Or how to travel with a dog if you can’t fly (which is the case for all flights to or from the UK)
Traveling with a >25 kilos dog from the UK to Spain is surely not an easy thing to do if you are on a low budget and cannot afford an over 1000 pounds fare for the flight ticket.
So what are the options then? It should be easy, so I thought. I have to admit that this process took me longer than I expected, trying to find affordable ways to travel with a dog to Barcelona.
At the beginning I looked for renting a car, as it would have been the easiest way to travel. However, the cost of a one-way trip with Hertz (the only company that allows overseas travel with a hire car) was fairly the same price as the flight, so that was out of the question.
The second option was to try to find a way to exit the UK and then hire a car from either France or the Netherlands, but the options were limited as well, plus you have to consider the deposit you need to block when hiring a car, which is at least 1000 Euros.
With the idea of hiring a car being completely taken out of the question, I proceeded looking for other ways of traveling like taking the ferry to France and then traveling by train from France to Spain, which sounded like a great idea considering both the price and the travel time.
However, taking the ferry from the UK to France proved to be quite costly, as you cannot take the ferry as a passenger with a dog, you have to be in a car. The Eurostar train does not accept pets and to cross the Eurotunnel you also need a car and to pay the tunnel ticket which can vary from 75 pounds to 250 pounds.
The other option by ferry was taking the Stena Line from UK — Harwich to The Netherlands — The Hook of Holland all for a very affordable price of 87 pounds.
The next step was to check the pet travel regulations in each country we transited, to make sure we don’t get stuck midway due to pets not being allowed in trains, because that would have been a problem.
This is how I found out that some train companies in France allow pets in trains but only up to 10 kilos and kept in carriers or in bags. When I checked the Spanish train companies, I found out pets are not allowed at all, so I had to find another option. Oh, and buses were completely out of the question, as none of the bus companies allows pets.
The trains in the Netherlands and Germany are fine with dogs, although you might be asked to pay an extra ticket for the dog on the train, but not always.
In the end, the most viable and most affordable option was to travel by ferry and then by train through The Netherlands. The ferry trip was really nice; it proved to be the best and most comfortable solution, as we traveled by night time, booked a special kennel for Gruia and I could watch him on the TV in my cabin.
Once in The Netherlands, we took about 6 trains in total to get from Schiedam Centraal to Stuttgart and I was asked to pay for Gruia only in one train, half the price for an adult ticket.
From Stuttgart we found a car share through Bla Bla Car — a guy who was traveling to Valencia and also had a dog, so it was really cool and fun to travel with. Gruia made a new friend and was not lonely on the trip and neither was I. Oh, and I also drove the car from Montpellier to Barcelona, which was really awesome, adding extra value to the trip as I love driving.
This was a really adventurous trip, but it was not all fun and games, as the actual train itinerary was not nearly close to what it was supposed to be… read more about the adventures of Gruia traveling by train through Europe and find out what happened here.
Daniela is a health software expert at Digitail — a software for veterinary clinics. She is very passionate about the development of veterinary medicine and about her dog Gruia who travels with her everywhere in the world.
