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Hi diana,

Said in my original post about not knowing where you lived but as you have said you are only 30 minutes from Folkstone I wouldn't be too bothered about looking at the longer crossings as you would spend a considerable amount of time crossing England to get to places like Portsmouth, Weymouth etc as you would to start going west in France. The ferry trip is also a lot more expensive.

You mentioned the tunnel, but the cheapest way across is almost certainly Norfolk Line from Calais to Dunkerque (last year we paid £58 return for car and 2 passengers for a 29 day trip). Check out the Ferrysavers.com website. The Norfolk Line ships are not as big as PandO or Seafrance but are very good and have the advantage of o forward view via a huge plate glass window in the cafe/restaurant (which should keep a pair of 5 year olds well occupied as they can see the coast coming towards them).

I love the advice in the early part of the thread....my first trip to France 2 years ago involved:

1) driving round Paris on the busiest day of the year

2) doing 2,500miles in a VW van in 2 weeks

3) only stopping more than 1 night at a couple of place so always on the move

4) trying to get a coastal camp site without booking in the first 2 weeks of August.

5) doing 450 miles in one go from Calais to Limoges! Poor van was almost on fire as were we!

Needless to say when we went last year we had learnt a lot BUT due to making a bad choice of area in 2 weeks we actually travelled more miles and only stayed in 1 place for 2 nights....we moved on every night apart from that!!!