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Is it possible to travel through Eurotunnel on a bus?

I want to experience loading on a train like in video here https://youtu.be/OwEpXMsR-sU.

I'll be traveling from the UK side to France.

Is there a bus route I can buy tickets for?

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  • The single deck part of the train can take coaches and passengers normally stay in their vehicle. I have no idea whether you can actually do this with a service bus which is why this is a comment not an answer, I suspect not.
    – mdewey
    Commented Jul 4, 2022 at 14:55
  • Searching [your favorite browser] for "bus through Eurotunnel" returns pages of links about how to take your own vehicle or to ride as a passenger in a commercial bus.
    – DavidRecallsMonica
    Commented Jul 4, 2022 at 15:15
  • Does it have to be a bus? If it can be a car, you may considering hitchhiking? Maybe better to start from the UK side then. Or, if it can be other tunnels, you could also consider Lotschberg tunnel in Switzerland.
    – Bernhard
    Commented Jul 4, 2022 at 15:15
  • I took a bus from the Victoria station to Amsterdam once through Eurotunnel. Actually twice, I also came back the same way.
    – littleadv
    Commented Jul 4, 2022 at 16:10
  • I have answered once, the opposite of yours, for someone who wanted to see the cliffs of Dover. It came to 'coach companies can use either ferry or train through tunnel and mostly decide at a late moment, depending on traffic and schedule details'. But that was a few years ago.
    – Willeke ♦
    Commented Jul 4, 2022 at 17:12

2 Answers 2

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[Note, I am taking bus and coach to be synonymous here]

There are regularly scheduled coaches which travel through the Eurotunnel for which you can buy a ticket.

As an example of one firm, FlixBus offers coaches between London and Paris. However, only a limited number of all the buses will go via the Eurotunnel - in a few minutes searching, I could only find the 23:00 on 9th July 2022 travelling via Eurotunnel.

Generally the shortest journey times are a good place to start searching, and by expanding the stops on the journey you can see if it stops at FOCA (Eurotunnel Terminal Folkestone) and CAFO (Eurotunnel Terminal Calais).

However, it would be a long journey (8h 20m) to experience a relatively short time on a Eurotunnel train. There may be other coach routes (Dover-Calais?) which are much shorter.

And as mentioned in a comment by @Willeke, I wouldn't neccessarily trust that the channel crossing method in the planned schedule would be kept to - i.e. the Eurotunnel crossing may be replaced by a ferry crossing instead.

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Use social media to make an arrangement with someone crossing in a car.

That will be more accurate anyway, since you are wondering about the experience of cars, not buses.

The bus isn't going to work. You'll hop on with the so-called "understanding" that this one takes the tunnel... and suddenly notice they're driving to a ferry terminal! Their contractual commitment is to get you from A to B, not to follow any particular route you might find interesting. If the driver has heard (e.g. from management) that the tunnel is backed up, they may go take a ferry they have a contract with.

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    A minor nit, as it doesn't affect the validity of your answer at all, but I am pretty sure it's not a question of "if the driver has heard...". That will be a decision made at a central routing office (who will have booked the coach on the ferry/Eurotunnel).
    – Martin Bonner supports Monica
    Commented Jul 5, 2022 at 7:48

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