Rental car place first city from Chunnel from London to France

Lille - that's where we'd planned on picking up our own car last year.

Edited to add: Provence is about 10 hours by car from Lille. Unless you have unlimited time and have plans to stop along the way your better bet might be to just fly. Am seeing direct flights (about 2 hours) from London to Nice on RyanAir, EasyJet, and British Air for less than $50.

Continuing from Lille by train would also be much faster than driving.

Is this the same (delayed) trip you were planning in December last year? https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/england/dover-to-calais-2236b8be-fc79-40a5-93f7-415f99326bf7

We discussed quite a lot about driving vs the train, at that time you were going from Dover.

As I mentioned then, Chunnel is not a term used much anymore - Channel Tunnel is what people say.

We did mention Lille before, which would be the direct answer to this question. I acknowledge that you may have your 40 year old daughter with special needs so you may very well have good reasons to get into a car as soon as possible. Car rental is available right in the Lille Europe station, the station for the Eurostar trains from England. It is all indoors and very easy. The major companies are there.

If you won't need the car right away, you might consider taking one of the seasonal Eurostar trains all the way to Avignon in Provence. It will be much much faster and almost certainly cheaper, or as said just above there are inexpensive flights from London to Nice.

Just to be specific, the ViaMichelin app gives Lille to Avignon by compact car as one-way tolls just over 80€ in tolls, 8 and a half hours of nonstop driving (I'd plan on at least 10 hours with comfort stops), and one-way fuel in a Peugeot of nearly 110€ which makes the drive a very expensive alternative.

I do understand you have special circumstances but I want you to have the full picture.

If you can get to Provence a different way, I certainly benefit from having a car in Provence and the Cote d'Azur. I drive my own car down and it is very helpful once I arrive. The drive from Lille (the way I go after a night in Lille after crossing the Channel, I live about 3 hours away from Dover) on the A27 and A7 is just mile after mile of boring motorway. I like it when I get there,

stay on until Paris. Then rent a car or fly.

Yes, I was asking a lot of questions this past year as our trip was supposed to Sept 2020.
Now, if Covid is not a problem (vaccine) then we plan on Sept 2021. If we took the train to Avignon are there car rental places there?
Thank you.

Hertz and Europcar are located at Avignon TGV station, as well as one other lesser known outfit (Virtuo).

Current schedules right now are only though Dec 12, but there is one connection from London St Pancras to Avignon TGV at 11:04 am, arriving Avignon TGV at 6:16 pm with a train change at Lille Europe. Next year, there are likely to be more connections available. You want to avoid anything changing trains in Paris as that will involve changing stations in Paris, from Gare du Nord to Gare de Lyon via the RER.

Thank you everyone for responding to my question. I am afraid a plane is out because
I think these are small planes (less than 100 people} and I am scared of those! I entered on the SCNF site a week in Nov. and that came to $540. Rental cars for the same week (standard) was $262. a week. Even adding in the tolls that is still a saving.
We are use to driving long distances, have driven across the United States several times. I imagine there might be a place to stop for the night along the way if we wish?
Thank you.

BA has nonstops Heathrow to Marseille for 100 GBP ($130 US) r/t using an A320. That has lots more than 100 seats.

Was the $540 fare for two people? That sounds like full-fare tickets. Of course, if things remain really uncertain until shortly before your travel dates next year, you might not be able to take advantage of advance-purchase rail tickets, but in normal circumstances that would be a viable option in this situation.

On the SNCF website (which is where you should look, not at a website pricing tickets in US dollars), I see OUIGO fares as low as 16 euros per person for the first week of January. There are some limitations with OUIGO regarding luggage and early arrival at the station, I believe, but I think outside the Christmas holiday period you can probably get tickets from Lille to Avignon for about 60 euros per person or less. Non-OUIGO tickets for later in January don't seem to be available for sale yet, so I can't be very precise.

I would not use RailEurope for European train tickets. It charges extra and often doesn't list all the departures, so you may be choosing from a list of options that doesn't include the cheapest ones.

You can check schedules and fares here: https://en.oui.sncf/en/train-ticket

Even adding in the tolls that is still a saving.

A gentle reminder that in addition to tolls, there is the cost of fuel as well. I find that ViaMichelin is an excellent website - when you put in your possible itinerary, it gives you some alternative routes and lets you know how much the trip will cost in fuel and down to the penny for tolls. (You can even put in different sizes of vehicle to get a feel for how much the fuel will be for something bigger vs. something smaller.). Highly recommended.

(Oops if I had been paying attention, I would have remembered that Nigel already gave this advice up in one of the very first responses. Sorry for the retread. Remember with his look at ViaMichelin, you’re looking at nearly 200€ in fuel and tolls one way — if you rent a compact car more for fuel if you rent something bigger — before you ever pay for the car rental itself!)

I entered on the SCNF site a week in Nov. and that came to $540.

What did you enter (what cities, one-way, round trip etc?)? For November like a couple of weeks from now?

If we took the train to Avignon are there car rental places there?

Yes, right at the TGV station.