Bristol is just over the Severn Bridge from Chepstow and where we have a house.

The timings from Alicante to Bristol are better for us then Ryanair.

We have UK credit cards and Spanish debit cards. On such matters I am a dumbo as to whether to pay in euros or £. Indeed at some check outs I get confused when asked whether I wish to pay in £ or euros!

Thus pay please with Spanish or UK cards?

The rule of thumb is pay in the currency of the country you are in. I.e if in spain and using your UK card, then pay in euros.
If you let the supplier bill you in the home currency for a foreign card, the exchange rate is rubbish! your banks exchange rate when they convert from Euros to Pounds, in this case, will always be better. This MAY be better than using your spanish card and paying in Euros for EasyJet - really depends on the banks rate when the bill hits it. Here, I pay in pesos and my UK banks conversion rate is much better than the local peso/£ rate.

If you have a spanish account with cash in it to cover the bill use your spanish debit card. If using a UK card opt to pay euro, let your own bank do the conversion.

Spanish companies tend to offer quite a low exchange rate should you opt for sterling. Last time this happened to us was with Goldcar in 2013. The rate we got from them was 11 cents lower than the daily rate at the time, I think it was 1.21 to the pound. They exchanged at 1.10 to the pound- a nice markup for them!

Many thanks we have a Spanish/German bank with cash in it and debit cards from them so use the funds there I suppose.

As an aside when we first bought in France in 2001 it was 1.675 to the £ Since that time someone has made some money?

best wishes

If memory serves me correctly, Ryanair do not give you a choice in what currency you pay with. I think they rely on the country issuing your passport and your registered address for the card used.
When I've tried to pay with my Spanish bank card they refuse it. When I used my U.K. Bank card for travel from Spain to U.K they always scam me!!

They always use the currency of the country where the flight originates. We book flights from Faro to Cork, Faro to Liverpool, Cork to Faro all paid in Euro no matter how hard we try to use a sterling card and pay in sterling. We also book Ryanair from Liverpool to Cork, Liverpool to Faro and have to pay in sterling.

For a long time we could not get the RA site to accept our Spanish debit or charge cards so suffered the RA ripoff on the exchange but I perservered with the banks online site and did something which now allows us to use both. Just wish I knew what.

Ryanair seems to charge you in the currency of the country your flight departs from. If you try to pay for a flight departing Spain with a UK bank card you agree to pay a RA's exchange rate. There is box you can un-tick at the the end of the process which means you pay the bank's rate.
Example:
Ryanairs price was 250€. At their 'guaranteed best' rate they would debit my UK account with £ 195. I unticked the box and so they charged my bank 250€ which the bank charged me £181 + £5 admin. Another RA rip-off avoided!

I always pay in sterling on my credit card no problem altering from euros to sterling.