Ferry Travel

[saffronrob]

Having done both the Eurotunnel route & Portsmouth - Caen cruise can anyone please advise on the fastest crossing combined with a good drive after.
Having had our play time reduced by one day we are looking to travel early friday morning and get back on UK soil monday afternoon-ish.
 

[smokie]

I am in Berkshire and although the Portsmouth Caen route is a whole lot more fun, door to door times are quicker when I drive to Dover and then do Calais to LM. And that's towing a caravan!

[BigH]

The phrase Hobsons Knob comes to mind here. I know it's not quite right, but it also reminds me of tea time.

The drive down has changed almost as much as the race over the years. When we first started going there was virtually no dual carriageway between Calais and LM, and despite the occasional jam in Rouen, the drive was a blast of overtaking and general tooting and pipping. Some of those French roads are just great driving roads. Now though, with dual carriageway almost all the way down, the fun seems to have gone, and it's not too much different from any other motorway haul. And that's when Mr Hobson and his knob come in, as it were. You can still take the old roads, but there won't be much LM traffic on them, or you can knock four hours off your journey and make the high speed blast. (That extra four hours start is handy if Gazz is on my drinking tail).
There's a bit of rose tinting going on here though, if I'm honest, - there were plenty times I was stuck in a half mile queue behind a tractor, with overheating bollocks, just wishing I was there. Or just plain lost...

For the record, we've gone Portsmouth/Cherbourg the last couple of years. There's still a lot of fine typical French roads, and opportunities to buy cider. Not much LM traffic though.

Stevie Brown! - did you ever take that country route that I sent you a couple of years back?
H

[chrisbeatty]

I seem to find the Calais/Boulogne to Le Mans drive quite entertaining. True, the dual carridgeway is a little dull, but you still get to see all the lovely cars & it does allow more time to drink beer once you arrive at your destination

The real fun starts once you get onto the single carriageway N138. There's still plenty of opportunity for mad overtaking manoeuvres, whilst sticking to the French speed limits of course  

I guess that being a more recent visitor to Le Mans and not knowing any other way it seems fine, the best bit is definately the single carridgeway stretches though!!

[Andy Zarse]

If I might be so bold as to venture an opinion, I'd say you'd be well advised to consider taking the Fastcat to Le Havre or preferably Caen. Or Newhaven at a push. You don't state where you're starting your journey and additionally this on the proviso you have no particular objection to being ankle deep in vomit of course. But a 2 3/4 hr crossing and a 110 mile due south run has to be the best bet. So if time is of the essence I reckon with using the new roads you can do Caen to LM in any reasonable car in under an hour and a half.

Personally I hate the Chunnel, it's so utterly uncivilised. No time for tea and chocolate Hobson's Knobs with the Purser on the Poop Deck.

Oh, and do look out for BigH on the way down. He's easy enough to spot. He'll be driving a nice MkII Jag and probably be dressed as a bee keeper.

[Black Granny]

[
Oh, and do look out for BigH on the way down. He's easy enough to spot. He'll be driving a nice MkII Jag and probably be dressed as a bee keeper.

Another source of income from Bee Keeping that wasn't declared perchance?

[Matt Harper]

Pertaining to "the drive down" nostalgia - it was always a poisoned chalice for me (I don't do it quite the same anymore - sitting on an aeroplane (not airplane, you'll notice, Zarse) is not the same as thumping down the M1).
The anticipation was like a kid before Christmas. Handling the 250 miles down to Portsmouth or the Sussex coast was just an opportunity to reflect on what the weekend ahead might hold. Many is the time we headed for the south coast a day early, to have a few beers with the southern contingent the evening before an early crossing. And this is where my troubles usually began to manifest themselves.
My daytime channel crossings were always miserable, rushed and very hung-over affairs. The nighttime ones invariably ended-up in some kind of melee, involving bloody noses, thick lips and arrests, I'm ashamed to admit. Once 'on't t'other side', the drive south was too frequently punctuated by piss/poo stops, with only the wonderful Auberge de la Croix Blanche on RN138 south of Sees providing tranquil respite. The rest of the time spent doggedly hammering along in silence, grimly fighting off the effects of the previous nights over-indulgence. The light at the end of the tunnel was arrival at the circuit, setting up camp and starting the party, of course - and that is what kept my foot hard in it.
Naturally, arriving on Houx was always delayed by the inevitable pit stop at the supermarket. Here, we would always stand around looking at each other, for a good half hour, trying to decide which pallet of crummy French beer we were going to attempt to haul out the door. I always marvelled at French supermarkets - nowhere else is one able to peruse both cheese and outboard motors in the same aisle.
Final engine shut-down on Houx was always a relief.
Now, driving home was a really horrible experience. Likewise, full of beer and mightily depressed. The real pisser, was always that once we got off the ferry in Dover of Pompey - we still had another 250 frickin' miles to slog back to Bradford.
I'm sure 138 is a fabulous drivers road - I was always too bleary-eyed and sore headed to notice

[BigH]

grimly fighting off the effects of the previous nights over-indulgence

Ooooh, yes, that brings back a few memories.
In our (admittedly ill advised) youth we used to take a late crossing to Calais, and arrive at a hotel in Boulogne at around 10pm. The idea of course, was to go straight to bed, spring up like a bunch of daisies in the morning and make an early start. Every year, without fail, we would get bladdered in town, finish off in the hotel, wake all the guests up, have a row and then pass out somewhere near whatever room we were staying in. The 7 to 8 hour drive down the next day was an endurance test alright. After about four or five hours in a hot, noisy car, driving squinting into the sun, bollocks on fire, you had to call on hidden reserves to get there.
In a sequence of events which would have been frowned on in Nurembourg in '46, we would hit a jam in LM, eventually find somewhere to park the car near the circuit, leap out, neck several warm beers, then get on all fours to erect a tent and, the killer, blow up an inflatable mattress. I almost passed out a couple of times, and the weekend had only just started!
F*ck knows how the bees stayed calm.
H

[Andy Zarse]

Matt, H et al,

It's all too true, but I've never really struggled with hangovers on the way down to La Sarthe, we've usually had morning crossings to Caen or Cherbourg. So the journeys down there, as you say Matt, are full of a sense of anticipation and wondering what particular high jinks are going to occur over the next 72 hours.

However, all this exitement is subsequently ruined by the regular two to four hour traffic jam to get into the curcuit. Trying to make egress into the place is like the Trials of Atlas, who I'm confident, had he been sitting with me sweating on vinyl seats for four hours, would have told the Gods to forget it. It doesn't seem to matter what time I get there, the queue begins somewhere half way round the ring road. Why? I'm convinced the jam is a Gallic conspiracy designed to cause ill temper with your fellow travellers. How many times have we all shouted "Look at that arsehole pushing into the queue. What a twat!!". In 1998, I jumped out of the passenger seat, went into the McDonalds for a cheeky McShit, was soundly bollocked by the Manager for not buying anything, and to whom I told to "McFu ck McOff, you Mc c**t", popped into the tobacconist/pornographers next door, browsed the top shelf, bought 200 Marlys and then sauntered out to find our car had only moved about ten feet further up the road.

Anyway, these days I'm relegated to sitting atop the hot engine in the Commer on vinyl leatherette, sweating like a flasher running through the woods at a girl's school. It's similar to taking a bath in a puddle of horse sweat. And for some peculiar reason I don't think I've ever travelled there in a car with aircon (except once in a Range Rover when the owner was too tightarsed to put it on. (In fact he was so mean, if he had a mouth full of gumboils he wouldn't give you one to ease the pain).

So what I guess I'm trying to say is that it don't really matter which way you go down Saffronrob, it's a hot sweaty uncomfortable slog and you're bound to get there much later than expected. Unless of course you fly, which is a different matter entirely. And Matt, it's an "aircraft" to the profesionals

Good job you didn't ask about the drive back though. I have some strange tales of the unexpected about that, many of them not really suitable for a family website, some of which involve quite a lot of diarrhoea.

[jpchenet]

Good job you didn't ask about the drive back though. I have some strange tales of the unexpected about that, many of them not really suitable for a family website....

The journey back from The Calssic wasn't bad though was it!!?? Shame the roads aren't like that after the main event in June!

Oh, unless you count waking up in the hotel only to discover your return ferry left two hours ago!!    Still, it was a nice brunch wasn't it!  

[Andy Zarse]

It was indeed a fine brunch Mark, so much so that we're opting to do the Deauville thing again on the Sunday night in 2005. Our ferry is from Caen at 17.00 Monday afternoon and I'll lay odds that we miss it.

[jpchenet]

It was indeed a fine brunch Mark, so much so that we're opting to do the Deauville thing again on the Sunday night in 2005. Our ferry is from Caen at 17.00 Monday afternoon and I'll lay odds that we miss it.

Hmmmm, interesting idea!!!  We're on the same return ferry as you (as I think are the SPS crew and a few others) but I'm not sure if we could break camp and drive up to Deauville on the Sunday. Don't know if we'd have enough sober drivers for one thing!!

[Andy Zarse]

Hey JP, why not leave all the packing up to the others who didn't help you set up your massive encampment in the first place. Then, with a few favoured pals, take that trip to the seaside.

You know you want to!

[Steve Pyro]

......Stevie Brown! - did you ever take that country route that I sent you a couple of years back?
H

What ho H.
Yes, most definatley, muchos gracias.
We've booked the 'sh*t the bed' ferry for 2005 so we'll have all day to do the route this time and still arrive early enough for a couple of warm beers on the campsite.

[jpchenet]

......Stevie Brown! - did you ever take that country route that I sent you a couple of years back?
H

What ho H.
Yes, most definatley, muchos gracias.
We've booked the 'sh**t the bed' ferry for 2005 so we'll have all day to do the route this time and still arrive early enough for a couple of warm beers on the campsite.

If only you camped on Maison Blanche. We're looking at 2 fridges and a freezer for this year!!  

Cold beers all round!!!