It's funny you should ask.
This week I set up a
http://www.currencyfair.com account and moved EUR to GBP. I have over the years moved money back and forth between Euroland and Sterling and I got fed up being ripped off by the banks. One of my friends who is in import/expert told me you have to ring the bank and whatever rate they quote you, tell them it's not good enough. That's the way he does it. But that's okay for him, for me trying to get a solicitor in another country to do that would be impossible. They can rip you off as much as 5% by the time they all take a cut.
There are lots of online brokers and I've always been nervous of them - what happens if your funds go missing? But this time I determined to try one. After research I found
http://www.currencyfair.com highly recommended on several forum, by trustworthy posters, so I decided to try them.
Bl00dy brilliant. Easy peasy to set up. You transfer the money into their client account with your client number as a reference. Twenty four hours later they email you the moment it has cleared. The trade took me all of two clicks, then I transferred it out to my normal UK current account. It was so simple and they saved me £600 in one relatively small transaction. That should pay for the QP insurance due this month!