# Driving to Spain



## Michael Ennis (Aug 14, 2015)

My wife and i will be moving to spain in december.

We will be driving from ireland.

Given the time of year, i was hoping to avoid the pyrennes mountains as they will be snow covered.

My sat nag is a nervous traveller and wants to avoid driving in the snow.

Does anyone know a possible route from south of france into spain avoiding the mountains or is this unavoidable..

Any suggestions would be welcome..

:fingerscrossed:


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## baldilocks (Mar 7, 2010)

Michael Ennis said:


> My wife and i will be moving to spain in december.
> 
> We will be driving from ireland.
> 
> ...


You will find that the authorities there are used to snowy roads and do a good job of clearing them. 

As we were driving here with a LWB van in early November 2008, I was talking on the phone to somebody in UK and recall the response from the other end of the line when I said it was snowing.


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## ccm47 (Oct 15, 2013)

In 2010 we left travelling from the UK to Murcia until early Dec. Almost all of the UK had been covered in snow for days and the morning we left, the snow fell for the first time at our house which was very near Poole, so as far south as you can get thus completing 100% coverage. Cherbourg in France was closed to HGVs that day as the previous day a number of lorries had got stuck going up the hills, so Brittany Ferries diverted everybody to Le Havre and leaving from Portsmouth, not Poole.
We took a 7.5 ton Ford Cargo horsebox laden with 3 horses, all their tack, food etc so we had overnight stabling stopovers booked for Rennes, Bordeaux and Zaragoza (via Biarritz). The further south we drove the less snow there was. The north-south motorways had clearly had snow ploughs out and there were many snow piles around but all the motorways were easy to drive. 
We understand that parts of the east-west Brittany motorway were impassable at the time, but could not confirm that. Equally we saw TV pictures of Teruel in Spain with 8 inches of snow, (we always have a competition between us of how low the temp will be there) but by lunchtime the next day it had totally disappeared! We wondered if the TV crew had really gone to Teruel town but gone to one of the nearby ski resorts?

Personally I wouldn't deliberately choose to cross France again in Dec but if I had to I would stick with the western coastal routes, and rely on the motorways as these will be kept open if at all possible. Yes there are tolls to pay but they are cheaper than accident repairs. The Pyrenees can be unpredictable, we had snow in June in Andorra one year! However on the western side it's much more likely to be rain or drizzle than snow, that's why most of the ski resorts are nearer the centre or east.


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## zofovest (Aug 10, 2015)

have you considered sailing from Portsmouth to Santander


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## hibiscus123 (Aug 27, 2015)

LD lines ferries used to do a Rosslare to Gijon trip, might be good to look into it.


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