Moving to Portugal in a couple of weeks, driving over via Santander, what’s the best way to deal with the road tolls (not many on the route)? I’ve seen Via-T but is it worthwhile, can’t see how much it will cost? The route via Santiago (to Ponte de Lima) should cost about 12 euros.

All the credit cards you have and some cash. IF all your credit cards get rejected by the recalcitrant Spanish machines resort to cash.

Edit because I hadn’t read the word Santander.

Iirc there are no toll booths in Portugal. Not sure how it works, but hire cars have transponders that you pay for.

Some Protugese motorways have normal pay booths, and some photograph the plate and you pay at a post office. There’s not point IMO on the journey to Ponte de Lima, just avoid them.

Edit: check your route on viamichelin and tick “éviter les péages”. Check out the route via Léon avoiding péages, its only 20min longer.

Spanish ones are easy with cash or card. Obviously easier with a passenger if you are RHD. Just now the tolls are pretty quiet, it’s not like August. The viaT is great if you are RHD and driving solo.

Moving to Portugal in a couple of weeks

Lucky sod 👍

Thanks, we are very lucky! We were planning doing it eventually anyway but with the circumstances of brexit and Covid it sort of made the decision to jump a lot easier!

The car will be staying in Portugal till April when we are back to Dorset for family wedding and then selling car and flying back.

Really disappointing

My blurry morning vision read that as ‘Road trolls in Spain and Portugal’

😆

To avoid the road trolls, we use a Bip and Go ( https://www.bipandgo.com/en/ ) for Spain/france/portugal to pay the road tolls 🙂

On a pay as you go plan. Always an exciting moment as you pray to hear the beep and the barrier flick up in the express lanes.

the additional costs seem to be minimal, it removes any possible faff and is zero hassle.

Just buy a tag and keep it when you’re out there – we have one for France, was about £10 IIRC.

That’s great if there is minimal additional cost, we will probably be making a few trips to Porto and I know there are a couple along there.

Did anyone else read that as ‘Toad Rolls’ as they were scrolling down?

Route of the Trolls

We had a nightmare last year trying to pay our tolls on the A22 motorway in Portugal. The machine at the border wouldn’t accept our cards, we tried buying prepaid cards and registering them, but that didn’t seem to work. After three different attempts at registering prepaid cards we gave up. No doubt there’ll be wanted posters at the border for us this winter.

We now have a Bip & Go tag, which has an English website, you can check your usuage online and it can be set up to work in France, Spain, Italy and Portugal. We live in SW France so it’s very useful for us.

As others have said a lot of motorways have toll booths, so it might be worth researching the ones you’ll be using.

Hope the move goes well, we’re still debating if we should head further south.