With our two weeks holiday pretty much at an end, the final day was met with an early start and a drive back across northern France. From our base in Normandy, it was about a four hour drive back to the Port of Calais, and with extra time for traffic and delays at border control, we set off about eight hours before our booked Ferry crossing.
As is typical when you leave extra time, our drive across Normandy and Hauts-de-France went smoothly and, after a short stop to refuel both ourselves and the cars, we arrived at Calais about three hours before our booked sailing. The check-in process was queue free and we were pleasantly surprised that, following our early arrival, we were moved onto an earlier sailing.
The only disadvantage of the earlier sailing was that our relaxed, pressure-free, journey through the border process had suddenly become more rushed, with just 45 minutes until our ferry departed the port. As with check-in, the French border was painless, with plenty of lanes and no queues, however shortly after we joined a slow moving queue towards the UK border.
About twenty minutes later, with the queue having moved steadily but slowly throughout, we arrived at the UK border controls, where there is a much more limited number of lanes (hence the queues) and the checks seemed to be more stringent. Being cleared back into the UK, we headed across what seemed to be most of the port, before getting to berth 7 and driving straight onto our ship for the crossing, the Pride of Canterbury.
The Pride of Canterbury had actually been our ship for the journey from Dover to Calais two weeks earlier (read about that here) and, despite my comments about the noise and chaos, we ended up back in the Family Lounge as most seats elsewhere had already been taken. Thankfully some decent headphones and the lack of a children’s entertainer of this crossing made the journey a bit more peaceful.
Departing just ahead of us from Calais was an Irish Ferries ship, one of two competitors to P&O on the route to Dover, along with DFDS Seaways. As I mentioned in the post for our journey to France, we had booked our tickets with P&O prior to their illegal firing of most of their employees and, had we booked after this would have booked with either Irish Ferries or DFDS.
We pulled away from berth 7 on time at 1345, more than two hours ahead of our original departure time of 1555, meaning that unless there was some unexpected delay, we’d arrive back in Dover before we had even planned to leave France. The early sailing was greatly appreciated, however I’m unsure as to whether this would be done for anyone or whether it was due to us having flexible tickets for the journey.
Given we were travelling on the same ship as our journey to the continent, I’m not going to go into massive detail as to the facilities onboard etc and as such this post is going to be quite a short one. We did grab a cup of coffee from the bar in the family lounge and I was pleasantly surprised they served Starbucks coffee, aiding me deal with the early start.
As with most sailings between Calais and Dover, the journey took about 90 minutes (although keep an eye out for the few journeys that are 2+ hours), with the Irish Ferries ship having arrived just before us. Disembarking the ship was painless and, after a short queue to pass through the customs lanes, we were climbing out of Dover on the flyover to the A2.
I think my conclusion to the journey from Dover to Calais was similar in that whilst there were no issues with P&O Ferries, I personally wouldn’t book with them again following their actions towards their employees in early 2022. If the cost is the most important criteria and P&O are the cheapest, then a journey with them would be comfortable and painless, however I will certainly be looking at Irish Ferries, DFDS or Eurotunnel to cross the channel in future.
Flights & Times 