Taking pets to London

smacl

My daughter is moving to London shortly and planning to take her dog (very small mongrel) and cat with her. She's already organised pet passports but we were surprised how expensive it is to have the pets transported over, €980 for both at the same time or €910 each separately. Other alternatives we're considering are as hand luggage on the ferry and train to London. We don't currently have anyone available to drive via the ferry. Any other options or suggestions of how to do this with minimal trauma to the pets at a reasonable cost?

I saw a previous post about Aer Arann allowing them as cabin luggage but this is no longer an option.

Labelled

If getting the boat from Belfast city to Scotland you can take your dog on board in a crate. I could not find any other sailings that allow that. It appears as though the pets either stay in the car or in Kennels. It's not an ideal way for they pets to travel as they would be kept on the car deck and unfortunately car alarms go off when on the boat. That being said we had our dog in the kennel for the first crossing and he was fine even though it got very noisy with the car alarms.

SuperBowserWorld

Dick Whittington took his cat to see the Queen IIRC.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Whittington_and_His_Cat

griffdaddy

I'm currently in a similar position with bringing my dog across next month. The Stena Estrid has kennels that aren't on the car deck and you can sit there with the dog and bring him for walks etc. The sailing times are arseways though, 2am I think. I've asked Stena about the Adventurer and I'm waiting on a response.

griffdaddy

Also should say, pets are allowed on the trains in the UK for free.

smacl

Thanks for the replies, we've ended up paying for the dog to be flown and I'm keeping the cat here with me. If the dog is coming home at any point, e.g. Christmas, it will be the train and ferry.