2022 Ferry Pricing
Hi All
After a sucessfull trip in 2021 to a wonderful site in the southwest of France (with an extra day added due to a blow out on the Autoroute on the car and all shops shut on a Sunday including Tyre Centres) we are looking at booking the next adventure for 2022 to Spain via and including a couple of nights down and up in France.
Dover Ferry return in 2021 = £361.00
Dover Ferry Return quote for 2022 = £639.00 - admittedly that is direct via the P+O site and not via the club but never had a £300 discount before even with the club.
Looking at alternative routes now but even they are stupid money - Portsmouth - Caen 7 hours = £800ish.
It says something when the Euro Star is actually coming out cheaper than a ferry!!!
Anyone else seeing this?
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I fairly recently found the Eurotunnel crossing to be cheaper than the ferry and it is many years since this has been the case. I believe the argument was the tunnel can run at full capacity as you naturally isolate in the car. The ferry companies cannot run at capacity due to passenger distancing and as such costs are higher to get the same return with less passengers. Going via the club both are a little cheaper, as usual.
I have also number crunched in the past, as one day we will get down to Spain. What at first seems an expensive crossing is not, by the time you consider a short channel crossing, fuel, overnight stops and some tolls. It looks like with the typical Portsmouth - Bilbao crossing now being £1,000+ instead of £800+ you may need to really break down the costs to see if it would still be a good idea.
Plymouth to Santander looks better at £910, or £950 with 4 x site vouchers.
Colin
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I break the costs down near on to the penny - Via Michelin is great for working out fuel costs and toll costs.
Not interested in the Pompy to Spain trip - its two days on a boat and if I wanted to do that Id book a cruise. We have been travelling down south for 15 years and the two years we didn't the kids both said they missed it. We get down as far a Djion for a couple of nights over and the same on the way home. It breaks up the holiday brilliantly
So far Ive got Euro Tunnel at £462 and Fuels+Tolls return at £630.00. Tolls we use the beeper so you get another 30 days on that before it hits the bank (plus loads of funny looks from the French in the queue when Im pinging through at 30mph).
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Dover is two hours if do my usual of OH MY GOD o'clock set off so its not too bad. I don't actually count the home - port part of the journey. Thats the warm up.
Can I ask - in your pick, the E Class wagon your towing with Im guessing its a 350 which I have the same - and I see your towing a Hobby. How does the weight stack up? Ive come from having an SQ5 and no worries about what I was towing but thought I was at the top of the % and only ever seen those pulled by Range Rovers (had one too once, drank like I do on holiday) or vans.......
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These ferry prices make me squirm.
My crossing, Harwich/Hook of Holland is peanuts compared to other routes. Car/van (6.2m) 2 adults return day crossing, out May back July is only £158 with Stena Line. I'm going down through Germany to Austria so the best route. Obviously more miles to south of France
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Hi Curly, There is no doubt that prices have risen with BF. I actually rang the club travel service who say there will be discounts but that was not reflected in the price they then gave me.
We have consistently over many years got savings of around £300 plus, on the Plymouth/Roscoff route but no more.
I have been looking at options for next year and may even go for the Plymouth/Santander route, at least one way. As Colin says it is not as 'expensive' as it first appears however, if you are not interested then of no appeal to you.
best advice I can give is never assume and check, check and check again with flexibility being key to securing the best price-having said that if you travel in July/August options are going to be very limited.
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We like the western channel routes. Particularly Portsmouth St Malo. Although somewhat expensive, especially as we have selected the fancy cabins, we will save the cost on what we would have spent on CAMC sites, if we stopped in this country. As we only want to visit France, using this route means we can wait until we get off the boat to decide wether we will spend a week or two in Brittany or head rapidly south.
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Curly, I understand if you do not want to take the boat to Spain, the journey can be part of the holiday and this is obviously something you enjoy. You mention viamichelin, which I must admit is a great site. We find the on the road times are very accurate and like the ability to put in via points so we can reduce toll costs. When we head south to the Dordogne area I discovered some years ago that putting in Dreux as a via point, having headed in the direction of Rouen from Calais helped a lot. I think it saved about 50 Euro each way and added very little time to the run. Lots of Aires to stop at for a break, cheap fuel on the way and great scenery sealed the deal for us.
Colin
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As said ViaMichelin is a very useful site for accurate toll costing.During lockdown in mid 2020 I actually put costs into excel spreadsheet, rather than trying to remember different costs, and it certainly helped to compare total costs.
On fuel costing I now do two figures-actual cost of fuel divided by actual distance and a “tax man” cost.
This is the mileage multiplied by the 45p/mile car allowance-I figure if IR will allow me 45p/mile that’s pretty close the the real cost per mile-and it don’t half make for interesting comparisons when, for example, comparing a drive across France to a ferry to Spain.0 -
Driving From St Malo to Benicassim mid Jan costs €340....€270 fuel plus €70 tolls...£287 - less if non toll.
the ferry from Portsmouth is £240
total £527 Takes 3 days for the trip
by coincidence, Portsmouth to Santander for same date is close at £535
Then there's the drive to Benicassim £150 fuel plus £34 tolls....£184
total £719 almost £200 more..
Perhaps a little less for a return trip...both returns are less than double..
I don't mind the drive and (say) £350 goes a long way to the site fees....(wine bill...)
Ps....getting to Spain is easy....just keep going at the bottom of France👍
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Hi David, Isn’t it nice to be having a pleasant and informative discussion?
Anyway, my “base figure” is 25p/mile assuming my expected worst consumption towing of 25MPG.
Taking the ferry to Roscoff, rather than Santander, adds 500 miles to a trip to, let’s say, Valencia so that’s a minimum of £125 in fuel but a “total” cost at IR rates of £225.
Of course I can play with the figures to justify my preferences but as said what at first looks like “blimey-how much” turns into a rather appealing alternative.
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Allan, Roscoff to Valencia is €300 in fuel plus €70 tolls...a tad more than my example above.
as you say, we can play around with the numbers to satisfy our own criteria.. all good fun....we are trying a different route this spring using the Somport tunnel.
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Our MH buddies have done that route a few times, I think they use an aire nearby to overnight.
They have increasingly used Newhaven, due to not being able to get as good a fare with the MH as we could get with car & van, and also stop overnight at Futuroscope.
Its certainly easier to plan the journey via France with a MH-which makes the Spain routes more attractive to us.
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There's a lot more to ferry prices other than the cost. Convenience, for example, the length of time you are away for. A couple of weeks and £1000 for a ferry is absurd. For 90 days that's about £11 per day. How much do you spend on booze, say, over 90 days, or cigarettes or any number of other things are discretionary, meals out for eg and so on. There's no "clincher" argument.
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overnight stops and some tolls. It looks like with the typical Portsmouth - Bilbao crossing now being £1,000+ instead of £800+ you may need to really break down the costs to see if it would still be a good idea.
Plymouth to Santander looks better at £910, or £950 with 4 x site vouchers."
lots of interesting figures in this post, although i no longer use Bilbao or Santander as the long and sometimes rough crossings are stressful for the pooch (x2 now) and much prefer Portsmouth - Caen or Poole Cherbourg.
For circa £1k including travel, we spent the month of September on a site in Devon, we had glorious weather, were very close to Cornish border so could sample some great food etc in the 2 counties, and lets not forget the great beaches, and it is 4-5 hrs from home.
Just returned from Spain and will be venturing again next year as we still have outstanding ferry tickets. Cost for us has not been something we have considered greatly but looking at some of the above I might also get out the excel spread sheet, and this may well be our last trip towing the caravan.
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We all have different criteria to work to, bit it time or finance. When we lived in Essex I taught at secondary school level. A long summer break was easy but my pockets were not deep enough. I could manage a 2 or 3 weeks in the summer and remember it was then cheaper to do such a stay in the Dordogne than in the UK. I think that would need to be 3 to 4 weeks now.
Colin
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David, that's a fair assessment...we actually don't mind the driving and once we get to Bordeaux (which we can do on day one with our earlier ferry arrival) the weather is certainly better, even in January and with most of it dual road or M'way, it's not too bad a trip.
From then the trip includes the mountains and we've usually been blessed with lovely winter sunshine.
this year I'm looking at a first stop just south of Bordeaux, second at Jaca or Huesca, and then down to Benicassim from there...sounds easy enough, lol.😄
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Maybe "absurd" was a little strong, but if you've only got 2 weeks, and cost is a factor then maybe some other kind of trip, (flying? package?) would be more cost effective.
We are lucky that cost of the ferry isn't a problem, but even so we note how much we spend on our 90 day trips (Dec, Jan, Feb in old money), ferry, food, sites, fuel, tolls etc and it actually works out more or less the same price as it would staying at home, heating the house, buying more expensive food, 5 nights away each month on a site etc.
Ultimately, the decision always comes down to individual priorities, likes and dislikes and how much one is prepared, or able, to spend. My, or your, preferences won't suit somebody else, but it's helpful to consider the options, advantages and disadvantages as you see them.
For example, pre-covid, we usually took the 2 nighter to Bilbao. A lot of folk don't like that trip. C'est la vie.
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Curly, I don’t know where you found your £800 ish fare from Portsmouth to Caen or what dates you are looking at…but I am seeing return fares of £430 next June into July for car, caravan and two adults on that route. That’s booking direct with Brittany Ferries and using a 10% discount code from a Club Voyage member on here.
It might even be better than that to book a package of four site vouchers and a ferry ticket from this Club but I can’t manage to get an online quote for that to get a comparison.
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With two kids, June and July are out the questions - where I saw the prices was for first week of summer school holidays, leaving on the Thursday well early o'clock and coming back two weeks later.
Im down to £600 on the Dover-Calais (non club discount) and and sub £500 on the EuroTunnel.
You guys have to remember, if your out of season, and possibly traveling in just a MH then my situation is much much different.
Ive been travelling down through europe in a caravan since two weeks after getting our first van 14 years ago - being that my dad and us did it since I was a kid. Memories are for making right, and my kids LOVE it as much as I did back them - pre sat nav and Air Con'ed cars and a dad who absolutely didn't want to drive on the Autoroute.
Site is booked - thats the first getting the pitch location (on the beach) and the dates needed - the rest of it I'll keep working on getting a deal on the ferry route and then which overnight stop down and up we will do. We have one that we have used the most just south of Djion which is our fave site anywhere and owned by a brilliant dutch family. But was thinking of doing the Bridge route rather than the Route Du'Solie this year just for a change up.....costs about the same on the tolls.
Good convo though with everyone - Happy Vanning be-it cara or motor.
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There’s a comment about ferry pricing v tunnel, by eribaMotters a few days earlier in this thread……
I believe the argument was the tunnel can run at full capacity as you naturally isolate in the car. The ferry companies cannot run at capacity due to passenger distancing and as such costs are higher to get the same return with less passengers.
Whilst I get the maths logic of this, is it really the case that ferries are still running at part capacity, and projecting so into their future pricing, even as far as next year? Flights are not limiting numbers AFAIK (we flew to Malta and back last month), so why ferries?
Unless a member happens to work in a ferry company setting pricing strategy, I don’t suppose I’ll find out for sure, but I’d be interested in others views.
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