The Short Strait
Dover to Calais and the Folkestone shuttle carry most of what we run. It is the shortest sea leg, the most frequent service, and the easiest to re-book when a load runs behind.
Britain to France
Moving to France
Removals from anywhere in the UK to anywhere in France — planned around the property you are moving into rather than the distance between the two.
There are two ways to quote a move to France. You can count the rooms, apply a rate to the mileage and hope. Or you can find out what the building at the far end actually is, and quote the job that exists.
We do the second, because French property does things British property does not. A longère puts fifty metres between the tail-lift and the far bedroom. A maison de village stacks four floors above a street too narrow to stop in. A Gascon farmhouse sits a kilometre up an unmade track. A Dordogne farmhouse has a doorway that clears your wardrobe and a reveal behind it that does not. None of this is unusual. All of it changes the crew, the vehicle and the day.
Whether you are relocating permanently, furnishing a property you already own, or turning a second home into the main one, the starting point is the same: what kind of building, where does it sit, and how do we get to the door.
Collection
Where we collect in the UK
We load from addresses across the United Kingdom. These are the points we run through most often, and a Scottish or northern collection is planned around the crossing so the load is not standing still waiting for a sailing.
- London Removals from London to France
- Manchester Removals from Manchester to France
- Birmingham Removals from Birmingham to France
- Leeds Removals from Leeds to France
- Glasgow Removals from Glasgow to France
- Edinburgh Removals from Edinburgh to France
- Bristol Removals from Bristol to France
Collections outside these cities are entirely routine — Cornwall, mid-Wales, the Highlands, Northern Ireland. Tell us the postcode and we will tell you how it is best run.
Destinations
Where in France
Grouped by the kind of property British owners buy there, because that is what determines how the move is crewed. Each belt has its own page.
Dordogne & Lot
Dordogne (24) · Lot (46) · Lot-et-Garonne (47)
Stone, oak and a lane too narrow for the lorry.
Removals from the UK to Bergerac, Sarlat-la-Canéda, Eymet, Issigeac, Cahors, Villeréal and the surrounding communes.
Charente & Poitou
Charente (16) · Charente-Maritime (17) · Deux-Sèvres (79) · Vienne (86)
A hundred feet of house and one stone arch to get through.
Removals from the UK to Cognac, Jarnac, Aubeterre-sur-Dronne, Villebois-Lavalette, Ruffec, Melle and the surrounding communes.
Languedoc & Occitanie
Hérault (34) · Aude (11) · Gard (30) · Tarn (81)
Four floors up, one room wide, and no lift.
Removals from the UK to Pézenas, Béziers, Limoux, Carcassonne, Uzès, Gaillac and the surrounding communes.
Gascony & the Gers
Gers (32) · Landes (40) · Hautes-Pyrénées (65) · Tarn-et-Garonne (82)
A kilometre of track and nobody to hold the gate.
Removals from the UK to Auch, Condom, Fleurance, Lectoure, Eauze, Mirande and the surrounding communes.
Alps & Haute-Savoie
Haute-Savoie (74) · Savoie (73) · Isère (38)
Top-floor living, ground-floor door, and a hairpin in between.
Removals from the UK to Annecy, Chamonix, Morzine, Samoëns, Thonon-les-Bains, Bourg-Saint-Maurice and the surrounding communes.
We move to the rest of France too — Paris and the Île-de-France, Provence, the Côte d'Azur, Brittany, Normandy, the Loire and the Rhône-Alpes among them. The five belts above are the ones where our property knowledge runs deepest, so they get pages of their own rather than a line in a list.
The crossing
Which route your load takes
Chosen for where the property is, not applied as a house rule.
The western sailings
Portsmouth and Poole into Caen, Cherbourg, Le Havre and St Malo cut a long French drive off a move into Brittany, Normandy or the west. For a load going to the Charente or the Dordogne it is frequently the better route.
The long crossings
Portsmouth to Bilbao and Santander are worth considering for the deep south-west. Which crossing suits your move is a question about where the property is, not a preference we apply uniformly.
How we group the work
By property type
Five categories, because five different buildings need five different plans.
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Rural stone house and barn
maison de maître, longère, grange
Thick walls, narrow openings, original staircases and outbuildings holding more than anyone remembers putting there.
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Village and town house
maison de village, maison de ville
Tall, narrow, stacked up a hillside, with a stone stair that turns at every landing and a roof terrace at the top.
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City apartment
appartement, immeuble haussmannien
Paris, Lyon, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Montpellier and Nantes — building rules, small lifts and a syndic who needs telling.
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Chalet and second home
chalet, résidence secondaire
Alpine chalets, coastal apartments and the holiday house that is turning into the main one.
Where is the French property?
Tell us the commune, the kind of building and roughly what is moving. We will come back with what we need to see and how we would run it.