You can take a ferry from Dover or Folkestone to Calais or Boulogne. Prices vary, but Speed Ferries seem to be the cheapest. With Eurotunnel as well as the ferries, the less time you spend in France, the cheaper the crossing.

“Peages” are toll autoroutes. From Calais to Paris it’s about 10 euros one way. Plus you have to pay for petrol. So travelling to France by car can be quite expensive any way you look at it. You can take non-toll roads (“nationals”) but it will take you longer as you pass through villages/traffic lights, etc. and the speed limits are lower (the limit on peages is 130k/83miles per hour).

Eurostar does specials on occasion which work out to be much cheaper than driving to Paris for one to three passengers. Plus, you are in central Paris and don’t have to worry about parking or having your car vandelised/broken into, which has happened to me a couple of times!

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dover uk to calais france with a car.

yes done it many times. ferries run about every hour or so.
ive never had to wait

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I’ll look for a site that calculates tolls, but the distance is 910 miles . You stay in France the entire way (coming a few miles from the German border). You cross into Switzerland at Basel and leave Switzerland into Italy at the small town of Chiasso (near Lake Como).
Google says 14.5 hours of driving time, but that would average out to 62 mph (which I find difficult to believe considering it includes a ferry ride and mountain ranges).
I suspect that your tolls and your ferry crossing will be you major cost drivers. If you can ballpark fuel you will probably be allright.
The train is normally £145 for two people and one car to cross the channel (one way) , but can be as low as £85 at unusual hours (between 23:00). The tolls and fuel estimate for the trip (according to via Michelin) is £161 one way.
A ferry site suggests £76 GBP for a one way crossing for two people and a car from Dover to Calais. It is considerably slower than the train.
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Another website suggests that many cost conscious Brits prefer to drive through Belgium and Germany instead of France. The distance is longer, but the tolls are lower.

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The best thing about catching the ferry from Dover is the anticipation that builds up starting from as soon as you can see the sea from the duel carriageway up by Dover castle. The road drops down from the clifftop and arches out over the Eastern docks harbour, then back in to join the roundabout at the far eastern end of the seafront parade. That’s all you see of the little town of Dover as you head towards the ferry, and perhaps you should consider visiting the town itself one day, but not on this occasion. The purpose of the excercise is to get on the next ferry from Dover without any delay.

Dover Eastern Docks

Dover’s Eastern Docks are a huge patch og land reclaimed form the sea, inside the great harbour arms of the port of Dover. This is where the majority of people pass through to catch the ferry from Dover. There used to be a busy ferry port and hoverport at the other end of the seawall, the Western docks  including a train ferry but these are little used these days.

The hovercraft stopped ‘flying’ forever in the year 2000 and were replaces by ‘seacats’ which are faster than the big car ferries but only carry a fraction of the passengers and freight. So the Eastern Docks is where you go to catch the ferry from Dover to Calais or Dover to Zeebrugge. There’s a big petrol station between the roundabout and the entrance but you don’t want that because petrol is cheaper in France, usually. Then you need to have your ticket checked before you enter the docks, and will be told which lane to join. Passing through customs and immigration usually takes just a few minutes without even leaving your car, but coming back  from Calais you might be checked a bit more thoroughly on the Dover side.

Boarding the ferry from Dover

Once the queue starts to move you know  you’ll be boarding the ferry from Dover in no time. The marshalls call you forward with big pointers and you drive up the ramp and down into the bowels of the huge ship. On the car deck, the deck crew will beckon you forward further and further against your better judgment until the front number of your car is about two centimeters away from the rear of the car or lorry ahead.  The Dover Calais ferry needs to pack as many vehicles onboard each trip as it possible can. The signs all tell you to make sure your handbrake is firmly applied and that’s rather good advice, really. When you get out of your car there’s hardly any room to squeeze through the gap with the next row, as you find your way to the nearest stairs up to the passenger decks. At this point t is a very good idea to memorise or even write down the deck number and stairwell so you can find your car against when it’s time to disembark! There are helpful signs which make this easier, so you’ll know to follow the signs back towards “Elephant 3″ or “Whale 2″ or whatever. The pictures are designed to work in any language for the benefit of  all the different people from all over the world who sail across the channel each year on the ferry from Dover.

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The Dover Calais Ferry Crossing is the shortest route between the UK and the continent, and also the busiest. The Eastern Docks at Dover are large enough to berth several big ferry operators, each having a fleet of super ferries, dwarfing anything sailing on the longer sea routes and it’s for this reason that the Dover Calais Ferry fares tend to be the most competitive. AT the peak of the holiday season however, even the largest ships on the route are sailing at full capacity round the clock so the fares tend to be much higher than in the low season, especially on daytime sailings. Nobody wants to sail in the dead of night if they can avoid it but If you can manage to plan your journey to make the channel crossing either early morning or late evening then it’s more likely you will find one of the most affordable Dover Calais ferry fares.

Leaving England in daylight on the Dover Calais Ferry

White Cliffs and Castle seen from the Dover Calais Ferry

SeaFrance on the Dover Calais Ferry Route

SeaFrance have been running ferries between Dover and Calais since 1996 following the end of a pooling agreement with Sealink, by then known as Stena Sealink Line. The service initially began with the former Sealink vessels Fiesta and Côte d’Azur which became SeaFrance Cézanne and SeaFrance Renoir respectively after extensive refurbishments to create a distinctive French atmosphere on board. Former Sealink train ferry Nord Pas-de-Calais became the SeaFrance Nord Pas-de-Calais and operated as a freight only ferry though SeaFrance did market the ship to passengers as a quiet ship. The three vessels were later joined by the former Stena Londoner which became the SeaFrance Monet. SeaFrance quickly became the second busiest operator on the Dover – Calais route after P&O European Ferries and ahead of their former partners now known as Stena Line. In 1997 the SeaFrance Manet entered service after a five year charter to Stena Line for the Newhaven-Dieppe service, the ship essentially replaced the Monet which was later sold after being damaged in Calais. SeaFrance took delivery of the SeaFrance Rodin in 2001, their first new ship and the fastest

• • Crossing time: 90 minutes
  • Vehicle check-in: closes 30 mins before departure
  • Foot passenger check-in: closes 45 mins before departure

Dover-Calais ferry. She was joined in 2005 by the SeaFrance Berlioz, a sister ship built at a different yard.

P&O Ferries, the main Dover-Calais ferry company



News from P&O Ferries is of increased passenger numbers in the 2009 season. Cross-channel ferry services to France are carrying more passengers than last year ( 2008) as Britons head abroad for the warmer climate and outdoor lifestyle. A rainy July is said to have contributed to the exodus so that ferries departing from Dover docks have been regularly more than five per cent busier than last summer, before the recession really started to hit home.

P&O Ferries, the principal Dover-Calais ferry company, reported brisk business at the end of July as the UK school holidays have started. In one weekend, the Dover Calais fleet carried 54,000 passengers and 18,000 cars on the route, an increase on the equivalent weekend last year of more than five per cent for passengers and six per cent for cars.

The P&O spokesman said:

We’ve seen a strong reaction to the poor British summer with more people determined to have their holidays abroad come what may. Things may be tough at home but the British have a strong attachment to the Continental lifestyle and just love hitting the open road in search of the sun instead of dodging the downpours at home. In a recession people look for value for money and with fares from £30 each way for a car and passengers, it makes France by ferry extremely affordable compared, say, to flying a family to the Mediterranean. We think those popular destinations on the doorstep of the UK, where the cost of travel to get there is low, prove resilient during an economic downturn.



Dover Calais Ferry Information

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