Hi,

I know it’s a while away but I am going to the Alps for a fortnight next year. I need to be there the last weekend of July and would prefer a friday night/saturday morning crossing.

I’m based in the midlands so either kind of crossing is a long way from home so not fussed if it is to be train or ferry.

Anyone keen on sharing any tips for booking the crossing (is it cheaper well in advance or not)
I have a camper so overnighting down south to wait for the early morning ferry wouldn’t be an issue.

Cheers
Col

We leave late afternoon friday and catch the ferry about 11pm. Then drive through the night with a short sleep when necessary. The rest areas are great for this in france as they arent service stations so much quieter

dont try and skip the toll roads – they make life easy.

as such get an ezitag.

get the timing wrong and the pay as you go lanes are hellish. – also saves you leaning across the car to pay if your on your own.

I’ve just looked on the euro tunnel site and you cant book that far in advance yet ( 8 months) anyone know how far ahead you can book?

I’ve looked for the ezitag and can find nothing about it…….

Sanef are the best company. I think they are based in Leeds.

https://www.saneftolling.co.uk

Here you go

Norfolk Lines, Dover to Dunkirk are always cheaper, and Dunkirk is only another 15-20 mins along the motorway from Calais. The EZtag are a Godsend. French motorways ( i’m sure you’ve been told) are brilliant but…….not when the whole of France decide to go on holiday all at the same time. If you can avoid these weekends, and travel through the night, it will be a breeze. Enjoy.

Depends if you shop at Tesco – if you do you can take £10 of clubcard vouchers and make it £30 against a ticket on the train.

From experience (twice so far) the train over is ok, on the way back if you get there later in the day it’ll be full of Brits coming home so early trains over are better. Even still it’s generally efficient and easy to use the train/tunnel combo. I’d happily do it again.

for a camper just head across the Friday evening, get a few hours kip in an Aire somewhere in France then crack on in the morning. Will have you in resort at a decent time on Saturday

We went overnight from Bristol to Alpe d’Huez, using the tunnel. Was surprisingly ok – we swapped driving every 2 hours and had plenty of food and a flask of coffee. Eurotunnel is pretty flexible about crossing times if you turn up early – we managed to do that on the way back.

Book it as early as you can, it rarely gets cheaper but some routes are better than others. Get a tag for the motorway and cut nightmare queues a bit (or totally) depending where you are. If you want to recoup some money and aren’t pressed for time then route via Belgium and Luxembourg for cheap fuel (and booze and cigs if you have space and that’s your thing). It’ll add a couple of hours tho. As you have a camper van, sleep in motorway rest areas but do it away from big cities, some are spectacularly dodgy.

Used train both times here. Quick, and if you time it right you can pretty much go straight to boarding. Got a 9pm crossing last time so came out at 11pm local time in France then drove straight down.

Get a Sanef tag, the 30kmh tag lanes are great. Came to about £115 total for tolls down to Chatel but that changes with the exchange rate. They don’t stitch you up on the rate you get either it’s comparable to exchange rates for currency.

edit: Make sure you don’t end up in Switzerland by mistake as they’ll charge you 40euro for a Vignette tag.

I’ve driven a few times now.

First time I thought I’d be able to do it in a oner. No chance. Had to pull in a lot for breaks and uncomfortable sleeps in the car.

This year I went down twice. Once in July for a fortnight then back in September for a week. In the july trip I stopped over at a hotel in Dover. Definitely breaks the journey up but makes it a much longer one. For the September trip I slept in the van. Much cheaper obviously and less time consuming as I could pull over for a much nicer sleep.

Rest breaks aside it takes 8 hours from Calais to Morzine. Driving in France on the toll roads is a real pleasure. 80mph for 7 hours. Zero traffic jams, zero road rage. Driving through northern France is a bit bland unless you love wheat fields but a few good podcasts makes the journey much easier. Oh and the Sanef tag is brilliant.

Bookmarking that sanef tag thingie. That looks handy.

Tunnel is quicker, probably about an hour and a half total considering they’re quicker at getting you on and off and the journey time is less, but it’s not much of a rest for driver, you don’t really get out of the car so I actually prefer the ferry, but I’m in the minority.

Diesel is/was cheaper in France (last year anyway) so typically I drive to the ferry port cross, go about 5 mins out of my way in Calais to one of the massive supermarkets, fill up and get on the motorway and just as long as I can tolerate – even with bikes on the roof I can usually make it to at least the foot of the alps without needing more fuel. You can save a bit of cash avoiding the motorway, but seriously it takes about 4-5 more hours and it’s long enough – my sat-nav is supposedly reactive to traffic conditions and has some sort of clever thing that decides that saving you £10 in tolls is worth a short bit of non-toll road near the middle of the trip it’s never steered me wrong yet – apart from when it go all confused by a new road and I had to loop this crappy French town twice.

In short, it’s pretty easy, but very boring – until the last bit when it all goes very Alpine – huge views, high bridges and just when you’re at the point of exhaustion – tight twisty roads with small concrete walls stopping you falling to your death.

It typically costs me £200 each-way in fuel, ferry and tolls.

If you plan a single drive then train IMHO is the only option as you lose too much time using ferries.

We did it this summer to Austria, left home in the Midlands at 04:00 and arrived at the hotel in Austria at 19:00 local time, with a couple of stops for food.
We took the French route, primarily because the missus was happier driving on the empty French autoroute whilst I had a couple of hours kip, as opposed to the busier Belgian autoroute.
Travelled on a Sunday so roads were quieter as well. Especially going round Munich where the direction from Austria had huge tailbacks whilst we cruised straight there.

In the past we have stopped off on the way down, would only drive direct now, gets an extra day on the trails as well.

Get a Sanef tag, the 30kmh tag lanes are great. Came to about £115 total for tolls down to Chatel but that changes with the exchange rate.

Depends when you’re driving. The tolls are completely empty in the middle of the night. We had to ring the door bell at a motorway services so they would turn the fuel pump on!

Tesco point triple up for tunnel crossings. if you buy the sanef tag through the eurotunnel website you get a discount on the admin fees, or you did a few months ago.

Wait until you are on the train before washing down some pro plus with red bull in preparation for the long drive. My mate did this while waiting to get on the train in the middle of the night only to get bumped and have to wait in the car for 3 hours for the next train 🙂

The tag (at least for us continental types) are not much more expensive. I think I pay 3e any month I use it and the toll price is the same after that. Year on year, more and more lanes are dedicated to Telepeage and my suspicion is that if you give it another 10 years, there will be 1 or 2 cash/card lanes and the rest the magical, orange T.

Try not to hit Lyon around rush hour or any weekend in summer during the day.

we did it in 1 hit to Verbier and used the ferry with no hassles, but from shift work I’m used to early starts/long days. Would use tunnel next time though for the hours it saves.

Filling up off the autoroutes is a chunk cheaper, only have to drive a km or so into a town/village and if you coincide it with a comfort break/shop stop it’s no hassle.

We didn’t use a satnav, but Munqe Chick likes map reading and she’d marked out the route with tabs in a Michelin map book so it gave her something to do on route.

Having driven I’d never fly to the Alps again; unlimited baggage allowance so all the spares you want (extra bike? No problem), and door-to-door it’s no slower as there is so much wasted time around flying.

All of the above, plus

Dont forget to pay online for the Dartford Crossing.. fines are steep!

Personal preference is DSF Ferry to Dunkirk, no asylum hassles you may get caught up in, its a nice breat wiith life threatening cook breakfasts and straight onto teh motorway from the terminal. There is a 24hr fule supermarket just off the boat too.

If your bit of the alps takes you through Luxemborg, the service stations for fuel and stuff are very cheap. 0.92 Euros / litre for fuel…

The mitchelin route app is great for both Nav, toll cost and overall costs.

It is possible to get a smooth, no cost duel carriageway route but obviously it depends where you are going. Homework and planning….

Don’t be a driving superstar and smash it in one hit as you will probably loose a day recovering and remember the way back often seems a long haul you would just rather not do, so leave enough time…

edit: Make sure you don’t end up in Switzerland by mistake as they’ll charge you 40euro for a Vignette tag.

This this and this again, check your route doesn’t take you into Switzerland (which it may do heading North out of the Alps – it looks like you’ll just skim Geneva. But they have this ridiculous dual carriageway U-Turn setup where you drive into Switzerland to turn around and leave again and they charge you 40Euro for the benefit then give you change in Swiss Franc’s which you won’t use as you never wanted to be there in the first place the THIEVING SCUMBAG B******S! And yes they were armed so I politely paid and left fuming ensuring I hammered the car to dump out as many pollutants as I could!

You can u-turn at the Swiss border you know. I’ve done it twice when missing a turning… they don’t LIKE it but they’ll let you.

last two years done Cheltenham to Verbier, leave about 9am, hit the ferry about 2 have lunch, get to Dunkirk, mid late afternoon, then bimble down the peage for a few hours, stop in Troyes sleep, then finish the drive the next day. As I am doing all the driving one hit is pushing it.

French road signs seem to work on the idea of send you in the direction of the nearest big city, So start by aiming for Paris, then aim for Reims, Then Troyes, Dijon. that sort of thing.

Return in one hit. The worst part is the realisation of just how crap the UK roads are when you leave Dover on the way home.

You don’t say where your going in the alps, The roads between france and Switzerland take a bit of thought after the mindless peage. (particularly when they shut the main road in Poligny and send you down interesting mountain roads!)

you don’t really get out of the car so I actually prefer the ferry, but I’m in the minority.

I’m with you there, depends on timing though. We usually get an early ferry across, which means you can get a good* breakfast down you on the boat. A stop for lunch and into resort mid-late afternoon

Think we’ve driven over about 10 times now. A mixture of doing it in one, enforced sleep stops, and planned sleep stops. All work tbh, should probably mention that we go from Glasgow.

*good for P&O, I miss Sea France 🙁

If there’s a couple of you going, split the driving. I haven’t done it for a few years, but last time we shared the driving and stayed in F1 hotel. It was far more relaxing (although we were driving to Mt Ventoux so a bit further).

Back in the day we did it in about 17 hours from Cumbria, think we managed to get some riding in on the day we arrived aswell! Ah, to be young again….. 😉

I’ve done it all the way to Geneva in one, took 10 hours from London. One tip would be to make sure you have all the stuff in the car that’s needed.

Spare set of bulbs
Red triangle
High vis jacket

not sure what else otherwise you will get fined quite heavily if stopped.

+1 the tunnel, then drive through the night.

3 stops for coffee/stretch. Toll roads all the way. Get there in the morning, quick nap then out on the trails!

I’m not sure about this sleeping mid-way thing, I’m by no means a Superstar at anything, but I’ve driven it non-stop (bar fuel and toilet breaks) every time, no I’m never going to arrive after driving through the night and jump straight on my bike, but usually I arrive about 6pm, have a shower a beer or two and something nice in one of the restaurants and been ready to rock the next day – the drive home is worse of course.

Which reminds me of two other things.

Make sure at least one of your passengers is able and legal to drive, you don’t want to be stuck in MOrzine with a foot in plaster and no way to get home.

Driving through the night is great for using up ‘dead time’ and the roads are even quieter of course – but every time I’ve tried to work out the trip it always has me arriving at breakfast time, hours before I can check-in anywhere, I’ve done that and it’s crap waiting to take a shower or whatever.

You don’t have to buy the Swiss motorway vignette, you can turn around and/or you can drive on non-motorway roads. You can take a chance of not getting caught too.

OP it depends very much where you are going, depending upon final destination it could be from 6 to 10 hours from the channel. I havent used the ferry to Calais since the tunnel was built, we take the tunnel every 4-6 weeks (Mrs B is French). I’ve driven solo to the Alps many times usually without an overnight and have friends who do the same but its a long time in the car and you need regular stops. I have also done the cheap hotels (e.g. Formule 1 or Logis) one time I took a very late tunnel and slept in the Calais Formule 1 from midnight till 7 then left for the Alps.

Definitely take the toll roads (peage) as the other roads are slow and tiring. We don’t bother with the automatic pay, my Mrs won’t sign up for it and pretty much all her French relatives don’t either. Paying the toll when solo is a little tricky as generally you have to get out of the car.

Definitely check your dates against French school holidays, it would be TOTAL madness to travel down on the first Saturday of the holidays

Yes you need a triangle and a high viz jacket (which you are supposed to keep easily accessible inside the car), I thought the bulb requirement had been ditched not least as most car headlights are so complex these days – its a dealer fit job

My top tip for enjoying the trip is to find a mate to go with, it will make the driving so much easier.

Spent a week in verbier this year, which has maybe an hour of Swiss motorway driving to get to. Didnt bother with the vignette and got away with it.
Maybe we were lucky.

If you are going to switerland you can travel off the motorways without one i think, just plan that part of your route carefully so you dont end up on one!

The french Aires are plentiful and generally pretty good. Some even have shower and toilet blocks. Not exactly pleasant camping but i wouldnt have a problem with planning on just stopping when you get bored. Also french campsites are cheap and frequent anyway. We landed in Dieppe at midnight, stopped on the seafront overnight then split the route down over two days.

Down in one hit is feasible, but pretty heavy going if you are on your own.

If you have bikes on the roof the far right lane has no height restriction and it’s usually empty at the weekend. I assume it’s for trucks but no-one bats an eyelid.

I used to drive to the Alps on ski trips and found the best option was to set off on Friday morning, cross the channel via the tunnel and drive until early evening. Stay in a nice hotel, enjoy a good meal with some wine and have a good nights sleep. Get up the next day and have a leisurely drive to your destination with plenty of time to settle in and sort your bikes out. Beats arriving shattered after an all night drive – you’ll be so tired you can’t do anything with the extra day anyway.

Spent a week in verbier this year, which has maybe an hour of Swiss motorway driving to get to. Didnt bother with the vignette and got away with it.
Maybe we were lucky.

If you are going to switerland you can travel off the motorways without one i think, just plan that part of your route carefully so you dont end up on one!

A follow up to this from @Olly We used non motorway to get from Jura border to Verbier and it added 2 hours to that part of the journey (nearly double the time). We also drove on Motorway (accidentally) elsewhere and as we didn’t see any police it was a non issue. You can take a chance but IMO the vignette is worth buying.

Poster above talks about driving at 80mph on peage/toll roads, speed limit in the dry is 130kmph (see note below) which is about 84mph which is typically around 90 indicated on your speedo (check with gps). French motorways have lots of speed cameras, one neat thing with France is if you see a “radar” sign there WILL be a camera or indeed 2 within 2km. In many years of driving in France and despite setting them off now and then I have never got a ticket (unlike the Swiss who will send them to the UK). The Frenchnare quite keen on handheld radar too. On the peage look out for reduced speed limits 130 down to 110 or even 70 or 50 past some roadworks. I got lucky last year when stopped by a motorbike doing 137 in a 110 I hadn’t seen, just got a telling off.

Tunnel is quicker but the ferry is a proper break; sit down meal, etc, although If you have a camper you can picnic on the train in comfort. I’d be tempted to go for the tunnel (using tesco vouchers) then stop at an Aire on the way.

No need for the tag. There are queues but I’ve never seen them on that stretch of motorway in the summer even on the really busy weekends. Only benefit is if you don’t have a driving buddy as the tolls are on the left.

Lane discipline is excellent. Pull out, overtake, move back in. Only lane 2 hoggers are foreign drivers (often brits)

Our ‘normal’ journey is head off after work, evening channel crossing, a few hours driving then bed down. Up moderately early back on the road and get there for lunchtime feeling pretty refreshed.

We’ve driven loads of times and have been on the tunnel and on the ferry.

We tend to go for the tunnel if we go for an evening crossing (leave home after work). Then get a cheap hotel within an hour of Calais. We then complete the rest of the journey the following day. By cheap hotels… it costs about €30 for a perfectly comfortable room with en suite not far off the motorway – as we travel as a family I can’t see a reason not to stay in one for a night (unless you have a campervan!)

If crossing in the morning we try to get as early a crossing as a 2.5hour drive to Dover will allow. We then cross on the ferry getting breakfast on there.

The drive back is always a leisurely affair. This year we drove back from Austria overnighting in Karlsruhe with a few hours wandering round the city. Overnighting in Luxembourg with an afternoon/evening exploring the city. Then driving to Ostend for a day there before getting an evening crossing back.

I don’t think the TAGs make sense for one journey.

There’s loads of cheap hotels that are quite good and easy to book online.

Ferry if your stopping over, tunnel if its a oner. (but not from Hull shirley!)

Don’t speed and they won’t fine you.

Just looking at driving down for the Etape (if I can actually manage to get onto the ASO page to enter the Etape in the first place…)

I driven down to the Alps twice before, once with a mate and we stayed off the paege and took our time, camping, road riding, back in the car, do another couple of hundred miles, repeat.
The second time was in a heavily laden Astra and we just bombed it down the paege.

However both of those were >10 years ago so bookmarking this thread for reference. 🙂

Don’t speed and they won’t fine you.

Just got one for 10km over the limit, €45 which is annoying as they are well signed.

2am as well, the machines don’t sleep. Yes, I paid it.

Pick a quiet time and set cruise control…