I have done the run south from England twice now, once outside round Iberia and once down the inside through the canals, and the thing nobody tells you is that the hardest part is the planning, not the sailing. The legs are well trodden. The pilot books are good. What trips people up is sequencing the whole thing so that the tidal gates, the weather windows and the paperwork line up.
So here is the route plan I wish I had been handed before my first attempt. Treat it as a skeleton, not gospel, and hang your own boat and crew on it.
Leg one: getting across the Channel
The first decision is your jumping-off point and your landfall. From the Solent, the classic hop is to Cherbourg, roughly 60 to 70 nautical miles depending on where you start, which most cruising boats do in 12 to 15 hours. From further west, Plymouth to L'Aberwrac'h is around 100 miles and lands you straight onto the Brittany coast, saving a day if your plan is the outside route.
The Channel is busy and tidal, so do not just look at the wind. Work the streams. If you are crossing the Dover Strait or the central Channel you will be punching foul tide for part of any passage, and the Schengen 90/180 day rule for boaters clock starts the moment you clear in, so there is no point arriving and then sitting still. Clear in promptly, because under the post-Brexit regime you are now a third-country arrival.
Speaking of which, do not slip the lines from England until you have read the sailing to France after Brexit checklist and have the boat's papers, the VAT evidence and the passports squared away. The Gendarmerie Maritime do board visiting boats, and arriving without your documents in order is an avoidable headache.
Leg two: the fork in the road
Once you are in France you commit to one of two strategies, and they could not be more different.
The outside route runs down the Atlantic coast and across Biscay. The inside route turns left into the canal network and motors to the Rhone. I will take them in turn.
The outside route: Brittany, Biscay and Iberia
Heading down the Brittany coast you have two serious tidal gates to respect. The Chenal du Four and the Raz de Sein both run hard, up to 7 knots of stream at springs in the Raz, and you time your passage to slack or with the tide under you. Get the timing wrong and a 6-knot boat goes backwards.
From Brittany you stage south to La Rochelle or the Gironde, picking up the Atlantic ports as you go. Then comes Biscay. The short crossing from Brest or Camaret to A Coruna is about 330 to 360 nautical miles, two and a half to four days for most cruising yachts. My detailed account of crossing the Bay of Biscay on a small boat explains why the shelf edge, not the distance, is the thing to plan around.
From north-west Spain you have a further choice: carry on round to Portugal and down to the Strait of Gibraltar for the western Med, or stop and base yourself on the Spanish rias. The full run from the Channel to the costas is roughly 1,500 nautical miles, a serious undertaking that most people spread over a season with stops.
The inside route: through the canals to the Rhone
If your mast comes down without fuss, the canal route is the gentler option. You enter the network from the Channel (via the Seine, or via the canals from the north coast) or from the Atlantic via the Gironde and the Canal lateral a la Garonne, and you work your way to the Rhone and out near Port-Saint-Louis.
The whole transit is around 1,300 kilometres depending on the line you pick, and a relaxed boat takes four to six weeks of motoring. The full breakdown is in crossing France by canal from the Channel to the Med. The two practical constraints are bridge height and your licence. The standard canals give roughly 3.5 metres of air draft once the mast is down, so check air draft on the French canals against your boat before you commit. You also need the VNF vignette, a few hundred euros for a season scaled by boat size, and a CEVNI endorsement on your ICC if you want to be fully legal on the inland waterways.
The numbers that drive the decision
When I sat down to choose between the routes, four figures did most of the work.
Distance exposed: the outside route puts you out of sight of land for two to four days at a stretch across Biscay. The inside route never has you more than a lock away from a bollard.
Cost: a season VNF licence runs to a few hundred euros, against the diesel and marina bills of 1,500 offshore miles. The canals win on money for most boats.
Time: both routes take a season if you cruise them properly, but the canals are predictable, while the outside route is hostage to weather windows that can pin you in port for a week at a time.
Risk: this is the real divider. The outside route is a proper passage with proper consequences. The inside route is, frankly, hard to get badly wrong.
Where to point the bow at the far end
If you went outside and through Gibraltar, you arrive in the western Med with options: the Spanish costas, the Balearics a day or two offshore, or onward to Italy. If you came down the canals, you pop out near the Rhone delta and the whole Gulf of Lion is in front of you.
From there the natural next leap for a lot of UK boats is the islands. The hop from the French coast to the Balearics is roughly 100 to 130 nautical miles depending on your departure port, an overnight passage, and I cover the planning in France to the Balearics from the Gulf of Lion. Crew-swap, top up the diesel, and you are properly into the Med season.
The legs in a table you can plan against
It helps to see the outside route as a chain of named hops, because that is how you actually sail it. From the Solent to Cherbourg is 60 to 70 miles. Cherbourg west along the Normandy and Brittany coast to L'Aberwrac'h is another long day or an overnight. From Brittany down to La Rochelle, broken at Belle-Ile or the Vendee ports, is two or three day-sails. La Rochelle to the Gironde, then on to the Basque coast, is a couple more. Then the big one: Brittany or the Basque ports across to north-west Spain.
Each of those legs has its own gate or hazard. The Chenal du Four and Raz de Sein on the Brittany coast run up to 7 knots and demand tidal timing. The Gironde estuary has a bar that should be crossed on the flood in settled weather. The Biscay crossing has its shelf edge. None of them is beyond a competent crew, but they have to be taken in the right order and at the right state of tide, which is why I plan the whole route as a sequence of gates before I ever look at the weather.
Provisioning and fuel along the way
The southbound route is well served, which is one of the quiet advantages of going through France rather than offshore from the UK direct. Every Atlantic port of any size has a fuel berth, water, and a chandler within walking distance, and the bigger towns like La Rochelle and Lorient have full marine trades. On the canal route the provisioning is even easier, because you tie up in the middle of towns every night and the boulangerie is a two-minute walk from the boat.
Diesel is the one thing to plan. On the outside route you want full tanks before Biscay, because you may motor through the calms in the middle, and a cruising boat can use 200 litres or more on the crossing and the Iberian coast. On the canals you motor the whole way, so budget for steady consumption and top up wherever the price is good, as it varies a fair bit from port to port.
A sample timeline
For a UK boat aiming to be in the western Med by autumn, a workable schedule looks like this. Cross the Channel in May. Work down the Brittany and Atlantic coast through June, or start the canal transit in early summer. Cross Biscay in late June or early July if you are going outside, or aim to be on the Rhone by October if you are going inside. Re-step the mast (canal route) or round Gibraltar (outside route) and start your Med season proper.
The boat that arrives relaxed in September is the one whose skipper did the boring work in February: the chartwork, the closure notices, the visa maths. Do that, and the sailing takes care of itself.
