When you’re booking for travel the same day, we it’s only £50 more 
The prices can be surprising. When I towed my boat over from the U.K. the prices for a car were about the same on the tunnel or on a boat. I presumed that for the car and trailer the ferry would be cheaper so I searched or a crossing. The best price I could get for the car and trailer on a boat was the car plus £75 and that was only on a couple of middle of the night boats. It seemed reasonable but I looked at the tunnel. All they had was that a trailer was plus £15. I phoned them and they assured me that a trailer 9m long with a boat on it was still a trailer. I didn’t believe it until the train unloaded in France. I wonder why the caravaners sharing my compartment would have thought if they knew that my boat cost a fraction of the price that they had paid for their caravans.
This current trip I booked about 8 weeks ago, and the tunnel was distinctly cheaper than N-D, especially if I wanted a cabin. It seemed like bank holiday prices had kicked in for the ferry but not on a Wednesday night for the tunnel, and in fact the Folkestone terminal was almost empty last week. N-D does reduce driving distance a little, but requires either passing through Paris or adding more than an hour and travelling on smaller, frustrating roads.
It might have been cheapest to use Dover-Calais, but would have also taken a couple of hours more .
Perhaps they were relying on you for emergency service if the tunnel should spring a leak. 
that’s a big surprise, are you a shareholder? The October day trip was at its lowest £208!!
Not at all, but N-D and return was approaching £500 before oap discount and tunnel was £211 or £240 - something around that - using peasants rate.
Crikey that is some difference must be a timing thing. Around 2018 I was working and finished the job looked up the Tunnel one way back to UK and that was £280. A far cry from the old 10 ticket carnet days which were a close match for the ferries and mega value for my van and trailer.
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And still available. Southsea to/from Ryde on the Isle of Wight.
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But they get very shirty if you try to take your car on board …
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Indeed. Foot passengers only.
BF is a massively subsidised organisation, so a bit of kettle-pot-black seems to be going on there. If it weren’t for the constant propping up by the French state, it would probably have gone into administration a long time ago.
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Plus you still have to swim the rest of the way from Ryde to France…
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I did it once…..sick as a parrot.
I’ve used Newhaven -Dieppe for thirty years and though I cannot remember the early year rates I haven’t ever paid more than about 144 euros for a one car/two person crossing since about 2015.
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I travelled on the hovercraft several times, usually from Ramsgate but also from the Western Docks in Dover. It was always something to look forward to but the crossing itself wasn’t particularly pleasant. Passengers sat in tightly packed aircraft type seats although there was a small outside area, usually full of smokers. They were very noisy and the crossings tended to be more like a fairground ride than a luxury cruise.
I escaped the U.K. on the Newhaven to Dieppe ferry on 04/04/1986. It was convenient at the time as I was leaving Worthing and spending my first night in Compiegne.
I don’t mind hovercraft but the few times I travelled on one, once you were over the water all the windows, or should that be portholes, were drenched with water and you couldn’t see anything. I can’t imagine going outside.
My favourite was the catamaran to Boulogne.
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The knot so fast, fast cat. Also a barrel of laughs in rough seas
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It was my fault for booking just 8 weeks in advance for the week before the bank holiday weekend. Usually it’s good value with a basic cabin both ways compared to the tunnel and a room overnight on the way out (always do the return in one day on the tunnel).
Yes, I now remember that about the windows. My memories of the fast catamarans were marred by an incident where I was very hungry and the only food on offer was one Ginsters cheese and onion pasty. I wasn’t hungry enough for anything made by Ginsters.