Advice on travelling to Spain/Portugal next year

Hi, is there any way of getting a ferry to Britain and from there getting another to Spain / Portugal without having to drive all the way through France? If so, has anyone done it, how much - is it too costly?, did you lose much time etc? Have two girls and they are not great for the long journeys ..thanks

excellent thanks for that. Would love to know if anyone has done this. Would be nice to spend a night in say Portsmouth, then travel down to Spain or Portugal for 10 nights and back up, but would hate to feel that large chunks of my holiday time are being wasted on ferries

thanks for that - yea just looking on some websites and the main one as you said is Brittany - if you add in cost of return ferry from Ireland to Wales, then Wales to Plymouth or Portsmouth (4.5 hours approx for both) then Brittany Ferries - expensive enough return Plymouth to Santander, then it adds up. Had a quick look also at campsites and they dont look as good as the ones in France ... So may be better to go to France and driving down with a number of stops ....
Cant believe I am even thinking about something we wont be doing until next July or Aug... Cant let this year's holiday go .....

We're currently in the south of Portugal. Have been travelling since June, and spent a lot of time along the north coast of Spain and the north of Portugal. We don't normally use campsites as we find them a bit regimented and the spaces are usually a bit tight for our size van. We have done a fair bit of wild camping. Most of the aires we use are free, but currently we're in a well designed aire with huge marked bays costing 8 euro including electricity and free WiFi.
In almost 2 months we've spent less than 120 euros on site fees, which means we've loads more money to spend in the great restaurants. Unless there's a specific reason why you need a campsite, you could travel quite cheaply.
Brittany Ferries is a nice route which had a Dolphin Watch organised by a charity when we used it last year. Friends of ours took their van from Spain to the UK in July and they found they had the choice of travelling standard or economy rate, so it might be worth looking very carefully at their website or even giving them a ring.
Hope this helps

love this thread, great info, thanks all.

For me and what I do, eat, drink etc I'd agree France is more expensive than Spain and Portugal and for the time I can travel the weather is certainly much better.