Driving in Southern Portugal and Southern Spain
Discussion
Hi, I'm doing a fly drive holiday next week and I've just been looking at the route and I'm trying to find interesting roads and points of interest along the way.
We're flying to Lisbon, hiring a car and driving through to Seville, Granada, then heading south and coming back along the coast via Marbella, Gibraltar then back into Portugal to Faro, then back to Lisbon.
Any suggestions or little detours that you can suggest?
cheers,
Jon
We're flying to Lisbon, hiring a car and driving through to Seville, Granada, then heading south and coming back along the coast via Marbella, Gibraltar then back into Portugal to Faro, then back to Lisbon.
Any suggestions or little detours that you can suggest?
cheers,
Jon
Jont999 said:
We're flying to Lisbon, hiring a car and driving through to Seville, Granada, then heading south and coming back along the coast via Marbella, Gibraltar then back into Portugal to Faro, then back to Lisbon.
I've always found the coast road [ N340 ?]from Malaga to Fuengirola a nightmare.
Best avoided by staying well inland.
If you have time - a few places to visit on the Algarve.
Villa Real de Santo Antonio and Tavira.
In terms of driving, there's some spectacular scenery on the old N122 which runs from Villa Real de Santo Antonio up to Alcoutim - which is a lovely place to stop for lunch on the river.
From there, I'd head North up to Mertola - another good place to wander around and have a coffee.
From there, take the N267 west to the N2 and drop down to Faro.
It's a full day of driving, including a couple of stops for coffee / lunch.
Others may have better suggestions, but I love that part of Europe - been going there for several years now and have only scratched the surface of what it has to offer.
I think what I most like are the roads in the hills where you can drive for tens of miles without seeing anything other than old blokes with piss-pot helmets on their funny little pre-revolution 125cc bikes.
Villa Real de Santo Antonio and Tavira.
In terms of driving, there's some spectacular scenery on the old N122 which runs from Villa Real de Santo Antonio up to Alcoutim - which is a lovely place to stop for lunch on the river.
From there, I'd head North up to Mertola - another good place to wander around and have a coffee.
From there, take the N267 west to the N2 and drop down to Faro.
It's a full day of driving, including a couple of stops for coffee / lunch.
Others may have better suggestions, but I love that part of Europe - been going there for several years now and have only scratched the surface of what it has to offer.
I think what I most like are the roads in the hills where you can drive for tens of miles without seeing anything other than old blokes with piss-pot helmets on their funny little pre-revolution 125cc bikes.
Well that was an interesting 1800km! One of the best drives I've had for ages is avoiding TomTom's fastest route recommendation (and several toll s) for the route from Lisbon to Seville. We headed south on the E01 from Lisbon, then turned off towards Beja on the IP8, towards the border, the landscape gets quite dramatic with big mountains and twisty roads. As we found out, TomTom really doesn't like the narrow roads of Seville and had to rely on following a taxi to get us to our hotel, hard work but Seville is beautiful.
As for the other places we went to, we found that without taking a huge detour or busy local roads, you're pretty much limited to the major toll roads which aren't cheap but are of a high quality and are reasonably quiet.
As for the other places we went to, we found that without taking a huge detour or busy local roads, you're pretty much limited to the major toll roads which aren't cheap but are of a high quality and are reasonably quiet.
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