Spain & Portugal Road Trip - Where would you go?

I did. And a very entertaining read it was. However it took up the time I had earmarked to do more of my write-up so I have another excuse . As others have suggested, there needs to be a better way of sharing and updating info on roads and eateries in Spain and Portugal. I think there are more tips in your write-up than I found on the whole of PH when planning my trip. Unless of course I couldn't find them. Which brings me back around to. . .

I’ll get back to the trip next, but let’s talk toll tags first. As usual the best advice on these on the Interweb was on PH. Shame on me having completed dozens of road trips over decades through pretty much all of Western Europe, I didn’t even know there were toll tag options available for foreigners.

Now of course you could be of the view that the whole point of driving on the Iberian peninsula is to drive anywhere but motorways. However, our format involved 2 nights at all but one stopover. This was to avoid what can feel like a (too much) driving holiday, and gave us at least a day to enjoy where we had gone. To connect up the good bits (great roads bits and beach bits) it made sense to hammer a few miles out on the motorways.

Tolls in right-hand drive cars are a balls ache (less so on right-hand drive bikes. . . ). My prior toy (now for something completely different) to the GTS was an Ariel Nomad. I never took that onto the mainland. ‘Er outdoors was remarkably tolerant of travelling in the old roller skate and we did some great trips to Devon and Wales. But the mainland seemed a step too far partly because of tolls. Not being able to reach the machine means undoing a four-point harness and probably having to get out. If you have ever tried to get in and out of an Ariel quickly and elegantly, you will have a physique like Taylor Swift. I still shudder at the nightmare vision of doing the French tolls as a solo driver in a Nomad. You will be the most unpopular person in France.

Every pull up to the toll machines in a right hooker is a balancing trick. Too far away from the machine and ‘er outdoors has to unbuckle and clamber out of the window to pick a ticket or shove the card into the machine – especially in a sportscar. Too close and you will curb your alloys on the seriously unyielding high concrete curbs. I know – I’ve done it twice.

Not to mention the irritation of seeing local drivers flying through the tolls because they have electronic tags, or being lured into drag races (that you never really meant to have but the locals insist on).

There seemed some close run options, but I went for Ulys from French autoroute operator Vinci in the end. Once I had determined that the charges could be applied directly to my bank (NatWest – yes I know. . .) because apparently not all of them allow you to set the foreign payments up, I went for it. https://ulys.vinci-autoroutes.com/en/ You pay a small fee for the days you are incurring charges plus of course the charges themselves.

The unit itself sticks to the inside of your screen behind the mirror. There isn’t much room there in a 718, and when we got in the car to leave, it had fallen off the screen after I’d installed it a couple of days before. It got a bit of a firmer shove second time around, and as far as I can remember is still there.



Anyway – as far as I can tell – it worked perfectly. To my great surprise, all bar one Spanish motorway we used was toll-free. That was a section we used a couple of times near Estepona on the Costa del Sol.

Portugal though is interesting from a tolls point of view. Unlike in France and Spain it seems that there is no cash/card alternative. It’s a toll tag or nothing. Bad news I suppose if you end up on a Portugues motorway expecting to pay as you go. However, there are no barriers either. Tolls are activated by passing under wireless gantries. These serve no other purpose than to communicate with drivers’ tags and photograph tagless vehicles. I don’t recall seeing another Brit-registered car in Portugal, and I think rental cars usually come with tags, but if you are unprepared, you could probably drive all over Portugal clocking up fines without ever knowing. I say ‘ever’ because perhaps they can catch up with somehow. But to be honest I can’t see how. Anyone been nicked in Portugal for not paying toll fees. . ?

For perspective, our toll fees in Portugal amounted to €44 and in Spain €4.20. So given the miles we did, Portugal motorways seem quite dear and Spain a bit of a bargain.

I have yet to receive a bill for using Portuguse toll motorways. Think the only way you would be caught would be by a traffic plod physical stop....
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Interesting . Makes me feel we got mugged a bit. The Ulys tag did provide peace of mind though. And I should have mentioned, covers France as well as Spain - and you definitley aren't going to get away with toll-free motoring in France. . .

Day 3. Fuente Dé to Casa das Penhas Douradas, Manteigas 570km.

(Day 2. Involved both horse riding and hiking in the Picos de Europa The national park here has 60% of the entire Iberian peninsula’s fauna, with deciduous forests reminiscent of our own, but also with wildlife we don’t even have in Hampshire. We didn’t see any brown bears or wolves, but we did see Griffon vultures both in the distance and close-in up on the peaks. There are very few places where you can see these amazing birds with a near 10 foot wingspan. There are a few around the Gorge du Tarn in France where they have been reintroduced, but the vast majority of the European population is in the Spanish mountains. If this is your sort of thing – and it definitely is mine – then it is yet another reason to come to this best kept secret corner of Iberia.)

On the second day in the Picos, we also drove down the mountain a little to the first village – Espinama in search of lunch. Sadly, several of the houses in the village were derelict, and an abandoned farm provided fascinating to explore and a sort of mausoleum to the local farming past.



But we found a small restaurant which opened at 1:30. We wondered around the village to kill time before the restaurant opened and dived through the door at 1:31. No one else walked in for the next half an hour which at first was a bit disconcerting. However, the quality of the local food blew us away – and by the time we left – a couple of hours later, the place was heaving with smartly-dressed locals making a meal of their Saturday lunch.



The other of Iberia’s best kept secrets is Serra de Estrela – or the Star Mountains. Described by Henry Catchpole no less as having “The best roads in the world” I wanted to drive here since watching this video.



This is what inspired me to hunt down the best roads in the Serra Estrella

So that was the next stop on the itinerary. The excellent roads continued as we headed south through the Cantabrian range. Until that is we got to the border between Spanish regions Cantabria and Castille & Leon. At this exact point the road deteriorated sharply and was rough, there were potholes and lots of dust. Aside from the dust, it could have been in the UK. This was in stark contrast to the roads around and up to Fuente Dé. If British roads are your reference then you won’t be able to imagine what the Picos roads are like. The only public roads I have driven on that are comparable are in Germany. The roads of this part of the Picos are ribbons of the kind of smooth black tarmac only found in Britain at a race track.

The CA-184 out of the Picos eventually improved, but was a little too tight and wiggly to provide much fun. We turned onto the CL-287 which opened out a bit and led us to our coffee stop at Cervera de Pisuerga which is a proper northern Spanish small town. The next table in the coffee shop was occupied by a family of parents with teenage son and daughter all dressed head to toe in camo.
While the equivalent British families were at this moment heading to Ikea and a lunch at Nandos, this happy crew had loaded their Toyota Landcruiser with half a dozen shotguns and were headed for the hills for a bit of hunting. Families that shoot together stay together.

This good omen presaged a bit of unsung road that was perhaps my favourite of the whole trip: the P277 southwards to the A67. Hilly rather than mountainous, sparse vegetation leaving great sight lines. Fast straights interspersed with constant radius curves and long sweepers, it probably suited the (oft-accused of being, but debatably) high-geared 718 better than the really twisty stuff.

No amount of Google research let me identify exactly where the Catchpole video was filmed or which were the actual best roads in the Serra de Estrela, but we were about to find out.

But first we had to get there. A little local knowledge would have come in useful when we were directed by our Satnav up a tiny side road off the ‘main’ EN232 that runs into and through Manteigas – the nearest town to our high altitude hotel. The car grounded on the steep turn and several more times as we drove up a single-track cobbled road which seemed to have about a 30% gradient. It was also signposted as a dead-end. Google Maps confirmed this was in fact the way to our hotel. What were we to know? So we soldiered on, grounding and grinding our way upwards. Eventually though we decided that unless all the hotel guests and provisions got there by mountain goat, there had to be another way. Finding it involved reversing down the mountain track for about a half a mile before reaching a precarious point to turn around. We found our way back into Manteigas.

We knew the hotel was above the town somewhere, but with regularly changing and always conflicting directions from the Porsche satnav and Google Maps, we left the town on more tiny roads in about 5 directions. But we always ended up in the centre of the cobbled town (everything is cobbled in and for miles around Manteigas. I think the GTS ride is remarkable supple – but Lord those cobbles were tiring.



In the end we asked a local to point us in the right direction. He gave us the best advice: “Ignore all the satnavs and Google Maps. Just follow the EN232 into the town, through the town, and to your hotel. Now why didn’t the hotel tell us that? (They did – when we got there.) In the end it took us 2 hours to do the actual 12km it would have taken on the EN232 from Manteigas to the hotel. Still now you know.

Our hotel for the next stop was the Casa das Penhas Douradas which has a sister hotel also on the EN232 closer to Manteigas. At first I was unsure about the hotel. Very expensively built by some celebrated architect in a very distinct Scandi-style. After checking-in we walked into the ‘cocktail lounge’ where due to the altitude (about 2,000m. It was late September), a fire was raging alongside the display of vintage cross-country skis.

The guests were all a certain kind of discerning Europeans. Discerning in the sense that they probably scoured the continent for ‘sustainable’ hotels and had enough money to fund their luxury beliefs.

The ski-decked lounge was thus completely silent and when anyone spoke they whispered. I lowered the tone a bit I expect by talking at normal volume, and heartily helping ourselves to the Prosecco. Life’s too short.

The hotel did have the precious and sepulchral atmosphere of a retreat, but our room was fabulous and huge. And the amazing attention to detail in its construction was reflected in the food. In particular the breakfast. It was just fabulous.

We had breakfast early enough for me to go out solo and explore the area a bit in the 718. I’m not really allowed to drive above about 60% with ‘er outdoors in the mountains. This used to irk me, but I seemed to have reached the age where driving ‘briskly’ rather than bonkers on even quiet public roads seems generally a good idea.

But at 9:00 am in the Serra Estrella with absolutely nothing else on the roads I did go a bit bonkers.

I’ll cover that in the next instalment.

So Casa das Penhas is just off the 'main road' (not really 'main' at all, but at least 2-lane) by about half a mile. Both the hotel and the N232 are visible on your map. The problem with getting to the hotel started on entering the cobbled maze that is Manteigas. The issue is that both the car satnav and Google maps want you to shortcut the N232 by cutting off the loops and going straight up the hill. The problem for us started at the entrance to the village which I marked on the map below close to the Hotel de Fabrica. We were sent right here, and even when we back-tracked into Manteigas we kept on getting sent up undriveable tracks straight up the mountain. As you can see from the map, to get to both sister hotels you have to follow the N232 east out of the town, whereas the Casa das Penhas is due west of Manteigas. This is obvious on the map, but was a nightmare on the ground.

Manteigas is a much smaller pretty mountain village, I had an enjoyable hour or so walking around.
Covilhã is much larger, with an old town and distinctly different modern development further down the "hill". Hence many more options for eating/drinking/staying.
I won't pre-empt the next installment, but there are very few dull roads around this area. Make sure to give yourself enough time to explore them.