Due to their size motorhomes are often charged quite a substantial premium over cars on ferries and through the 'Chunnel'.  All those tempting special offers widely advertised at anything from £20 upwards will say 'cars only' somewhere in the small print.  Typical list ferry prices for high season are £3-400 return for a short crossing and maybe £7-£800 for a return to Spain with a reasonable cabin.  Eurotunnel have been very expensive until recently with peak fares in the £5-600+ range.  The fierce competition in early 2004 seems to have brought those fares down to around the £300 mark - and now offers as low as £125 in mid 2004!

This whole topic is a bit of a thorny one since fares can vary enormously with the booking method and can also be very high compared not only with cars but also against caravans.  Even worse the fares have been impossible to fathom in recent years as the ferry companies play strange marketing games with each other sometimes under somewhat concealed identities on the web.

Let me give you an example; last year we wanted to book a short crossing in July and the price given by 'phone by quoting a "special offer code" was £370 but after much searching and playing the internet at varying times I got a return crossing for £136.  Amazed? yes I'm sure you are.  But what if I tell you that this was for exactly the same boat, on the same day, at the same time?!  And how about the fact that the phone call was to P&O and that the cheap www.ferry.co.uk website is run by - yes you guessed it, P&O!  I'm not particularly singling out P&O as the bad boy here since many of these companies are playing the same game - no wonder that http://www.channelpirates.com/ was born.

Norfolkline are slightly different, they concentrate on commercial traffic and seem to charge less for motorhomes - maybe they're babies compared with the trucks they mostly carry!  They operate the Dover to Dunkerque route rather than Dover to Calais.  On-board there's no McDonalds, no ball pit, no video wall and very little in the way of shopping but there is an excellent quiet lounge if you want it.

Other than the ferry companies' own websites - obvious or concealed - the cheapest deals are usually from the Caravan Club, the Camping and Caravanning Club and the Motorhome Ticket Club.  The best deals vary from club to club depending on the routes chosen.  Shareholder deals can be attractive too but often pale into insignificance compared with the highly competitive short crossing discounts as above.  The longer crossings are not subject to the same fierce competition and are not usually discounted by much, so shareholder discounts can be quite significant here.

News:  A new crossing is making a fresh hole in the market, presumably to carve out a market share. Speed Ferries: www.speedferries.com are operating on the old Dover to Boulogne route and are reputed to be going to do for the ferry crossing to Europe what Ryanair and Easyjet did for air travel!  Note though that bookings are limited to vehicles no more than 2.90m high and 6.50m long, including any or all additions!