Search Q&A
roadworks to/from Calais
Has anyone driven from Brussels to Calais and back recently? Can you please comment on any hold-ups caused by roadworks? We drove back a couple of weeks ago and got severely held up, but I am hoping it was a combination of roadworks, end of school holidays and German football fans coming back from the U.K. rather than blaming it on the roadworks alone. We are going to the UK again soon and will come back on a Sunday and would prefer to drive but not if we are going to lose hours sitting in a jam.
If you are planning on taking the autoroute in the direction of Oostend and on to Calais, on Saturday there were serious traffice jams in several different places, between Ghent and Oostend and beyond Oostend. I drove that route on Saturday thinking it would have less traffice on the weekend. On the return trip I cut across country to avoid the problems.
Travelling from Calais to Brussels on a Sunday evening (especially in the summer) can be a bit of a lottery. You can end up in a 20km traffic jam with everyone else coming back from the coast at the end of the weekend. One alternative I often do on Sunday evenings, is travel on the Calais / Lille / Brussels route, rather than the Calais / Ostend / Brussels. However, that's not guaranteed either because funnily enough, people from Lille also go to the coast on a weekend, and need to get home on Sunday evenings. Sorry I can't be more helpful. As Bruce notes above, there are a variety of "cross country" routes you can take that avoid the motorways, but unless you have a satnav, don't bother.
I actually just did Calais to Brussels yesterday, did it in about 2 hours.
Going from Calais towards Dunkirk, then towards Lille, and then Lille to Brussels.
Did the E40 coast route about 10 days ago and it was horrendous. 3 1/2 hours when it's normally 2 hours. Am going back to Calais on Sunday and will definitely be going via Lille. Avoid the coast road if you possibly can!
