Travel Canterbury to France by sea

I think the ferries to France that take foot passengers depart from the southern coast--places like Plymouth, Poole and Portsmouth. I am not familiar with current routes to Belgium or the Netherlands. You can explore options on www.directferries.com. I'd try to book on the website of the company that actually operates the ferry, though.

I must warn you that it's not unheard of for a sailing to be canceled, even between May and September.

I'm a huge fan of trains, but if I wanted to travel from southeastern England to Switzerland, I wouldn't use a combination of ferry and rail. Flying would probably be cheaper as well as much faster. Check flight options on www.skyscanner.com.

I've done Portsmouth to Cherbourg by ferry, but I've not done this particular route. You may want look into to travel from Canterbury to Dover, and then take the ferry from Dover to Calais.

Use Southeastern to get from Canterbury East to Dover Priory -- https://www.southeasternrailway.co.uk/ --
Should be about a 30 minute journey and £10 and as I understand it Dover Priory station is 1.5 miles from the ferry port, but there is a taxi rank.

Then P&O Ferry to cross to Calais -- https://www.poferries.com/en#route

I don't think P&O is the only ferry company, there should be one or two others.

Hope this helps you get started.

One last little thing, Chunnel was the name all over US media back in the early 90s when the Tunnel was under construction and now long outdated. Channel Tunnel is how most will know it.

You can't sensibly go by sea, as no ferry out of Dover now takes foot passengers. You'd have to backtrack to London for a coach to Paris Bercy.
Or go to Portsmouth for Brittany Ferries, via one of several routes to France.
The other way is the DFDS ferry from Newhaven to Dieppe which takes foot pax. But at Dieppe the trains no longer come down to the harbour, so it's a shuttle bus to the town station for Paris.
Canterbury to Newhaven by train is quite easy, changing at Ashford and Lewes.
Given the difficulties in France currently I would be inclined to take the Dutch Flyer- train from London Liverpool Street, ferry from Harwich to Hook of Holland overnight, tram to Rotterdam then train down through Germany.
You could get the train if you wanted from Rotterdam to Brussels or anywhere else in Belgium for a few nights, or maybe Amsterdam, then continue to Switzerland.
Overall I think personally the Dutch route is far better, nicer boats and a full nights sleep on the way.
The Portsmouth routes are just a very long way round.
Once you're in Holland or Belgium it's simple. A route can easily be put together. Use bahn.de (German Railways) or Rail Europe, or come back here when you have determined your start point on the Continent.
VAP's route via Dover is out of date as stated. It is also very rare for the boats to Holland to be cancelled. Dover Port suffers from bad weather due to its layout, but you aren't going that way.
Planes can be and are cancelled in bad weather, but that doesn't stop you flying.

https://www.poferries.com/en/routes/dover-to-calais/travel-information/travelling-as-a-foot-passenger

This whole thing is typical of P and O. The foot passenger service was definetly withdrawn soon before Christmas 2022. It seems to have been re-instated but the timings of the ferries now taking foot pax again are not as stated on that page when you look at the booking engine.
If you look at it the timings there is only one of those services (the lunchtime one) which connects through to Paris, with a change at Amiens, not reaching Paris until 10pm at night, so you have to overnight in Paris as you'll be too late to connect to anywhere else.

Also the whole conduct of P and O last year, when they dismissed their staff by Zoom, and hired in new cheaper staff was reprehensible. And very recent videos of their ships shows a dismal travelling experience. The Ryanair of the seas.

I quote from Man in Seat 61- "On 17 March 2022, Dubai-owned P&O Ferries made all 800 British seafaring staff redundant without warning via a 3-minute Zoom video, and replaced them with cheap agency staff. All sailings were suspended without notice, leaving passengers stranded. See www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-60779001. The firm's behaviour has been described as 'appalling' - you may wish to reconsider using P&O Ferries."

P and O are back taking foot passengers Dover to Calais. It is a pain in the neck, and neither the Dover port or Calais port is particularly convenient for foot passengers.

The other two ferry companies between Dover and Calais/Dunkerque are DFDS and Stena - neither take foot passengers any longer.

I personally won't touch P and O with a 10 or more feet long pole. They were really awful with their staff, firing all the skilled seafarers and eventually replacing them with Indian agency workers on less than minimum wage, and the agency workers had never been in similar ferries and had no knowledge of Channel crossings. Then some of their ferries failed safety inspections, one failed three times in a row. Others can make their choice, but I and my friends steer well clear.

There are ferries which take foot passengers further around the coast but then you need to travel much further through France.

There are no crossings at the moment between the south of England and Belgium.

You could go from Canterbury into London and go by train to Harwich and take the slow boat to the Netherlands, then the long way down to Luzern. Coming from Canterbury to London, the fast way is Javelin trains on the High Speed line voom into St Pancras International station (the home of the Eurostar, if you change your mind to taking the train it is just down stairs) or the slow train into Victoria station. Either way you have to tube/bus/taxi to Liverpool Street station for the train to Harwich.

If you want to go way north in England, all the way to Hull in Yorkshire you can get a ferry to Zeebrugge which isn't far from Calais, or to Ijmuiden near Amsterdam. Both of those routes take you all the way around the houses to avoid a short Eurostar ride to Lille or Brussels for the ride down to Luzern.

By the way the ferry from Hull is also run by the reviled P and O. That goes to Rotterdam Europort, P and O have withdrawn their Zeebrugge passenger ferry from Hull (I think it still runs in freight mode).
There is now no foot passenger sea route to any Belgian port.
The Ijmuiden (which is 45 minutes out of Amsterdam) ferry runs from North Shields (Newcastle) - operated by DFDS-That is an extraordinarily long way round to go from Canterbury to the continent.
The train from St Pancras takes a mere 9 hours- 1301 Eurostar from London (so say 1000 from Canterbury to St Pancras to be sure of your connection), change at Lille, Paris CdG airport, Strasbourg and Basel, arrive at Luzern at 2230.
A very civilised day's journey.
If you are willing to change across Paris there are several earlier connections.
If you really wanted to take the sea route 'avoiding' France you would have to overnight in Amsterdam, Utrecht or Arnhem as the daily via Germany express departs Amsterdam at 0808 (calling at Utrecht and Arnhem), changing at Karlsruhe and Basel, arriving in Luzern at 1705.

It seems like a lot of extra time and trouble to take a ferry. Why not take the Eurostar train from London St. Pancras to Amsterdam or Brussels, and then route through Germany to Switzerland via Basel?

We took the train from Amsterdam to Switzerland a few years back (2018) and it was a nice experience. I am pretty sure it was a direct train from Amsterdam to Basel, but I do not see one any more. We spent a very pleasant night in Basel ( my husband joined the locals for a late afternoon swim in the river)

If you use one of the national train websites to find trains from Amsterdam (or Brussels) to Basel now, they will route you through Paris. If you want to avoid French trains due to ongoing strikes, you can just pick a city in Germany you might like to visit for an overnight stop (Köln comes to mind);and then head to Basel from there.