wow this is tiring..............

I know you say you've decided on Hull Zeebrugge, but that's an awful expense to start with, especially as you say you're on a budget - it seems odd to spend so much on the ferry, and then try to cut down on the sort of site you want.  After all you're going to be spending the holiday on the campsite, and only one night each way on the ferry!  As you're going to have a long drive in France anyway, why not cut the cost  by more than three quarters and do the short crossing from Dover?

Are you still looking for sites in Brittany?  Again, why not do Picardy, or Normany and save some of the costs of the drive.

I've just costed up three ferry options: 

1. Hull/Zeebrugge on Saturday 21st July outwards and Sunday 12th August home, 4 bunk inside cabin, 2 bunk inside cabin, at a massive £785.00

2. Dover/Dunkerque (via Camping Cheques). outwards Sun 22 July at 14.00, return Friday 10th at 12.00 noon (these dates qualify for free caravan - £115.00

3.  Dover/Dunkerque (via Camping Cheques) outwards Saturday 21st July at 12.00 noon (afternoon sailings full), return Friday 10th August at 12.00 noon (free caravan on one sailing).- £135.93

COPIED FROM THE CAMPING CHEQUE WEBSITE:

Your cheque order

3 Camping Cheques

Standard Delivery - Royal Mail Second Class

Going outwards on Saturday, and coming back Sunday cost a little more:

But still a HUGE saving on the Hull Zeebrugge.

The last two quotes INCLUDE 3 Camping Cheques, which someone (me included) might buy from you for (say) £11/12 each!  So your ferry costs you around £75.00 - £100- that gives you many hundred pounds more to spend on campsites, even allowing for extra fuel to Dover!  Don't forget that the extra drive from Zeebrugge is about 100 km - so you could offset that against the longer drive down to Dover.  These price are much less than the quotes directly from the DFDS website!
We live in West Yorkshire and do the journey every holiday.  Yes, it's boring, sometimes there are hold-ups (but not as many as therre used to be) but the savings are enormous if you're on a budget.

If you went for either of these options then you could go back to looking at more expensive options for the campsites!  After all, it's the campsites you're going to remember, not the ferry crossing!

laura, I've just read your post, and I must agree with Val.You're using one of the most expensive crossings to save a few hundred miles driving! Doesn't make any sense to me, even if you weren't on a budget.Val has quoted DFDS prices, I think, and if you sail at unsocial hours, even those can be trimmed by a few more pounds.

Although I'm a pensioner, I still don't like wasting money, so I find the best possible deal that does what I want, and ValA is even more experienced than me, so I should listen to her!

Btw, my crossing is very dear this year, at £108 return, because I need to travel weekdays. Last year it was £78.

There are some bargains out there if you look for them.

I've just checked the new Caravan Club mag and DFDS are still advertising crossings for £39 each way. That makes it £78 instead of £536. That's half a holiday saved!

Emmerson - thanks for your support!  As President of the 'Cheapskate Campers' or should I say 'Best Camping Bargains Hunter'  I actually rechecked the Hull/Zeebrugge, and it's even more at £785 because the family will need two cabins in each direction!  Frightening!  We try to spend as near to £1,000 as we can get  and that's gives us a three week holiday, including ferries, campsite fees, fuel, food and spending money!  Our income is now vastly reduced, due to redundancy and age, but we still manage to have great holidays.

We do economise on the ferry because that just gets us to France, it's being in France that we enjoy!  This year our ferry will cost just £58.00 return for car and caravan - and in fact is even cheaper because we left the caravan in storage in France this year.

Nearest is not always best in my opinion. Although the route is now discontinued we live only 30 minutes drive time from Rosyth where there used to be a ferry crossing to Zeebrugge but never once did we take it, prefering instead to drive the 480 miles to the south coast ports. Twice we went on the Hull-Zeebruuge route but that was when we were heading to  North Spain.

Calculate your total mileage of home to ferry to holiday destination for both Hull and Dover ( or whatever south coast destination you fancy). Then compare price of fuel and crossing combined for each route. Remember also you can use Tesco vouchers if you have them for the tunnel. I'll be very surprised if you don't find the south coast crossings work out significantly cheaper even taking into account the extra driving required to get there.

Do you have any leeway in when you can actually leave home to start your holiday? I was thinking along the lines of what we do, travel down south and have an overnight stay at a site close to ferry terminal. If you were able to book the crossing for say a Sunday morning, you caould travel down either overnight Friday or daytime Saturday. A night's sleep then over on the Sunday a.m. with the added advantage of quieter roads on The French side, no HGVs on a Sunday.

With the short crossings you could be in France early to mid - morning, (tunnel is only 35 minutes).

Val, no thanks needed. I'm the vice president! Reading some of the costs of European holidays frightens me so much, that I think I must be missing something!

Last year, we extended our Euro-jaunt to 12 weeks, to take in Sweden and Austria.Sadly the European part had to be curtailed in Dresden en route to Vienna, and we had to return to UK. We then decided to continue the holiday up in Scotland, and spent the remaining 6 weeks in the Highlands and islands, including a week in Skye.We drive a 4.2 litre Range Rover, (on LPG, for "economy"), which can sometimes scrape into double mpg figures when towing, but even taking all this into account, and not scrimping in any way, the entire 12 week, 7,500 mile holiday cost only a fraction over £6000. I realise that being only two of us, our "entertainment" costs are lower, but I do feel that some posters costs could be cut.

Btw, LPG isn't available in Denmark and Sweden, so we had to run on petrol at the eqivalent of £1.85 per litre! That hurt.

i just think because we live and hour from hull its gonna be more relaxing than traveling for hours to get to dover (i have 3 children age 8,6 and 3 just put yourselves in a car with 3 kids!) its not great lol. Then the hundreds of miles from calais. I have checked out portsmouth crossings but it costs about the same as hull not adding the extra petrol! and at least on the return we only have an hour to get home. I have costed portsmouth one way and home on zebrugge but its not making any savings. If it was just us 2 and maybe if we lived nearer to dover then i wouldnt hesitate to do the cheaper crossing. My husbands holidays cannot be changed and we have to go in the summer holidays-which  is just a swizz. I wish that we could do a camping cheque holiday it would be brilliant.but we cant. And we are happy to have an 8 nighter in a fab place and 8 nighter in a municipal.

but then we arent forgetting ive got to feed us all!  we will take as much as we can, its not gonna be cheap but then taking a family of 5 in holidays isnt going to be reasonable.

does anyone have any reasonable campsites they know of? municipals?

We use the caravan club book "Caravan Europe book 1" for all types of camp sites including municipal sites

I have just checked Amazon books, they are selling 2012 editions for £9.96 inc postage

Laura you don't need to be holidaying in low season to book the ferry through Camping Cheques - it's just a way of getting a much cheaper ferry crossing - you can still book the crossing without using the Camping Cheques at all, or as I say, sell them or give them to friends. 

Are you still planning on Nevez in Brittany in view of the distance from Zeebrugge (525 miles which is almost exactly the same as your original Dordogne site).  Somewhere around Caen might be good - just about half way - perhaps this one Camping Municipal Le Pont Farcy (reviewed and recommended as a half way stop by another contributor to this forum) or http://www.pont-farcy.fr/commune/camping (campsite website).

Where do you want to spend your second week?  Do you want a municipal site in Brittany, or further east?  Site recommendations would be easier if you could give an idea of areas.

If you prefer Portsmouth to Cherbour, have you tried a Condor sailing - there and back on a Sunday (even in high season) when caravans go free.  You should get this for as little as £250 return.  Now and even when our children were younger we drive down to Portsmouth in the evening when the children are tired.  They drop off to sleep in the car.  We have the beds made up in the caravan and, when we part up at Portsmouth, move them into the caravan to continue their sleep.  You could do this on the Saturday night and get the 9am ferry crossing to Cherbourg - just a thought!  This can be booked either through Caravan Club or Camping Cheques.

Try a price combining sailing out from Portsmouth on this "caravan gors free" sailing with a return into Hull for convenience and see how you get on.  A few good sites for children of your ages would be - Haliotis in Southern Normandy or Chateau de Galinee, Northern Brittany, Camping le Cormoran, northern Normandy so not too much driving the other side and plenty of facilities for the children.