were not sure weather to do dover to malaga or portsmouth to bilboa then ride to malaga then ride back and catch ferry to portsmouth

A little confused here because I didn't think that any of the ferries from Dover went down the west coast of Spain and Portugal and then round into the Med to end up in Malaga :-)

Seriously, Bilboa to Malaga is approx 560 miles whereas Dover to Malaga is approx 1,250 miles - more than twice the distance. I don't know what sort of daily mileage is doable on a motorbike but I assume that you could ride from Bilboa to Malaga in 2 to 3 days but a return journey of 2,500 miles via Calais is a hell of long time on a bike for the sake of few days in Malaga! On the other hand if this is about the journey BEING the holiday rather than simply the means to get to your destination then you could end up covering an even greater mileage on a circular trip rather than just going the most direct way there and back.

There are previous threads on driving by car from the UK to southern Spain which will have a lot of good info on them re routes etc that would be worth you looking at.

SM

sorry my bad ,,, i ment dover to france then ride down to malaga or ride to portsmouth then ferry to bilboa and ride to malaga its more of a achievment rather than a holiday ! thanks

I used to do Dover to the Costa Brava every year on a sports bike

long ride but pleasant enough, we used to make it down to around Lyon on the first day then onto the Costa Brava on the 2nd day
so I reckon 3 days to Malaga is comfortable enough, 4 if you don't use the French Autoroutes
if you look at mappy.com you'll be able to look at possible routes, put in a few details and it'll give you details of fuel and toll charges etc