How to get to Europe car-free – and hassle-free – with a dog

I know it’s rude to stare, but I cannot keep my eyes off what’s happening on the next table. A waiter in a waistcoat with a medallion around his neck is brutally but meticulously dismantling a barely cooked duck for a table of four Frenchmen to my left. I find myself unable to look away, except to check on the dog who is – predictably – also enraptured by the lesson in aquatic bird anatomy.

I tighten my grip on Arty’s lead in case he decides to pounce, and try not to worry about the medieval-style torture device cast in silver that’s clamped to a trolley nearby.

I haven’t accidentally set myself down for dinner in a butcher’s shop. I’m in Rouen, capital of northern France’s Normandy region, where duck à la rouennaise – pressed duck cooked in a sauce of its own blood, port and cognac – is the delicacy.

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While the dog might be wishing he could get his chops around the bird, I’m less keen. I return to my bottle of beaujolais and examine my itinerary for the next day instead. I need to plan, as we’ve got a train to catch tomorrow, and another one after that, and then a couple more, because thanks to a new initiative by Byway Travel, I’ve ventured onto the continent completely car-free with canine company – something that has been a logistical nightmare until recently.

Travelling to Europe with a dog but without your own car isn’t as simple as hopping on the Eurostar. Despite dogs being allowed on trains all over Britain, Eurostar has a somewhat baffling no-dog policy. Before the pandemic, dog owners wishing to travel to France and beyond either had to go by car on a ferry or via the Channel Tunnel, or book a dog-friendly cabin on the DFDS Newcastle-Amsterdam ferry or P&O’s Hull-Rotterdam route as foot passengers.

Not only are the latter options more expensive, but getting to and from the ports can be a faff when you’re dragging a dog along, too. For dog owners without their own vehicle, the continent has long felt much further away than the 21 miles it takes to cross the Strait of Dover.

But Byway’s new dog-friendly, car-free, flight-free trips have opened up Europe for passengers on foot and made exploring the continent by rail a real – and enjoyable – possibility. Our journey began in Marylebone, London, where Holmes Hotel provided dog-friendly bed and board the night before our early train. Then, after a brisk, autumnal stroll on the crispy leaves of Regent’s Park, we headed to St Pancras for our train to Ashford International. It’s here that the Byway trips get clever, making use of a relatively new service run by an American called Brenda: Le Pet Express.

After being stranded in France with her pets when she flew in from the US (on her way to relocate to London for a job in cybersecurity at the London Stock Exchange), Brenda was inspired to set up her pet-friendly minibus shuttle for car-less travellers looking to get between the UK and France. In 2021, she finally swapped computer servers for a specially adapted minibus with crates along one side and single seats down the other, so passengers can sit with their pets at all times, and now she runs a daily shuttle between Ashford and Calais.

She picked a group of us up in her red bus outside the train station (three dogs, one cat and four humans in total), herded us through check-in at the LeShuttle pet reception like we were on a school trip, and then deposited us at Calais-Frethun station for our onward travel in France. It may sound simple, but the red tape is plentiful. Fortunately, that’s Brenda’s job to worry about – all we had to do was show our pet passports (or animal health certificates) and relax on the bus.

That said, there’s still some admin of your own to do beforehand, as travelling to Europe with animals is a fair bit more complicated than those breezy pre-Brexit days. All pets now require an animal health certificate or a valid EU-issued pet passport (Arty and I went to Ireland to get ours earlier this year). There are rules around what you can and can’t bring into the country – meat-based dog food, for example, might be confiscated so you’ll need to switch to a vegan or insect-based alternative, such as Hownd or Grub Club – and your pet will need to have had a worming tablet given by a vet within five days of your return to the UK.

There are also rules around dogs on trains in France: officially, they must either fit into a small carrier, or larger dogs must wear a muzzle and remain on a lead at all times. In reality, these are rarely enforced, and travelling by double-decker, air-conditioned train in the country is a delight whether you’ve a dog with you or not.

Byway’s dog-friendly trips might require some refining. We were initially booked into a hotel that was a 40-minute walk from the nearest green space – this was changed on request – and later found that our destination, Rouen, wasn’t the most dog-friendly city, as you can’t travel with dogs on buses or trams. But it’s still a brilliant way to get onto the continent in a stress-free fashion. Just pick your destination wisely and allow plenty of time for fun on the ground – the 12 hours it took to get home felt a little excessive for our three-night trip, so next time we’ll be staying for longer – and I suspect Arty will see to it that we order that duck.

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Lottie Gross was a guest of Holmes Hotel and Byway Travel. A three-night trip to Rouen with Byway costs from £892 per person including all trains from London St Pancras, the Le Pet Express service, and three nights’ accommodation.

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