This is probably a tired question, but does anyone have some alternative (and cheap) moving options from England? We don't have much stuff so I've figured out that moving ourselves is more than half the price of hiring a moving company, but it does seem like a pain to rent a van here, drive it to Belgium and then have to drive it back to drop it off and then get ourselves back to Belgium again. The annoying thing is we are 3 hrs inland from Dover. Can you put your stuff on a train or something like that?

I've decided to move my stuff myself with a large van. Can anyone advise if special docs are required by customs when crossing the channel? The Belgian Embassy in the UK doesn't seem able to answer this question. First they told me I need to show a residence permit for Belgium, which we obviously don't have yet since we haven't yet moved. When pointing this out to them he said I could get the permit after I moved, but didn't say if it was needed for actually getting my stuff through customs.

Ingrid, I have twice hired out a van to transport household furniture, bits and bobs from the UK to Brussels. The first time I hired a van from Budget in London for the weekend, if one was to inquire perhaps there is some customs docs that you must fill in and carry with you (itenary of contents of each box etc) but I didnt bother. I also had a live Syrian Hamster who didnt have an EU passport :-)

Anyhow, going through the customs in Folkstone (Le Shuttle) I was stopped by the customs guys, who opened the van, took a cursory glance around at the bits of furniture and once it was obvious that it was a domestic private move (for ourselves) then he had no problems. I was worried he might ask about the hamster, if he did he was going to be adopting it....

The second time we were actually in Brussels so I hired out a van from one of the rental co's near Ikea (Steerebeek) for a weekend, drove it over empty and loaded it and drove it back, again no special customs papers and no problems.

I travelled by Le Shuttle and by Hovercraft, if you are going via Hovercraft make sure the van you have isnt too big for the boat....

Hope this helps but like I say "officially" you maybe are obliged to, its up to you whether you want to bother or not....

That's good to know. I've had my car looked over in Folkestone before so I wasn't sure if they were going to ask for documents there if I showed up with a van. I didn't want to find out when I was there.

Syrian Hamster, is that a misnomer for rat?

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