After finding a suitable match for your posting, you initially contact other members through the FranceConnections email system (this ensures both members’ privacy).

Once you know more about your travel partner and their plans and are both happy to share, you then exchange contact details and will normally arrange to meet at the port of departure. The driver will of course need the full name of their passengers well in advance as they will need to be added to their ticket.

Of course you will both need passports to travel. This allows you to be confident that you have met the right person. but make sure that someone else knows who you are travelling with and your itinerary.

Although meeting others in this way is probably more secure than normal car share arrangements, we do not recommend that you exchange home addresses. We also advise all members to meet in busy locations such as the ferry port or train station or bus station, which are easy to reach and return from, should the arrangement fail.

Ferry passengers will normally only be in the vehicle long enough to embark and disembark. If travelling via Eurotunnel you may spend more time in the vehicle, but you are able to move around the train to a limited extent during the short journey.

Passengers need to make sure that in the event the arrangement for returning fails, you are able to make an alternative – this may be as simple as buying a one-way “foot passenger”  ticket home, but you need to be sure you have the means to do this.