Ferries to France

Eurotunnel is great, and so fast too, but there are times when some of us may need more rest time than the Tunnel allows when we go over to France, and by that I mean people who have probably driven 5 hours or more to the south coast of England who could do with a meal and a decent break before they have to drive again.

And of course, that is precisely where your ferry to France comes into its own as it gives you the time, the space and comfort to have a good meal and spread out for have a power nap should you need in very nice surroundings, all in the 90 minutes it takes for the crossing on the Dover to Calais ferry.

Unlike the ferries of yesteryear which we have written about on a previous blog (Launching our new site), the cross channel ferries these days are massive, and bear little resemblance to their forebears in any way, shape or form.

To be honest, I am unable to remember if meals were available on board 45 years ago, but if they were then they were also a waste of time and money for most of us because the boats rolled so much a great many of us were ill, and that was on a calm crossing too!

It has often been said that the English Channel between France and England is the most expensive stretch of water in the world, and whilst I can’t necessarily go along with that I also recognise that it is pretty dear, and the reason for that is that the ferries don’t take a great deal of traffic during the winter months, so they have to make what they can in the spring and summer.

But you can still get a cheap ferry crossing by checking the availability of some of the more off peak crossings, and by scheduling your journey around the ferry times you can save quite a nice little packet.

The time of writing is near the end of April 2011 and our new ferries to France website is just about to be launched, but because of the intense competition in this field it will be a good 6 months or so before it is found in the major search engines. That’s a great shame as it means we shall miss the 2011 holiday season, but there’s little or nothing we can do about it.

So permit me to take you back a few years, to 1965 which is 46 years ago to be precise, when 3 friends and I went on our first ferry to France Hell bent on a long summer holiday driving down to and camping in the south of France.

Our car was a little Hillman Imp which was supposedly competition to the Mini. It was a great little car which had a rear mounted Coventry Climax 875 cc aluminium engine. The boot, such as it was, was at the front and where the engine is in a normal car layout.

The petrol filler was also accessed from inside the front “boot” as well and this caused much merriment amongst the petrol attendants we met in France and Italy as it seemed that they hadn’t come across such a phenomenon before.

The Dover to Calais ferry cost precisely £13.10 shillings (£13.50) return for the four of us and the little car, and even by our impecunious standards then this was cheap when split between four people. Looking back at that figure makes me remember that £13. 10 shillings represented roughly half the wage of a skilled working man.

I remember thinking that the boat we sailed on seemed huge but that was probably because none of us had seen a proper ferry before, but in reality, compared to the cross channel ferries of today it was the sort of thing as giant would play with in the bath!

So to us it was big, but big it wasn’t, and that was borne out by the fact that it didn’t have stabilisers, so pretty nearly everyone was rushing to be ill over the sides.

It did have duty free though, but not as we know it (or knew it) as it was just a counter where you ordered what you wanted like a bottle of Scotch and 200 of your favourite fags, but nobody was allowed to walk in and browse like they do these days.

Ah well, those were the days of cheap crossings to France!

I have always thought that there is a great deal of pleasure to be had from planning a holiday properly, and by that I don’t mean planning it down to the last detail like a control freak would do, but planning the route, the overnight stops if any, and of course that all important ferry to France.

The Dover to Calais ferry is still one of the favourites despite having Eurotunnel right next door as a main competitor, but it is still the main crossing for anyone travelling down to French Riviera – Provence or Cote d’Azur, whichever you like to call it.

Most of the ferries to France on the Dover/Calais route take just 90 minutes, and yes, they were so much more fun before the ghastly unelected Beaurocrats in Brussels took away our duty frees on nearly all of our ferry routes, but that is something with which we have to live nowadays.

This is our first blog as you can see, and we are about to start work on our site in the very near future so that we can provide you all with up to the minute details of all the different ferry crossings to France, and more besides.