Driving to Spain?

Information to make your journey more pleasureable

Driving to Spain from the U.K. is an experience and a long one at that. With a 13 year old and a 5 year old to entertain along the way you would think it would be anything but enjoyable. But it was great! We had a good time and here are our tips on surviving the 1,240 mile journey that we did in 2 days.

entertaining children on long car journey

1 The Spanish are courteous on the Motorway. Overtake and then move back in. Do not hog the outer lane.

2 If someone wants to get past you, they do not flash their lights. Instead they leave their left indicator on until you move aside.

3. The services are clean and pleasant. There are shaded areas for you to leave your car. There are picnic areas and parks for the children to let off steam.

4. Make sure you take toys and entertainment for the children. We took a laptop which we could play DVD's on (7 hour battery time), the Nintendo DS and our iPhones have games on them.

5. We also took plenty of music.

6. Don't forget the old favourites are the best. I Spy, 20 questions, the yes and no game. We also used the shuffle on the iPod to create our own game. 2 points for the quickest to guess the artist and the song title.

7. Take a cool box packed with food.

8. Make sure you have some food in the car with you, don't leave everything in the boot. Little ones will get bored and hungry!

9. Have plenty of water in the car.

10. Have coins or your credit card ready to use at the toll booths.

11. Have a sat nav! Have a back up map in the car in case you have a problem with the sat nav.

12. Enjoy the fabulous views. The countryside is beautiful with fields of sunflowers, vineyards, olives and mountains.

beautiful views

sunflowers

historic buildings

13. I sat in the back with my youngest and our 13 year old sat in the front. Splitting up the children proved to be an effective strategy! Note children have to be over 12 years old in order to sit in the front seat.

14. A Phrasebook!

If you decide to travel by car to Spain then the key is organisation.

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