Hi,has anyone done this before - hired a car in Paris and driven to Calais to catch a ferry? We are looking at hiring a car just for the day and stopping at one of the War Memorial sites in the Somme on the way, and then leaving the car in Calais. We would want to leave Paris during the morning rush hour with aim to catch an early afternoon ferry - spend couple of hours around war memorial site or stop at a couple of villages on the way to Calais. Is this feasible?

Your timings are probably a bit out, and I'd suggest it's important to plan enough time for this.

Assuming you're collecting your car at CDG, it'll take you about 2.5 hours to drive without interruptions to Calais. Finding the dropoff point, hiring a taxi to the out of town ferry terminal and allowing for checkin time will eat up another hour.

Detouring to, and finding the sites that particularly interest you in, the Albert-Thiepval-Peronne area is probably going to add a couple of hours more. You really can't just stare at these cemeteries (and, except over the border at the Menin Gate, it's the cemeteries rather than the memorials that really have the impact): you do feel morally obliged to assimilate the atmosphere.

We've occasionally diverted for war graves along the Paris-Calais route (there's a horrifying number - and that's just the Commonwealth ones, which are the best signposted), and often felt we were badly underchanging them because we were conscious of an about-to-be-missed ferry.

This isn't really an area of villages. Amiens, Arras, Bethune and the rest are wonderful towns, with often spectacular (albeit often entirely rebuilt) Flemish market places. Again, getting into one of these towns and finding somewhere to park can be time-consuming too.

I wouldn't plan on getting to London or Canterbury in time to see a play that night. Assume a ferry around sixish, catch a very early morning RER to CDG and you'll have an interesting (though possibly emotionally shattering if you spend too much time looking at the ages on the tombstones) day.

Thanks flanneruk, the main memorial we are interested in is the Thiepval one as this has my great grandfather's name inscribed there, so I thought we would spend just a couple of hours looking around this area. It's only something I've just thought about doing, after talking with my Dad over the weekend. It would be a great shame to be so close and not visit and I feel morally obliged to go. I will definitely look into it more. Can you tell me is CDG the best location to pick up a rental car - would you not recommend getting one in central Paris close to the hotel, or would this be nightmarish?
Thanks flanneruk

Hiring a car in central Paris and driving out isn't at all nightmarish. There are an awful lot of old maids - of both sexes and all marital statuses - on this board who love batting on about how terrifying driving in a proper city is. They're wimps. Ignore them.

But you've still got to get yourself and luggage to the nearest Hertz or whatever - and it's bound to take longer to get out of Paris that way than to get yourself to the nearest RER, collect the car at CDG and drive straight out onto the Amiens-bound A1.

In my opinion, absolutely no problem to get from Paris to Calais. The A1 autoroute has far too many big trucks on it, but since you want to see memorial sites anyway, you'll spend a lot of time on the pleasant national and departmental roads instead. You can use www.viamichelin.com to help plot your itinerary, but feel free to stray for their suggestions.