Club 80-90 Forums

Just booked our ferry for France in August via LD Lines Portsmouth to Le Havre

Went last year on the same ferries on similar dates great journey only 3hrs and last year cost £380 return, just noticed the same journey booked now for august this year only came in at £250 so have booked it whilst its still quite cheap, don't know if its going to go up before then but wouldnt suprise me so anyone on south coast who doesnt want to drive all the way to dover for ferry or pay the £600-£700 through brittany ferries may be worth booking with LD now.

iowcamper

Towards the end of this month I'll be travelling from Lancashire to Nantes but, even so, yesterday I booked with DFDS-Norfolkline to cross from Dover to Dunkerque. The cost for 2 adults and our van (<2.4m high and <5.0m long), is £52 both ways, no extras. Their quote today for the same journeys in August is £68. You might say that if I were to subtract that from the £250 for Portsmouth - Caen, then that would give me £182 to spend on diesel for the extra mileage, perhaps even an extra campsite too.

I'm too dim / lazy to calculate how far I can travel at 40mpg on £182 worth of diesel, more than half of which might be at the French price, but it should be a good long way, shouldn't it?

LD Lines - Anyone got an opinion on the comfort levels of the cabins / journey experience. It's coming back at £378 for four of us in a cabin overnight out and afternoon return (July/August)...

we didnt book a cabin last year as never got the overnighter just the fast 3.15hr one its called norman arrow or something!! we got it last year and was a really nice ferry journey loads of space, a bar and coffee shop and they put on films for the kids, the only negative i had was that le havre is a ***hole but who cares when you just arrive and depart from there. Brittany ferries takes twice as long and cost twice the price and is normally over crowded in august as well. For me its not worth saving £100 quid in ferry fare to drive all the way up to dover and then back down the french coast as id do that in petrol and tolls!

Please feel free to pick holes in what follows here.

Starting and finishing points are clearly very relevant to the question of which Channel crossing to take. One would surely expect a person going, for example, from Bournemouth to Brussels, to travel via Dover.

Clearly there are relatively advantageous starting points between (and to the north, east or west of), Portsmouth and Dover. And equally clearly there are other relatively advantageous finishing points between (and to the south, east or west of), Caen (or Cherbourg, or St Malo, or even perhaps Santander, or Bilbao), and Calais where personal preferences and your vehicle’s cost per mile (fuel / mpg / etc.), as opposed to ferry (or tunnel), fares become increasingly, or decreasingly, relevant. (Or not).

The RAC’s Cost of Motoring Index 2010 showed that “The average annual cost of owning and running a new car has increased by £346 (6.3%) to £5,869. This equates to a weekly cost of £112.87 or 48.91p per mile. 48.91p per mile!!!

But we’re talking about on-holiday use of variously converted not-new vans and minibuses, so I’d suggest that mpg and fuel costs, plus the cost of any additional accommodation and sustenance might give campervanners a realistic and reliable guideline.

The time of year, and the time of day or night, are also relevant to the cost of Channel crossings.

(The option of using a vehicle fuelled by LPG is making my head spin).



On my next trip my destination, Nantes, happens to be almost due south of Portsmouth.

Lancaster Dover Dunkerque Nantes = 1462 miles return.
Lancaster Portsmouth Caen Nantes = 930 miles return.

If I choose to travel via Dover - Dunkerque I will need to drive 532 miles further than if I were to travel via Portsmouth - Caen.

Diesel costs £1.40 in the UK and £1.10 (€1.29) in France. The amount of mileage in each country is similar, so I’ll set the diesel price at £1.25 per litre x 4.55 = £5.69 per gallon.

The cost today of taking similar vans across the Channel to and from France in August 2011 is £250 from Portsmouth to Caen and back, and £68 from Dover to Dunkerque and back, i.e. the shorter crossing is £182 less expensive. The person paying can, of course, do whatever they want with that £182, but if they want to spend it on diesel, then they can buy 31.89, hey, let’s call it 32, gallons of diesel.

On 32 gallons of diesel at 40mpg one can travel 1280 miles. But those Lancashire-based travellers to Nantes who used the shorter crossing “owe” 532 miles. Having paid that “debt” the Lancashire-based Dover – Dunkerque travellers have 748 miles “to play with”. 748 miles happens to be exactly the same distance one travels by road

• from Dunkerque all the way across France into Spain at either end of the Pyrenees, or
• from Dunkerque to Brest and very nearly all the way back to Rouen, or
• for two quite long but good progress-making days of travelling at any stage of your holiday anywhere in continental Europe

all enabled as a result of starting from oop North, for example, and taking the shortest Channel crossing in a 40mpg, diesel-fuelled, not new, leisure vehicle.

mate i tip my cap !! great calculating

BUT

my original post was aimed at anyone living on the south coast (we are on the isle of wight) and west of say portsmouth, lots of us down here would think about driving up to dover as the brittany ferry is normally around £600 in august and you can go via dover for as you say £60 - £100.

I felt in my own case (and therefore thought it perhaps would be relevant to others who live in a similar geographic location) that as you can now get ld lines for £250 it didnt warrant driving up to dover and back down the coast the other side to only save £150!

Obviously it wouldnt be relevant to someone coming from up north!

I know the majority of members on here are from the north but not every post is aimed at you's !!

Well, point taken, of course, but I'm glad I did the sums.

Ours is an oddly shaped country and I note that the fastest road route from Penzance to Dover is longer than the fastest route from Lancaster to Dover. If I lived in, or to the west of Hampshire, say, and was travelling to Brittany, I might well not bother to go to Dover, but even so I'm a little surprised to see someone say "to save only £150" when such an amount should convert to a lot of fuel, and therefore distance, or perhaps even, dare I say it, hotel accommodation, whenever one might decide to cash it in.

My replies are aimed at any Club 80-90 reader starting their journey from anywhere in the UK, and that's because having lived in the south west I was used to crossing from Southampton to Le Havre, or from Portsmouth to Caen. I even did so when Switzerland was the destination. When I moved to Lancashire I assumed it still made sense to cross to France from those westerly ports and continued (once or twice), to cross from Portsmouth.

Increasingly we've been using Eurotunnel. It's not cheap, but it is greener and much quicker than any other method and, as my wife points out, less likely to sink.

i would normally try and save money where possible but for me the £150 saving on going via dover just wouldnt be worth the

a) estimated one and a half tanks of petrol extra used (that must be £75 quid at least)
and

b) an extra £20 or so in tolls
and

c) the extra 7 or 8 hours of travelling (assuming the m25 was clear)

but if it was a choice of that or paying the ridiculous sums brittany ferries charge i would probably do the extra travelling or even if i were going to travel straight down from calais, but we're heading for the very west point of brittany which only takes 5 or 6 hrs from le havre

the wife hates the 2 monster bridges as you come out of le havre though as she thinks the roof is going to blow off and insists on holding onto the roof handle the whole way up and down them!! so i think she would prefer a different route!!

We went with LD last year for the first time and i have to say i was very impressed nowhere near as crowded as the other routes, didnt have to fight for a seat or queue at the bar

It would certainly be good for us if they could chuck another tunnel under the channel starting near portsmouth - would be bloody great for the economy as well !!!

enjoy your travels this year whichever way you go - just got my tickets through today and got campsite booked so cant wait i'd go tomorow given half a chance!!

I love the way we do these calculations!

For my part coming from merseyside it depends where in France were going. If its the south of France or Burgundy in the east then we'll get a Dover ferry or Eurotunnel.

However most of our hols are central or western France and we'll usually get a western port ferry - St Malo, Cherbourg, Roscoff. This year its the Loire valley and were doing Newhaven - Dieppe on LD lines. It costs more but the convenience is worth paying the extra. That is unless its silly money charged ala Brittany ferries. We tend to try to avoid the M25 too cos it gets mad (although theres a bit of it on this years route). The shame is that the north east of France is about the least interesting bit of the country so theres always a fair old distance to travel from Calais to most destinations. Condor used to do cheap crossings to St Malo which was the only cheapo to a western french port - but this years the prices are much higher.

Its costing us 220 quid peak season with LD lines which is probably double what we'd pay for a Dover crossing/eurotunnel. A chunk of the difference is saved on fuel but i reckon it will cost us about £80 more for the extra convenience. I can live with that. Convenience counts for quite a bit.

.....also have to say Lowcamper and Noomo, my wife hasnt mentioned things sinking or roofs blowing off.....yet!

anaconda wrote: Convenience counts for quite a bit.

It counts for a lot, I reckon, as does time. Nobody takes a holiday in order to spend too much of it whirring along motorways, but it's often an inevitable element in reaching far off (and long dreamed of), destinations.

anaconda wrote: Noomo, my wife hasnt mentioned things sinking or roofs blowing off.....yet!.

.

Over recent years things have improved with regard to the co-pilot who now cheerfully says the more big bridges we go over the easier it seems........ Until we arrive at a big one. She coped with the Øresundsbron (Sweden to Denmark), but we still have to drive through the town of Millau to avoid their bridge. So far.

Girls, eh.

Noomo wrote:

anaconda wrote: Convenience counts for quite a bit.

It counts for a lot, I reckon, as does time. Nobody takes a holiday in order to spend too much of it whirring along motorways, but it's often an inevitable element in reaching far off (and long dreamed of), destinations.
.

I agree, although there are times driving in France when its a real delight. Some treat the travelling as part of the holiday..stopping of at different sites/places of interest etc. Generally i just like to get where we're going and relax