I'd booked Hoverspeed with a discounted promo appearing in the Star newspaper. £19 return for one car and upto 5 pax seemed cheap compared to Eurtunnel's £38 return. If we'd gone on a Sat. sailing Hoverspeed cost would have been £29.
I'd checked out the customs 'allowances' - I don't think there should be any limit but Customs and Excise are a law unto themselves. 90 litres of still wine each translates to 120 standard bottles each and at 1.2kg per bottle (on average) the weight would be 288kg if we both brought back 120. That's about 3 - 4 passengers in the back so weight is the limiting factor for a normal (hatchback) type car anyway.
Left at 2:00am Friday morning and missed the traffic on the M25. Arrived at Dover on time at 07:00am for our 8:00am departure. Nobody told me you need a GB sticker on the rear of the car and my numberplates don't have the blue GB flag in the corner. £1.25 for a sticker. You also need headlamp deflectors to avoid dazzling oncomming drivers. Even though we would be in and out in daylight hours still legally required (so Hoverspeed told us) - £8.50 for the pair of stick-on deflectors.
Hoverspeed now use large catamarans and loading of cars was fast and efficient but required some manoeuvring as they load in a spiral fashion getting higher inside on each circuit.
Journey was just over one hour and reasonably bumpy with a 2mt swell. Coffee on board is good. There's a shop selling wines and beer etc. and they even sell single packets of fags at £2.50 each when midway in the channel.
Offloading at Calais is fast and signposts for A26 then A16 main motorway are easy to follow.
Called at Auchan (head for Boulogne on the A16 then exit at Junction 43; head right - North - and at first roundabout turn left past the Total garage and Auchan is on the right).
You'll need a 1 Euro coin for the shopping trolleys located in the car-park and as we had no coins we went inside to a newsagents for change.
Wine choice here is wide with case deals including buy case of 6 and get 6 free. Looking at the labels on the shelves and deciding which to buy then proves difficult to locate the same bottle in the full cases below the shelves. I tended to buy cases at the ends of the aisles where it was easier to read the details and know what you are picking.
Buying single bottles or maybe 2 or 3 of a kind soon filled the trolley and we realised the problem of storing in the car. There's not many empty boxes available and they want to try and sell you a carrier (for 6 bottles) for .80 euro each. If you look where the staff are shelf filling you can usually ask for the empty boxes and you might find a few near staff access points to the back storage - but grab them whilst you can.
I found it useful to take some info re. better years for each of the main French regions (http://www.bbr.com/shopping/vintage-french.lml) and was able to avoid some years and focus on others.
At the checkout the queues were far worse than a typical Tesco/Asda and they seem slower to scan/serve each customer. Some of the case deals scanned using the box barcodes but most of the time the inner bottles needed to be scanned. With mixtures of bottles in the boxes 'borrowed' earlier there's a chance that some bottles may be double scanned or missed. Overall I'd say they missed scanning more than they double scanned (but I didn't know this until returned home and checked carefully).
Having stacked these in the car we visited Franglais. This is a wine warehouse (http://www.boozecruise.com/shop_guide/calais_franglais.asp). Take the A16 heading for Boulogne from the port of Calais and exit at junction 40 - this was known as junction 11). Turn left and it's about 500mt. You can't miss it - large hanger style building painted white, blue and red.
Impressed by this outlet. The manager was helpful and spoke good English. You can taste approx. 15 wines varying in style and price and they have specialist tastings each week. Prices were good at the lower end and some bargains. I would definately visit again on future trip. Next time I would make sure I had sterling notes (not coins) as they offered the better prices if paid in sterling cash. You cannot pay by credit/debit card in sterling - it will be taken in Euros and converted on your statement.
Finally, headed for Carrefour Hypermarket. Junction 41 (was 12) off the A16 and head south towards Cite Europe. Keep going and it's on the right. This is the anchor store in a mall development that also has a very pleasant restaurant area. We ate here and had ample choice. Again, you need coins for the trolleys.
There was a wider choice than Auchan but overall I'd say there were less bargains. Nevertheless, we stocked-up and again had to search for empty boxes. Check-out's slow again and some mistakes made.
Back to the port for the 17:45 (local time) crossing. You need to be there approx. 30 minutes before sailing time although they suggest 45 minutes. Sailing times are local and France is one hour ahead in summer. The port offered the best deals we'd seen on beer and as the customs 'allowance' for beer (110 litres each) is separate to the wine we bought several trays. Weight restricted us further but for £28 72 cans of 1664 was a bargain. They seemed to be offering the better deal if paid in pounds sterling cash.
70 minutes return crossing, quick and simple exit out of Dover onto M20 and stopped for petrol at a Sainsbury's near Ashford. Unleaded in France was same as UK although Diesel in France was cheaper (about 72p a litre I believe).
Overall, for 102 bottles the cost worked out at £2.56 a bottle and if the travel costs are added (although shared with mate) a further £0.70 per bottle fully covered all travel costs.
With vat in France being 19.6% on wines I don't understand why Tesco and the rest cannot import by the container load and sell at below £3 bottles that can be purchased for 1.25Euro in Carrefour. At UK vat rates that's £0.81 before duty is added. Carrefour can sell at low-cost and presumably make a profit.
If more of us bought in France and boycotted the UK outlets perhaps both the chancellor and the major chains would address this imbalance.
