Advice on driving to France

[Walkthelakes]

We are going to ile de re from a North Yorkshire. Will be able to set off about 3.30pm on A Friday from around York. Takes about 5 hours to drive to Dover. Was thinking about getting a late ferry about 9.30-10.00 and then a hotel close to Calais. Other alternative is to get a hotel in Dover then an early ferry but I quite like the idea of being into France on the first night. For those who have driven to France which do you think is the best option?

I think your option B of a hotel in/near Dover would be your best bet.

Don’t underestimate the impact on travel time of Friday-afternoon traffic. I just put into Google maps N Yorkshire to Dover on a Friday and it gives a travel time of average 6h20 but potentially up to 8 hours.

I regularly have to travel South and on a Friday afternoon I allow 4.5 hours to do a journey that takes only 2.5 hours at other times.

Check in for the ferries from Portsmouth closes 45 minutes before sailing time. I don’t know about Dover.

Ile de Re is lovely!

I’ve done this journey a lot but we are only 40 mins from Dover so tend to get a 430 shuttle and blast the rest of the journey out in one go and get to our van before dinner time.

have you been before? It’s stunning. Be very aware of UV reflection though and serious sunscreen even if cloudy. If I was you I’d want to start the next day in Grance so hotel in Calais (don’t leave bikes on the car or a roof box).

or without looking at the timings would it be worth driving to Portsmouth and doing the night time Caen sailing, start the day in France?

I would recommend looking at the Plymouth-Roscoff overnight ferry.
if you haven’t already done so, apply for your crit-air sticker https://www.certificat-air.gouv.fr as whatever route you take you may well pass through a city that requires one.

I'd second this option. You can get an evening meal on board and book a cabin on the boat and get gently rocked to sleep.

You'd be better off doing Hull to Rotterdam/ Zeebrugge overnight and driving down on European roads. You are never going to make a 9:30 sailing leaving York at 3:30.

Or take an overnight to St Malo or Roscoff. But you'd have to leave earlier than 3:30 that's for sure.

Thanks for the advice everyone! We had looked at hull zeebrugge but as we are a family of 6 and have a minibus/van it was crazy expensive compared to Dover/calais and actually left us with longer to drive in Europe. My sister lives ten minutes from Newhaven so looked at new haven dieppe but with only one morning sailing and a longer crossing it looked like we wouldn’t get to il de re in time to check in which I think was 8pm. I’ll keep checking the other options suggested. We are considering both cost and length of drive and trying to find a happy medium

The reason we can’t leave before 3.30pm is that I am a teacher. We will leave straight from school but there is zero flexibility there unfortunately

Saturday is the busiest day to travel in France, you can get traffic forecasts on the Bison futé website which will advise you which times to travel to avoid jams.

We’ve drove to France many times since having our eldest 11 years ago.We have 2 girls both in school now so in last few years we’d driven down straight from school Friday stayed in an hotel near by then early crossing. We use the euro tunnel now found it easier & quicker, less time hanging around and shorter crossing with young children.
Last year we decided to try taking late Friday crossing ( got stuck in lots of traffic only just made out crossing) then we stayed in an air bnb in Calais then drove on through France early Saturday but I much preferred the stay in Folkestone Friday night we were all so tired over the first weekend

I would drive to Portsmouth instead and get the over night ferry. We did the 11pm crossing and got to France at 8am, driving to out destination by mid afternoon.

I just looked up Portsmouth and was amazed it’s actually quicker to get to than Dover from York. I could only see a 8pm crossing which there is no way we would make so we would have to add an extra day. It’s also £800 as opposed to £200 Dover Calais. If money was no object this would be our best route

I would do morning from Newhaven and stay overnight somewhere on the way to your destination. There are some fabulous places to see on the way that would be missed by driving straight through. And some fabulous places campsites!

If you don't want to stop then look at overnight from Portsmouth and drive straight there

I think this is the option we are leaning towards. Premier inn in Dover or Folkestone then an early crossing. We are going May half term so a while away and I think this isn’t a holiday in France so hoping the traffic won’t be too nuts

I would cross in the evening and hotel in Calais. Otherwise, in the morning you have the travel to the tunnel, 1-2 hours checkin plus the crossing time which means you will have lost around 2 or so hours from the day before you've reached France. Then you will still have the drive down France. Alternatively, DFDS do a crossing Newhaven-Dieppe around midnight, it's a shortish overnight crossing (so may not result in enough sleep) but puts you an hour further down France and can be reasonably priced if you book far enough in advance

We live slightly further up the A1 that you, a couple of junctions…. We’ve frequently driven to south of France and the A1 can be a nightmare , it’s taken us between 5-9 hours to get there down to Dover. Nightmare.
100% recommend doing Eurotunnel not a ferry.. within the same price bracket you can get over early, earliest we’ve got over is two hours, it’s also flexible if you are late.
hotel wise on the other side in France we always go for an ibis, cheap and cheerful. Look around Bethune, Saint-Omer. It’s about the hour the other side

Whenever we go to France we do Portsmouth - St Malo on the overnight. It’s approx 4 hours to the Vendee area on the other side which is just a little less than ile de re
we done dover to Calais and found the overnight much more relaxing to be honest.

Sorry just saw you are going May half term, we've done the tunnel a few times going on a Friday after school and it is always really busy crossing on the Friday evening as loads of people have the same idea. It's fine when you get to France. It's a 7+hour drive in France with stops so going to be a long day either way. We find viaMichelin good for plotting routes

We used to get the ferry from Dover but now we get Le Shuttle. Only 30 minutes, pay per vehicle and at certain times of the day it can be really cheap. I used Tesco vouchers for one of the crossings last year so that was brilliant. Also, not worth paying for the more expensive flexi ticket. We have in the past but then took the cheaper option and we’ve changed our return crossing a couple of times and it barely cost anything. We usually just look at the price of a new return ticket on the day or day before if we think we might want to go back earlier or later and I think the last time we added a day on, changed our booking the day before and it cost about £19 iirc. The cost of the flexi ticket can be almost double the cost of the cheapest one so paying just a few quid extra to change the booking works out way cheaper anyway. And we’ve got to the terminal both early and late and have just been given the next crossing (either before or after our booked time) and there’s no cost whatsoever, so we have never gone back to a flexi ticket.
plus, driving onto a big train platform and then on to a big train (esp if they direct you upstairs!) has never lost its novelty factor 😄

We always try and get out of England as fast as possible, so I'd stay an hour away from Calais en route to ile de re.

The le shuttle has changed its policies this year so if you need flexibility make sure that you’ve booked the correct type of ticket and read the t&cs .

Get the overnight ferry from Newhaven.
get you heads down for a few hours sleep and it docks in Dieppe at 0500, early start on the French motorways.
We have done this, and driven straight through to south of Bordeaux. We were at our site by 1400.

Just had a look and it’s pretty much the same as what it was for a standard ticket- they might let you on- subject to the ticket prices. Basically it means if it’s in the same price bracket then if there is space they will do.

It's not worth the stress of an evening crossing. Stay in the premier inn at Folkestone and get the tunnel at 5am, it's so much quicker than the ferry and as everyone says they basically put you on the next one when you turn up.

Ferries are so expensive, other than the Dover Calais one, and the Portsmouth Cherbourg route (which is the best one for us) doesn't even run on particularly useful days.

Just reiterating PPs on the journey time. Regularly drive from Kent/Leeds and back - don’t underestimate how much longer it will take you on a Friday late afternoon/evening. So much so that we no longer go then. But sounds like you have to, so definitely book a hotel in Dover and get on the first crossing you can. P and O is 6.30am but I think there’s others before that, maybe 5.30am. There’s probably some even earlier if you want to really get ahead.
ETA - only saying ferry because we live literally up the road from Dover so always use ferries but agree Shuttle is just as good an option.

No advice on whether to go over Friday night or Saturday morning, but I'm giving another vote for the tunnel versus the ferry. You're in France in about 40 minutes, it's so easy.