Club Arnage

If you are prepared to take a gamble on next years race being 14/15 June (surely it must be) P&O are offering a 70 quid return. Be prepared for the price to rise once the date is announced.


Outward  Dover - Calais Wed 11 Jun 2008 21:40  £35.00 
Options  None   
Return Calais - Dover Mon 16 Jun 2008 14:00 £35.00 
Options  None   
Includes 4 adults , Car , 

Magic. I'll have a look. Don't forget the £10 priority boarding fee.

£12 now. :(

The return trip on Monday at 1400 is up to £50 already >:(

For those who travel reguarly both Sea France and P&O do a block of tickets (Carnet on Sea France) which gives 10 trips for around £45 a trip, making £90 for an each way.  They are valid for around a year - with Sea France it's a year from when you use the first one I think (worth checking with both of them) and we book them and move them.   They are standard five day returns usually and sometimes they don't charge us extra for going for more than five days. 

The absolute beauty of them is that they are hugely flexible and certainly Sea France treat you as a VIP and we've rarely had a problem securing the crossings that we want with them.  It also makes life easier if you miss a crossing.   Sea France charge a small supplement over the end of July/early August (catches us for Spa). 

Just checked LD lines and Brittany ferries from pompey (My Usual Crossing), Tuesday 10th to tues 17th? no prices from LD lines and £310 from Brittany. That will double by next summer.

My wife forwarded me an email recently from SpeedFerries. Precisely the same, except for the price: £220,- for ten singles, so £44 each return trip.

A lot cheaper than the Channel Tunnel, but I don't care ;D

Speedferries is fine if you've got four hours to spend between sailings!  Plus I think with the trailer we're bordering on being too long for them. 

That is one hell of a long journey for you. Bristol - Dover - Le Mans. Surely there is a quicker if not cheaper way.

Agree about the use of Speedferries. One hold up on the way and you're in for a long wait. If you miss your P&O or Sea France they put you on the next sailing, 40 minute wait is not so bad.

It's just over three hours from us to Dover and somewhere over 2 hours to Portsmouth as it's cross country so there's not a vast difference in travelling time this side of the channel and whenever I've looked the ferry cost Dover Calais is so much cheaper than any of the other options that it is still worthwhile, especially adding the trailer into the equation. 

KK went one of the longer routes to the Moto 24 earlier this year and with just the car and one passenger very off season it was OK and he managed to sleep so could do a days work the next day.  I'm not great at travelling overnight, it buggers my sleep patterns and leaves me prone to migraines so we go for early morning getaways from Bristol to be in Dover from 9ish and head off from there. 

I've used Speedferries the last three years and have only good things to say about them. Has anyone heard when/if they're getting the second Seacat?

I bought one of their Superticket multi packages at their last promotion.  So we had a weekend away across the channel last weekend - no mention now of a second ferry or a revised timetable.
My theory is either they could not find a suitable second vessel on the secondhand market or they had a good look at their business model and decided against it.

just put quote for motorbike with Britany. pompey to cherbourg £198 ouch. pompey to caen £213 b****ks are they taking the urine!
No prices yet for LD Lines but they have never charged more than a ton.
Anyone with a trailer or a van to take me and the bike?

I have one return ticket left to use before 31 Dec from a previous promotion. They mailed me earlier this year, just after summer timetables were published, to say they would be amended as they were getting a second boat. When I called them it was expected in the following couple of weeks. It obviously fell through for them for some reason.

Mostly my experience was good except 2006 when we were turfed out of the Dover queue for being millimetres too long. My failt, I didn't even think to measure, but P&O did very well out of me as a result.... I've never had a decent win on their one armed bandits though, which I have a few times on P&O. And the duty free shop, when it's open (which seems a bit random) is pretty crap - but that's academic as I wouldn't buy there anyway. The good thing is that you start off 20 minutes closer to Le Mans then from Calais, and the wait time is less each side.

A friend of mine uses the Portsmouth Carn route but its up to 10 X the cost (le mans week) of Dover Calais. As piglet says I used Portsmouth Le Harve for the moto 24 because I could, sleep in both directions and go out later then be back for work Tuesday.It was a cheap ticket and worked fine, I tried to book for Le Mans all of the overnight ferries were 400-500 quid for that week.

The SeaFrance ticket we get fully refundable and amendable tickets, so we just turn up and they get us on the next ferry. 4 hours to Dover, 90 mins on ferry and then 5 hours to LM via Calais,or  2.5 hours to Portsmouth, 7 hours on ferry, and then 3 hours to Le Mans from Le Harve I know Caen is a little closer but you only save an hour

It's about 1000 miles of driving ( LM and back via Dover) so about 20 gallons of diesel, lets say £80 for fuel and £100 for the ferry return against about 500 miles to LM via Portsmouth so £50 of fuel and up to £450 on ferry return so about £500 against £180

I wonder if the ferry will be cheaper on the friday I've just noticed its the 13th? :-\

I have just booked 6 of us for the Classic in July with P & O, out on the 8th, back on 15th, Hull - Zeebrugge
£187.00 each, price includes cabins and 6 cars.
Steve :) :) :)

that's a good price.. Hull is a bit of a drive for me I'll stick with Dover

I have just had our Porstmouth/ Cherbourg (fast Ferry) Caen/ Portsmouth ferries confirmed at £420.00 and that is daytime. I looked in my records and we paid £322 in 2003 but that included the overnight outbound to Caen.

We do prefer the portsmouth route as the drive is better (avoids Autoroutes) but it is getting really pricey

Oh, it all seems a bit too early, we haven't even had Guy Fawkes night yet, - but it's got me looking...
Brittany: Portsmouth/Caen or Cherbourg - nearly £400
Speedferries: Dover/Calais - £56
£300 or so buys a lot of beer and wine! It's a while since I've done the Calais to LM run, and I think a few autoroutes have opened up since. Without getting into speed cameras/gendarme pursuit vehicles or womens frilly underwear, it looks like the Calais option is a no brainer. It's a shame, the route from Cherbourg is a very nice drive, and sitting in a 40 year old car on the m-way for 5 hours from Calais isn't going to be much fun, mind you, who knows if I'm lucky I might get my mallory points scorched.
H

H you can get to LM in under 4 hoursfrom Calais without breaking the speed limits on the new motorways, but if you are in the Jag I would recommend allowing yourself more time and take in a few N roads, it's 4 hours of boredom on the A's.

Absolutely, I think that new road should get an award for the most boring road in France. 

4 hours!
That's a big improvement alright, maybe call it 5 and make a couple of detours into some of the little towns we used to stop in years ago.
Anyway, there's plenty time to think about it, but £300 is a pretty persuasive figure, - if there's 3 of us in convoy say, that's an extra £1000 in the kitty! I made the Brittany crossing this year on the bike, and I was almost the only person onboard, - well, maybe ten vehicles or less, - with those prices I can understand why.
H

H, it might not be Bonfire Night yet, but the bloody Christmas stuff is in the shops.  Get the bookings done and paid for before the Xmas hit on the bank balance my man!  

I used to do the Portsmouth-Caen route every year, overnight out in the week and back on the Sunday night boat, when the extra cost was about the same as the additional fuel used by going via Dover.  Gave up on the route about 5 years ago because it was getting so pricey and the difference had risen from around £100 to around £200, and now is £3-400.  That is a lot of beer or, indeed, an overnight stop in a hotel on the way out, back or both.  

And don't worry about boredom on the autoroutes.  The section from Calais/Boulogne to Rouen (2 hours or so) is pleasant enough with some good rolling scenery (and it's cheap - I think that the toll for that comes to about 7 euros), and the run from Rouen to Le Mans is the most boring stretch imaginable.  So on the way out, I head from Rouen down the old route to Alencon and Le Mans, and only use the new autotroute from Le Mans to Rouen coming back.  

I do miss the old route - the proximity to Le Mans, the atmosphere, the convenience of the overnight cabin, stopping at Falaise for coffee etc etc..  But Dover Calais/Boulogne has plenty going for it too aside from price - Rouen is not a problem once you've found the back way way through it, the Baie de La Somme stop is delightful, and there are plenty of places to stop off enroute with hotels or campsites if you want to break the journey up.  And you can still drive the bit of the old N138 that remains atmospheric - between Le Mans and Alencon.

MG Mark

You can also play a good game on the autoroutes, if you're in a RHD car with a snoozing passenger. Pootle along at 130 KPH and see how many times they get woken up by exotic tin. :laugh: