the advantage of driving Zurich to Calais is that it's motorway all the way.

It is to the Hoek, too. Coming from Zurich you even cross the motorway to get to Rotterdam/Hoek. It is pretty clearly signposted all the way through, and takes us about 50 minutes from where we live in the centre of NL. We regularly travel to yUK and we go 90% of the time through the tunnel at Calais. However, we can shave about 1.5 hours off getting to Guildford via the Hoek, the ticket costs less, the boat is fast, clean and new, and the overall petrol bill is lower due to the reduced amount of mileage. I reckon we save around 20% on a trip via Calais overall, and with two kids in the back the time saving is a blessing (in spite of Daddy's empeg playing Thunderbirds)

Certainly won't be travelling on the tunnel though - I was quoted GBP300 for a return ticket over Christmas

We have just had the same shock - only worse - they are now charging GBP347, and in spite of the fact that I really like travelling through the tunnel, we have made our last trip that way if the price stays up there. The boats have all gone up as well, but they have cannilly placed their prices below the tube by about 20%. We were quoted GBP295 return about 2 weeks back Passenger traffic via the tunnel has fallen off by some 50%, we heard; when we turned up on spec for the last trip, we were one of 6 (yes, six) cars that got onto the train!

At Christmas, a friend and I left Zurich at the same time - he was going Hook of Holland to Newcastle, I was going Calais to Dover.

Hang on now - this wouldn't just happen to be a certain Mr. Steve Graham, would it?

between France and the UK is sufficiently large that many people make regular runs across the channel to stock up

...and if you hit the supermarkets here, you will find it's even cheaper than in France; we went to the Calais Wine & Beer Company expecting the prices to be good, and were appalled to find the stuff was more expensive than our supermarket across the road! This was about a year ago, so things might have changed since, but we haven't bothered going back - the queues are shorter at our supermarket...