TRANSPORT
TO FRANCE

It can be a tricky thing, transport to France. Not only is the distance involved usually considerable, but there's all those worries about crossing borders and risking your goods in a foreign country.

But rest assured - nowadays it's no harder to transport to France than send your goods a few miles in the UK.

Love it, or loathe it, the European Union is a true community which encourages the free movement of people and goods within its member states. It's often a ridiculed concept, but Europe is a vast body of diverse peoples and lands which has done much to spread peace and prosperity.

Which means that there's no mass of paperwork when it comes to moving goods from one country to another. And anyway, the courier company takes care of all that.

So let's say you want to transport to France a piece of much loved furniture. The sort of wardrobe, or dining table, that when you take a cursory look, you say to yourself, that's fine, we'll get that in the Volvo. Then, by the time, you've pushed it backwards and forwards, scrapped a few layers off the paintwork in the house, and scratched the wood, you realise that the reliable Volvo is not actually the Tardis.

So you eventually get it back into the hall, convincing yourself that it will be okay until you can get a van organised; can't cost all that much to hire a van and drive the blasted thing down yourself, can it?

Well, yes, it can. Hiring a van nowadays can be as hard as taking out a second mortgage, not only in terms of the expense, but also in terms of the paperwork. You'll likely to need two credit cards, your passport, your birth certificate and with some operators, a finger-print. Once they're satisfied that you actually live at 5 Acacia Avenue and don't freelance for some terrorist group, you'll be asked to pay up-front the hire cost and sometimes leave a deposit that will settle the national debt.

That's even if the hire company allow their precious van out of the country.

So if you're considering transport to France, of any kind of goods, use a delivery auction site like ANYVAN.com. You list your goods, pick the best courier for you and let them take the strain for a fraction of the cost.

It's a lot easier.