Which buses from London to Continental Europe take the ferry?
- By
- Aparna Patel
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- 1 Aug, 2023
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Since you’re a fellow Canadian, we hope you came across our London – Brussels route offer on Busbud. 🙂
We know of at least four bus companies operating England – Belgium. It’s our understanding that the channel crossing mode changes happen based on traffic, delays and driver time behind the wheel rules. So you might, as previously mentioned, consider taking a ferry specifically and connecting on either end since you seem to care a lot.
Or it could be good to check with the bus operators about the specific schedules. As a rule of thumb the Eurotunnel goes from Falkstone to Calais while many ferries depart from Dover; if you see Dover in any bus schedule, you can be pretty sure the journey is planned to be by ferry. Interestingly when crossing by Eurotunnel, the whole bus (along with other motor vehicles) is actually rolled into a train which takes it through the tunnel.
In general the crossing between the UK / England and Europe by bus company:
- OUIBUS (formerly iDBUS) prefers the Eurotunnel trains but they sometimes use ferries.
- Eurolines (by National Express) depends on the schedule, many are by ferry but some are by Eurotunnel.
- Student Agency normally crosses by Eurotunnel.
- Megabus normally crosses by ferry.
Call the bus companies you consider using.
Some of them change between ferries and train on different times of the day and some change over regularly or irregularly, depending on things I have never been able to work out. From what I hear it is often a surprise which connection they use.
If you want to be sure you will use a ferry to the continent, you can use the Dutch flyer, rail and ferry link, or use a train to get to Dover and take a ferry from there, buses will be available between the station and the ferry dock, both sides of the connection, with trains on the French side as well.
But experiencing a ferry is not such a great deal. I like them but I think going by bus on a train under ground and sea is an experience as well.
I have used several of the ferries and all of those were spacious and you can walk around them freely.
There are seats and restaurant and/or bar areas in all ferries.
Most allow you to go outside as well unless the weather is really bad. But on the fast ferries the outside space is not big.
Credit:stackoverflow.com‘