Best route from England through France to Amsterdam

Taking your car through the Channel Tunnel is quicker than using the ferry, and avoids any problem with rough weather in the channel. Details are at www.eurotunnel.com. Journey time is about 35 minutes, there are frequent shuttles, and you drive off the shuttle straight on to the autoroute in France. If you intend going to the Normandy beaches, then natives are the various ferry routes from Portsmouth to Caen or Cherbourg. Details are at www.brittany-ferries.co.uk/. These are much longer crossings, but the boats are very comfortable and well-equipped.

Are you intending to take your English car to Europe? Or get another in Calais? Depending, there are a number of other considerations...

I think it is very expensive to rent the car in one country and return it in another,, are you return to UK to fly out?

I don't know anything about renting cars in Europe. That's why I need your advice on the best way to do it that is also cost effective. We could also cross from Portsmouth to Caen (?) to put us right there in the WW2 beach area but it's a longer crossing. Ideally I'd like to fly into London and return home from Amsterdam but again I'm not sure if that is cost effective or if we should just return to London. Your ideas would be appreciated.

Toss this idea in the pot: Keep one car the whole way since a bunch of short-term rentals will cost you a heck of more than one longer-term one. Take the car back to England and leave from there. The drive from Amsterdam to Dunkerque is three hours, the crossing is two, and it's two hours back up from Dover to London. Dunkerque usually has cheaper crossing rates and a more frequent schedule (directferries.co.uk has the scoop for all routes). It burns an extra day, but will more than pay for itself. Other thoughts and tidbits: You don't want a car in Amserdam and to get a half-decent parking rate, you have to park on the outskirts and tram in. It takes seven hours to drive from Caen/Bayeux to Amsterdam. I don't ride trains, but I'd bet the train would be faster. With a car, you could poke along for a couple of days and stop in Amiens and Brussels. If you take the ferry to Caen, you have to ride a bus from the ferryport into Caen proper to get to the car rental places. I can't picture a Dover - Caen ferry route- - it's probably from Portsmouth. If you take the ferry from Dover to Calais, car rental places are handy on the French side. I can't picture any car rental places at the Dunkerque ferry port and I go through there fairly often. From either Dunkerque or Calais, it's close to fours hours to drive to Caen. Renting in one country and dropping in another is super-expensive. Picking up in the UK and dropping on the continent is off of the page. Use kayak.com to fiddle with the prices. My druthers would be to try to do without the car in England (but I don't know what you want to see), then get one and turn it in all in France.

Buying open jaw (multi-city) tickets for home-London and Amsterdam-home would be an excellent choice. You would save both the time and expense of returning to London. However, if you do decide to return to London, you can fly very cheaply from Amsterdam to either Luton or Gatwick on easyJet. Or you could take the "Dutch Flyer" train-ferry-train combination, either overnight or during the day. For more information, go here. Both Bob and Ed have given you some good ideas. I'll add a few more for your consideration. If you rent a car in the UK, leave it in the UK. You could take the overnight ferry from Portsmouth to Caen and save the cost of a night in a hotel. Pick up a rental car in Caen. Ed said that it's a seven-hour drive from Caen to Amsterdam. The fastest train route (Caen-Paris-Amsterdam) also takes seven hours. I recommend that you take the train, at least from Paris to Amsterdam. You could drop your car in Caen or you could drive to Paris and drop it there.

Great ideas. Thank you! Maybe you could help me decide if the trip to Normandy is worth it on its own. Our biggest goals are driving around England (a long time dream of ours) I've been to England twice before and find taking the train very stressful and then visiting family in Amsterdam. Although we would love to see the beaches of the D-day landings as a pilgrimage of sorts, I don't know if it's worth the expense and time to do it. What would make it worth while for me is to experience cute French villages and scenery....I have no desire to go to Paris again. Will we experience that in the Caen area? or is there much more to see for example, driving across normandy to Amsterdam. Am I making sense?? :)

It's clear what you're about, finally. Get a car and use it in England. Turn it in in Portsmouth and do what Tim said about the Caen ferry. Get another car in Caen and turn it in somewhere in France. Take the train from that place to Amsterdam. If you want to drive across France after Normandy, the scenery doesn't get that good until you hit Picardy (Amiens is about two and a half hours from Caen - - it's boring from the Seine to the Somme). I don't know where the road intersects a train line (without having to ride the train back through Paris) so you can drop the car - - Tim does - - it's maybe Lille with a routing probably through Brussels to Amesterdam. Stretch each car use as long as you can to get a better average daily rate if your schedule allows. As far as Normandy being worth it, that's up to you. But there's a heck of a lot more to the area (especially in the interior) than just the WWII stuff.

I'll pick up where Ed left off. Leaving your car in France will allow you to avoid the extra fee assessed for doing it in another country. You can easily go from Lille to Amsterdam by train with a connection in either Brussels or Antwerp. For detailed timetables see the German Rail site. You've aroused my curiosity. I find train travel to be wonderfully relaxing. What about it is stressful for you?

Thanks for your info Tim. Well...my first trip to Europe was a few years ago with my adult daughter. We trained all over for 3 weeks and I just found it stressful always making sure you were at the station at a certain time, figuring out which train was the right one, running around when the track they said your train was coming on switched at the last minute. We were on the move every few days as well which just made for a busy trip. If I had to do it again, I would have done a tour where all that thinking was done for you. I'm afraid I'm not that adventurous. Now, planning a trip with my husband, I guess I just want more freedom to hop in the car whenever I want and stop wherever I want.

Car rental for over 21 days is cheaper,, you lease it , not rent it. I personally vote with leave the car in UK. Taking it over just makes everything more expensive and stressful,, driving a left hand car on a right side road,, just after getting used to driving a left hand car on a left side car, yech.
You haven't mentioned this, but its important , how long is trip. ?