Portsmouth-Caen ferry

Anyone used it recently? I’m on it tomorrow I think…Just wondered about the check in and facilities etc…

You’ll be fine if you speak Polish or Lithuanian. :wink:

It’s Ok but left to Brittany Ferries they would have you sleeping 30 to a cabin.

I came back over on it yesterday. In the last 5 weeks or so I’ve never been in a cabin with more than one other driver. It seems that the Spanish drivers get shoe-horned in together, but maybe that was by choice (listening to the ‘cabin party’ the noisy zb-ers were having!!).

Food is okay although the cooked breakfast didn’t look up to much so I went all healthy and had melon, cereal & toast. Don’t forget to present your boarding card/door ‘key’ at the till as you get 50% off the price - good job too, otherwise they could shove it!!

As for check-in, are you using the sailing as part of a daily rest? They were banging on the door to book-in on my way over last time, far too early - the office hadn’t even opened!! Also beware that they may move you from the ‘booking-in’ lanes to the waiting lanes closer to the boat . . . . . . . then leave you there for 40 or 50 mins, thus only leaving you 10 - 20 mins at the other side of your ‘ferry move’. You’ll see quite a few drivers, me included now, who don’t won’t move until they are definitely actually loading. It’s worse coming back over due to the lack of parking at this side; I try to use less than 10 mins getting on at Caen so that I have 50 mins to find parking over here when you get off. I normally end up somewhere up the A34, hopefully at the Shell garage (Sutton Scotney or something??).

Are you pulling a fridge? If so, make sure the ‘fridge man’ on board (green overalls) does sort out your Plug In (which you should’ve booked in advance) - nowt worse than coming down 6+hrs later to find that he missed you out!! I stand with him until I see the fridge actually up & running on the leccy.

I actually think that there’s more UK drivers on there than you might expect. I’ve met some decent blokes and had a few entertaining chats although my last trip back must’ve had the world champion of ‘Bull-zb Talking Drivers’ by a country mile, in fact, by a country marathon if such a thing exists!!! I won’t say too much now as it will be covered somewhere else on here, suffice to say, this bloke had put Joe Bugner on his arse when he (the boxer) was in his prime; something to do with a bit of road rage, evidently. :open_mouth: :unamused: :smiling_imp:

I saw you mention elsewhere that you might have been going over via Dover - Calais; zb that!! Caen is okay but you can’t beat the mini-cruise that is the Santander boat!! :sunglasses: :laughing:

HTH.