Looking to book a two week trip to south of France from Wed 26th Feb.
Just looked at DFDS, P&O, Irish Ferries and The Shuttle.
Dover to Calais is averaging almost £300 (single) for car, van and two people. Almost £600 return ????
Has anyone else experienced these eye watering prices ?
Is something going on with cross channel routes ?
Love to hear from anyone.
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We stopped taking the van to the continent because by the time you add up ferry prices and the extra fuel you use towing, extra insurance and breakdown cover, inwe found it cheaper to book a cottage over there
I can believe the tunnel would be those sort of prices but the ferry should be nowhere near that.I buy a P&O season ticket each year and 3 return crossings for my MH comes to around £170 each return trip. The standard return is more than that but far short of the price you mentioned.
They seem to be rising by quite a lot every year, makes you wonder how long most people will stomach it for before they just stop taking the caravan abroad.
I suppose (for me) I'd rather pay the extra price for the better chance of warmer weather over there than in the UK, not to mention that the camp sites are generally a lot cheaper in France than the UK.
The alternative is to wait a bit and see if they discount any sailings later in the year, we had a 25% discount email from P&O last year but we had already booked with Brittany, I also get ATOC discount with P&O but they pretty much stopped us from using it in the summer holidays when COVID hit and don't think they have changed since then.
Quote: Originally posted by franbee on 10/2/2025
I got a discount code for the Shuttle in the New Year for trips up to the end of June. Concentrated our minds re dates, but we booked and saved £150.
I booked then as well, with 20% off. Didn't get the saving of £150 you got, but obviously it depends on what the cost is in the first place. For us the discount was about half of yours, so original cost must have been less for us in the first place. Still, a decent saving and also means we've still got a lot of Tesco points to use for the next one
I've just checked on the dates quoted above. DFDS with a longer caravan, Dover/Calais/Dunkerqaue is, as said above, around £300 outwards. However, if you remove the caravan the prices drop to around £100 or less. We started to store our caravan in France when prices rose years ago, and it costs us just €180 euros a year (outdoor storage). That is less than the additional cost of taking a caravan ONE-WAY across the Channel.
The better news is that Newhaven to Dieppe (with DFDS) is £159 for car and caravan, and with a 20% over 60s discount that is around £127. (NB You have to phone DFDS to get the discount).
Sadly those are the prices we're now having to pay. Gone are the days of 'competition leading to price cutting' on those routes. Costs HAVE gone up but not by as much as prices, and I suspect that as we are a 'captive audience' in the UK (ie we have to use a ferry/tunnel to cross the Channel) the ferry companies have now decided to cut competition for traffic and just increase prices!
Thanks for this Val A.
You beautifully sumarised the price fixing monopoloy of the cross channel operators.
Will consider the DFDS route you mentioned.
I haven't checked this year but last Irish Ferries out of Dover were considerably cheaper than P&O.
Added bonus that whisky and gin were £10 a bottle on board.
DaveS1
I obviously misunderstood your original post when you said a car, a van and 2 people. I didn`t realise that by van you meant caravan. Those dates on P&O are £518 - - strange that a car and caravan is £50 more than a car and a motorhome.
Quote: Originally posted by franbee on 10/2/2025
I got a discount code for the Shuttle in the New Year for trips up to the end of June. Concentrated our minds re dates, but we booked and saved £150.
I got the promo email too, unfortunately I had planned to go in July to minimise missing too many events and functions in June for this year, so I am going to Scotland for over 3 weeks in July instead.
May rethink for next year.
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Topic: Ferry / Tunnel costs
via mobile 10/2/2025 at 3:25pm
