Friday 2 February 2024
Now that Dave is officially an OAP and I am currently unemployed we do have to be careful with our travel fund and not fritter it away unnecessarily. We spent £86 on the French toll roads but only because we were pressed for time just having one day to get to our friends in the Pyrenees so we sucked it up. The last hour of the journey however was in complete contrast to the previous twelve on the motorway!
Our mission for Spain and Portugal was to travel more leisurely and always avoid the toll roads, even if it meant a longer journey. On the whole, we’ve managed it so far with a couple of annoying and unplanned exceptions. The toll roads in Spain and Portugal are an incredibly quick way of getting from A to B but the scenic routes are much more rewarding (albeit rather potholed at times).
On many journeys we’ve weaved around the motorways, driven through villages with cobbled roads and busy towns. We’ve often driven on parallel roads and occasionally even driven a few miles on the lovely smooth fast toll roads then directed swiftly off them again by our sat nav (set to ‘Avoid Tolls’) before arriving at the ‘peage’.
The ‘problem’ with Portuguese Toll roads is the system is quite complicated, especially in a foreign registered vehicle, and many are only electronic. To use these you need to have registered your car before you travel on them as there is no lane where you can pay by card. Thankfully the one Portuguese Toll road we inadvertently ended up on wasn’t an electronic one so I was able to pay the €4 for a mere 12 accidental miles on it by card.
Route planning for our journey to Lisbon from the Setúbal Peninsula showed two options. One was a 3hr 16 minute trip which would avoid the toll payment for the 2.25km April 25 bridge over the River Tagus.
Ponte 25 de Abril / 25th of April Bridge - Lisbon
No comments:
Post a Comment