If he flew he wouldn’t be able to bring any swag over😉. Easier to travel by foot (not at all easy for him) and I’d pick him up from Caen or St Malo
Chris, years back I to used a 3rd party booking and it was a mess up at the motorway and I arrived late. I got charged by the 3rd party to issue an amendment where the lady at the desk said we would not have charged you if you came direct because we know motorway incidents happen.
Fair comment - I agree there is a slight risk, although I am incredibly anal about route planning and timing and always arrive much too early for ferries!
Plus on the outbound leg I normally catch the 11.30pm crossing from Newhaven so there is little risk of a hold up that way.
And I have travel insurance. 
All that said next time I will probably book direct so as to get the 20% off DFDS, which I always forget about as I am so used to booking things online!
it’s a bit daft they don’t offer this via their website, you have to phone them.
Especially if you cannot get through like a bank holiday in france. I will be testing out their phone numbers today as my stored ones were not apprently in use any longer???
Understand but its the constant trend and chain reaction that gets me all fired up. They gained acceptance of the wonderful new technology based on the €7 probably knowing all along that by the time we accepted that price they would already increase it to €20.
New tech eh, labour saving, time saving, cost increasing…
Nothing like tomorrows world predictions for energy etc…
Bonne chance!
I do, frequently, as BF is getting more expensive but Ouistreham is taking longer and longer with passport checks (it took an hour last week and I was roughly in the middle of the queue) - GoK what it will be like when EES kicks in.
But the Dieppe crossing timings don’t work that well, and its extra driving.
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Unlucky (or maybe it’s the time of year) - when I came through on June 25th it was pretty quick.
Yes that’s always the snag - Dieppe’s a viable alternative for me going to/from Guildford, but even then it’s an extra hour’s drive on the French side and half an hour extra on the UK side, plus it’s country roads as opposed to a fast whizz up the A3.
If you can be flexible on dates and times then you can sometimes get cheaper crossings. Same for flights. I’m going to Bristol on Wednesday and coming back a week later. Total cost around €100. Not the nearest airport or exactly the dates I originally wanted but that would have been around €350.
I fit’s any comfort, the N-D crossing was going to cost us almost £500 for our August trip with an O/N cabin midweek. Tunnel to the rescue at about £260, although that wouldn’t help you especally.
It’s an option if I don’t mind doing 9+ hours driving without a break compared with five hours doing the run down to Portsmouth and then Ouistreham or Cherbourg to the house.
The BF Portsmouth - St Malo run is actually the nicest. It’s long enough from a proper kip and it’s the closest port to the house but the 8:30PM departure is a bit too early to leave work at five, get home, finish packing and get to the port. It’s also the most expensive of the BF French crossings.
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N-D is too short to sleep enough, too slow to sit around. We did it in the afternoon returning in may, and it was very unpleasant in the end, even though boat and crew are good.
Return, AM? Yes N&D are just as bad as the others during peak season. £249 being a common price I saw.
How so?
For us St Malo is, as above, the closest port but not the best price or convenience wise on the UK side. We normally do Friday night Portsmouth-Caen, sometimes the Saturday morning Poole-Cherbourg sailing but that’s best on the high speed service (which is not running at the moment) otherwise we arrive too late to go shopping for provisions when we arrive - so we have to factor in a stop on the way, room for bags etc. Not a show stopper but extra annoyance.
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Yes, £260 return IIRC. Going Wednesday evening may have helped.
What was horrible? So much hanging around, not being able to find anywhere comfy for the crossing time and feeling increasingly achy before starting the last leg of the journey home. We were open to trying different routes, but this became a 'never again ’ option for us.
I don’t mind the tunnel if it logically fits into the route - so went that way to Munich and would do so again. the fact that passports are checked on the departure side is extremely convenient (wish BF had a similar arrangement).
But from the West Midlands, to the Morbihan via the tunnel does not make sense geographically - maybe if I needed to be at the house with very little notice but otherwise it doesn’t really work for us.
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Understood, as a seasoned N&D I carry certain things like a small pillow so I can hunker down on the now wider banquette seating so I grab a little knap. As I am a few years older than when I started that route the late night cabin is now essential.
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Same here for the N&D crossings.
If we’d got the place in Deux Sevres then we might have wanted a P-C season ticket.
One of the BF routes (is it Poole-Cherbourg?) has jist been increased to year round. So with a sudden imcrease in capacity some diligent testing of pricing on various of the newly available dates might pay off.
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