Barcelona Car Rental for Euro Road Trip

Martin:
You really need to go on GoogleMaps.com and plot your intended itinerary. I think you'll find Spain and France to be much larger than expected, and there are easier ways to travel than automobile.
The first and last days of your trip and every time you travel from city to city is a lost day. Backtracking all the way back to Barcelona is going to be very, very expensive.
Your trip would be much more efficient if you flew open jaw into Barcelona and home from London.

There's a relatively new fast train service from Barcelona to Paris, however it's still a 6 1/2 hour trip. It's the way to go.
And from Paris to London is 2 1/2 hours on the Eurostar is the way to go on that leg.
If you want to do day trips out of the big cities, it certainly would work well to rent a car.

Thanks for the reply David.

I'll look into those options, however the reason we're considering car rental as opposed to flying or train is to be able to make the trip through France several days long each way with various stops en route. The total drive time from Barcelona to London is shown at about 17hours which is ok for us.

The train from BCN to Paris might work if I could rent a car from Paris for the rest of the trip and we will need one for sure for the entire week we're spending in England.

I'd have preferred to fly into London to begin with, but got return tickets for $315US each with Air Canada to BCN, so we figured the savings would allow us to see three countries instead of just one.

Best,
Martin

I have not done it myself, but I would assume that driving a car from Spain or France in London that drives on the opposite side of the road would have some extra challenges as you will not be oriented appropriately. It might be better to rent a car for a smaller portion of the trip and take trains for the longer distances.

I have driven a French car in Britain and it was no problem. I even preferred it, since my driver's seat was further away from the oncoming traffic.

Any car rental agency wants to know which countries you'll drive in, and that may be regardless of whether you buy their insurance. You should also tell them if you plan to take a car onto a ferry or the EuroTunnel train. My home car rental insurance doesn't cover overseas rentals, but maybe yours does.

Although the car expenses would be shared by three, it could still make sense to mix in other transport. For instance, pick up a car on the French side of the border at Perpignan, do your French wandering and then drop the car in Paris or Lille. No significant drop-off fee within one country. Take the Eurostar train from Paris or Lille to London. Fly back from London to Barcelona on EasyJet or other budget airline; see www.skyscanner.com.