t working at the time, and they didn’t respond to the message I sent them via Instagram. Booking.com got my money!
- Take the time to discover France off the beaten track
Turn off the main A7 Autoroute de Soleil into rural France, on your way south, and you’ll find textbook-pretty France at almost every turn. Châtillon-sur-Chalaronne is exactly that. People are friendly and strangers sing ‘bonjour madame’ to you as you pass on the street.
It’s approached via rolling countryside, dotted with huge, local Charolais bulls grazing alongside their ‘wives’, and roads lined with plane trees, offering shade. It has a covered timber market and isn’t full of tourists, making you feel somewhat special and in-the-know.
Undoubtedly, one of the best things about France is the food and one of the best things about overnighting in Châtillon-sur-Chalaronne is the ability eat at the delightful and delicious La Gourmandine (above), perched on the banks of the Chalaronne river.
You can sit on the terrace, surrounded by heavily-scented, intoxicating jasmine, watch the ducks on the river and enjoy the simply stunning food. We ate for around €100 (with wine) and enjoyed the Burgundy snails in Persillade (€18.50), tomato gazpacho, homemade basil sorbet and marinated crayfish (€16) and simply served, tender local beef (24.50).
The service was friendly and efficient…but what would you expect from an owner called Vanessa?
The Japanese-style loo is rather out of character for the restaurant but utterly fabulous and fun!
- Keep it classy
A very classy, half-French friend of mine always takes a table cloth with her on lengthy road trips to her house in Brittany, always elevating a simple motorway services picnic. I liked this so much that I copied her and always have one about my person to throw over a picnic table at the services.
Stop at Carrefour Cité Europe in Calais (you can get to it directly from the exit of Le Shuttle) and stock up on baguettes, pate and cheese for your journey. Travelling by car and not plane also means you can take a bread knife with you.
- International breakdown cover is worth every penny
Don’t skimp. That £32 for cover might be the best money you’ve ever spent. On one previous trip, upon crossing the border into Spain, my car decided to overheat and we were temporarily stranded on the side of the motorway in temperatures of over 30 degrees.
Thankfully we had roadside recovery, meaning someone was out to us at lightning speed and it cost us nothing. I have never travelled abroad without cover since.
- Check out parking before you leave
Wherever you are going, make sure you can park when you get there. Lots of seaside resorts have very limited parking. Luckily, you can park on the street for free before 15th June in L’Estartit and there is free parking on the edge of the beach all year round.
In other little towns nearby, there is very limited parking and what there is, is hugely expensive!
My verdict on flying versus driving to Spain? I found it an all-round much more relaxing and enjoyable way to get to Spain, albeit taking longer and adding a couple of days to our trip. It was great to go at our own pace.
The cost was approximately the same (although I added 2,000 miles to my car’s mileage), I didn’t have the hassle of disputing the need for extra insurance at the car hire desk and my sister’s artwork (we delivered two paintings) now hangs proudly on the walls of Restaurant Garbi at Passeig Maritim in L’Estartit (above).
Will I be doing it again? In a heartbeat.
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