Can one hire a car to drive to Europe?

[SuperEkstra]

We live in London and have a little car that is great for our normal needs.

However, this summer (if we are permitted) we would like to drive to Poland. We would normally fly, but have driven in the past, albeit when we had a 7 seater rather than a 5! It would be 5 of us travelling (two teens, 8 year old and DH and me), and I think it will be too uncomfortable in our Golf.

Is it even a thing to hire a car to drive across Europe and back? I suspect not...

Yes, we have done a couple of times. Should be fine.

I don't know of any hire companies that allow this, I think you'd be best to hire there and then at least you'd be driving on their side of the road too.

@StarcourtMall - can you remember which company you used?

@emmathedilemma - we don't want to fly to mainland Europe and then get a car - flights would be prohibitively expensive for 5 of us!

I did this two years ago with EuropeCar - I think that was the name (green and yellow branding). Not many companies do it but there are a couple.

Can you take a ferry as foot passengers, or Eurostar and then hire a car once in France?

Both of our local independent hire centres do this (we looked at taking a scout group abroad so did lots of research)

It's obviously more expensive but aside from that didn't seem too problematic.

Yes, I've done it when we had a problem with our car and had to get back to Belgium. We hired one from Europcar for about 6 weeks, then drove it back when ours was ready for collection.