Compare driving to the Algarve with flying

A flight to the Algarve from, say, Birmingham takes about three hours. That doesn't include getting to the airport, security checks, hanging around in the waiting area and then the inevitable queues at immigration.

Driving to the Algarve involves getting you and your vehicle across the Channel to start the journey - that either means a quick hop with Eurotunnel (around 25 minutes) and then a long drive through France, Spain and Portugal; or it means a sea crossing such as the one run by Brittany Ferries from Portsmouth to Santander in Spain. This trip gets you a good part of the way down - cutting out the French section essentially - but it was, in our case, a night, a day and another night before disembarking at around 7am.

You're not finished yet though. You now have 11 hours of driving, depending on how well you observe the speed limits. We broke our trip at Estoril - not a natural break point since it meant heading to the West. It was also eight hours of the eleven to get to that point and, for us, that was a bit too long, although the hotel was worth it!

The upside of the flight is speed. The downside is that you can only take a limited amount of luggage, no liquids unless packed away in the hold, the herding of people that only airlines seem to be able to achieve and, of course, the fact that you have to hire a car at the other end.

The downside of the drive is the length of time it takes, unless you decide to enjoy it - which we did. The scenery is breathtaking as we travelled on roads that swept of ravines spanned by spindly viaducts. With two sharing the driving, it was generally a breeze. You'll have to feed the car too - we used two tanks of fuel in an Audi Q5, driving down from Staffordshire and then to Praia da Luz. It's better to buy the fuel outside the UK!

The upsides though, apart from the beauty of the journey, are quite numerous. The roads in Spain, Portugal and France are generally excellent and, by British standards, empty. You can recapture the joy of driving. Then, you also are in your own little world -  cocoon of you-ness, defined by your "stuff" your vehicle and your agenda. Want to stop? Just do it? Fancy staying in a little village? Go see if they have rooms.

The fact that you have your own car, complete with its bits and pieces, is a huge plus. Your music is there, your things are there - indeed, you've stuffed it full of everything you might conceivably need. The urge to overpack is strong - how many shirts will you need, really? And driving your own familiar vehicle on foreign roads is so much easier than dealing with the idiosyncrasies of left-hand drive, manual/auto, strange vehicle behaviours that you get from a rental.

Your car is loaded not just with your clothes, but your favourite tea, those sweets you like so much, the remains of the Christmas cake (yes, we did!) and a host of other homely comforts that basically say, you're getting old!

We've just done this trip by car for the very first time and, to be honest, we'll take some persuading to fly to Portugal again. Or anywhere else in Europe, for that matter. Cost-wise, we reckon it's about the same, once you have factored in the need to pay extra insurance, the fuel and oh heck, the Portuguese tolls! More of that in another post. Having your own home packed into your car though - that's the best thing. BTW, we saw a guy waiting for the ferry in Portsmouth, pouring himself and his wife a tea from a flask. He didn't have sandwiches there, but I bet he'd had them earlier on. We've not quite reached that pitch yet - only a matter of time though!