We are taking the ferry over to Santander with some of our belongings and then travelling by car through to Lisbon. As my husband has a bad back, we are planning to break up the journey so only driving for 3 to 4 hours a day. Could people suggest places to stop which are nice to look round and any good hotels or B&Bs. Also if you have suitcases and personal possessions in the car piled high, do they stop you at customs in Santander. We already have the D7 stamps in our passports, but would we incur any problems with customs.

Try joining facebook group British Expats in Portugal - people doing the journey on a regular basis and the question you are posing always generates suggestions about where to stay and experiences ref customs but it seems you are less likely to be scrutinised by customs travelling by car than you would be in a van.

depends, do you want to travel around the coast ? or a more direct inland route ? we travelled around the coast so cannot comment on the interior route, Cudillero was a good first stop in Galicia, nice little village, lovely harbour and a few lovely restaurants, great hospitality, we split our journey into 200km jaunts as we where towing a big caravan, and 200km was my limit, until the 80 yre old pensioners started arriving in the Algarve in Oct/Nov from Holland / Germany etc, with tales of doing 600km a day................... made me feel like a right 'wuss'

Towing a big caravan would be a challenge but only doing 200km would mean the holiday is over before it started for me or do you mean first toilet break? Going from Ireland to France next week and driving down to Spain, so booked a hotel after 900km and then 350km the next morning. I used to drive the whole day but now hate driving in the dark. Can't help with hotels though Booking always does it for me.

we could take it leisurely as we were coming here permanatly, so it didnt matter how quicky or slowly we did it, but some of the pensioners from Holland go to the algarve for 6 months, and still do 600km in a day............ slightly off topic from the OP I know.

We stopped at the Hotel resort El Montico near Valladolid its just of the main road and really comfortable and an easy half way drive from Santander to Portugal