Admittedly, Brittany Ferries will be using its two existing UK-Spain ferries when the new Portsmouth-Bilbao service starts running on the 27th March, so it won’t have to fund the cost of an additional ship and will be able to increase utilisation of its existing ferries.

Whatever the economics of the matter, the new service means that motorhomers wanting a driving-free trip to and from Spain will be able to choose from five weekly return crossings and two UK departure ports.

For journeys down to the south of Spain, there is not much to choose between Bilbao and Santander, which are about 60 miles apart on Spain’s north coast. Bilbao is to the east, making it a better choice for Barcelona and the east coast (e.g. Valencia, Alicante, Murcia), while Santander might be a slightly better starting point for Portugal (e.g. the Algarve) and more westerly parts of Spain. In reality, there isn’t much in it, wherever you are going in Spain or Portugal.

Bilbao is also handy for south-west France – it’s less than two hours drive from Biarritz, for example.

To find out more about Brittany Ferries services or to get a quote, click here.

Each ship has 3,746m of vehicle lanes and will be able to carry 1,750 passengers, 195 cars and 180 lorries, dwarfing the old Pride of Dover and Pride of Calais, as these shots show:

The Spirit of Britain replaces the Pride of Dover is due to go into service on the 21st January, I believe. Each of the new ferries has a dedicated deck for tourist vehicles – motorhomes and caravans – meaning that we will now be separated from the lorries and coaches when boarding ferries.

An identical sister ship, the Spirit of France, will replace the Pride of Calais and is currently being completed in Finland.

Here’s a shot of the Spirit of Britain entering Dover:

(All photos copyright P&O Ferries)

One of a pair of new ferries for the Dover-Calais ferry route, it has almost twice the carrying capacity of the ship it replaces (the Pride of Dover) and will be able to carry:

• 180 lorries
• 195 cars
• 1,750 passengers

In addition, the Spirit of Britain will apparently have a dedicated deck for “tourist vehicles” – meaning that motorhomes and caravans will no longer have to share space with freight vehicles and instead will have their own, dedicated space. From a customer point of view, I don’t see why this matters, but I guess a lot of people will like it and I suspect it will improve loading efficiency for the ship.

The new ferry is one of an identical pair – its sister ship, the Spirit of France, will replace the Pride of Calais and will enter service a few months after the Spirit of Britain. The two ferries have been built in Finland at a cost of €360m and are intended to operate on this route for the next 25 years – so they are a major commitment by P&O. Each ferry weighs 49,000 tonnes and has been designed to be as large as possible for the existing facilites at Dover and Calais. Each ferry is 213m long and has 3,746m of vehicle lanes – if loaded only with cars, each ferry could carry more than 1,000 cars. For comparison, the existing ferries can carry 650 cars if loaded only with cars.

You can see the official P&O news release here.

The only UK-Spain ferry route that will remain in operation from this date is the Brittany Ferries service to Santander, which runs from both Portsmouth and Plymouth and is much faster than the P&O service – around 24 hours, rather than the 36 hours or so required by P&O’s ageing ships.

Santander is pretty close to Bilbao and for the purposes of travelling in Spain, it doesn’t make much difference which port you arrive in.

1. Northlink Ferries from Aberdeen – Lerwick.
2. Northlink Ferries from Kirkwall – Lerwick.

Both are in fact the same service, but not all ships stop at Kirkwall – some go direct from Aberdeen-Lerwick. If you are going direct to Shetland from anywhere south of Inverness, the Aberdeen-Lerwick option probably makes much more sense than having to take a separate ferry to Orkney and wait around for the Northlink service to Shetland.

The Kirkwall-Lerwick service, which we used to get from Orkney to Shetland, leaves Kirkwall at around 2330 and arrives in Lerwick at about 0730 (June 2010). Cabins are optional (£80+) and reclining sleeper seats are available at no extra cost for the budget conscious (us). Aside from a few well-lubricated souls who bounced in around 0200, the reclining seat cabin was peaceful enough to get some sleep.

I would add that this service isn’t really much fun if you don’t like ‘the motion of the ocean’. The crossing is often a bit rough – note in the picture below how the chairs in the dining area are tethered to the floor!

1. Northlink Ferries’ Aberdeen-Kirkwall service
2. Northlink Ferries’ Scrabster-Stromness service
3. Pentland Ferries’ Gills Bay-St Margaret’s Hope service

Both the Northlink and Pentland Ferries services offer several sailings each day, except the Aberdeen route, which is once daily and much longer.

We chose the Pentland Ferries service from Gills Bay to St Margaret’s Hope, on South Ronaldsay. This was both faster and cheaper than the equivalent Northlink service from Scrabster to Stromness. (Although South Ronaldsay is a separate island to the Orkney mainland, it is joined by toll-free road causeways, so reaching the Orkney mainland does not require further ferries and only takes about 20 minutes.)

You can get comparison quotes for both service by choosing the UK-Orkney option in the booking engine below:

Pentland Ferries Review (Gills Bay – St Margaret’s Hope Ferry)

The Pentland Ferries ship Pentalina is almost new, modern and very comfortable, with lots of seating inside and outside and a snack bar for the 1 hour crossing

We sailed on the Pentland Ferries service from Gills Bay (mainland Scotland) to St Margaret’s Hope (South Ronaldsay, Orkney) and also used the same ferry on our return from the Orkney Islands.

It was fast, well organised and modern and I would thoroughly recommend the service.

Don’t be misled by the rather basic terminal facilities at Gills Bay and St Margaret’s Hope – the ferry itself is very modern and well run and the office staff are friendly and helpful.

Payment can be made in advance by credit card, at the terminal before sailing by credit card or onboard, after sailing, in cash.

Boarding is a fairly simple process and the crew fit a surprising number of vehicles onto the ferry. The ferry loads from the rear only (it’s not roll-on, roll-off), so motorhomes, vans and other larger vehicles have to reverse on. This isn’t something to worry about, however – ample assistance is provided and it’s only a short, fairly straight reverse with good visibility.

P&O Ferries…

Until recently, all of my channel crossings have been with P&O Ferries. It’s always seemed a reasonably decent and competitively-priced service, albeit with the same criticisms that seem to apply to all ferries these days:

• Lack of outside space
• Lack of indoor seating that isn’t in an eating place or bar

One of P&O’s best features, however, is that (in our experience) when you turn up a bit early at Dover or Calais, they will always just book you onto the next available ferry, no questions asked and with no extra costs.

This always struck me as a good deal for both parties – they’ve got space to fill on a ship that’s sailing anyway and I won’t have to kill time at Dover/Calais.

… vs. Sea France

In May we went to France and used Sea France for the Dover-Calais crossing. The ferries were pretty similar – similar food, similar shops and similar car decks!

We did discover one rather annoying difference. If you turn up early at Dover or Calais, Sea France won’t book you on the next available ferry unless you pay extra for them to do so. We turned up about 4 hours early at Calais on the way home (we’d had a long run up to Calais and didn’t want to cut it fine) and ended up caving in and paying £17 to book an earlier crossing rather than spend half the evening killing time in Calais (I’d forgotten what a dump it is…)

It wasn’t because the ferries were busy, either – ours was barely half full.

I don’t know if some ticket types do offer flexibility – ours were just booked through the Sea France website and were ‘normal’ as far as I know.

Conclusion

P&O and Sea France compete intensively on the same route, so it’s no surprise that the service they offer and the ferries they operate are broadly similar, as are their prices.

P&O’s apparent greater flexibility tips the balance for us, and we’ll be sailing that way next time (unless I can find some cheap Eurotunnel tickets – I’d like to try the tunnel and it’s quicker).

Do you have a favourite crossing route? Let me know by leaving a comment below.

Doing this means booking your motorhome on a ferry (or Eurotunnel). Whichever option you choose, there are a number of things to remember when booking your ferry/train tickets. Here’s our five-second guide to booking ferry tickets for your motorhome:

1. Measure the total length and total height of your motorhome, in metres. Remember to include roof boxes, bicycle racks, etc.
2. Decide which ferry routes you are interested in.
3. Visit our ferry booking page to compare ferry prices or go direct to a ferry operator such as P&O Ferries, Norfolk Line or DFDS.
4. Book your ticket.
5. When checking in to the ferry port, remember to have your tickets/booking reference and passports to hand.

Finally, remember that you cannot use gas on board ferries or in the tunnel. Your motorhome’s gas supply must be turned off at the bottles before boarding. If you’re worried about the temperature inside your fridge, here are a few tips:

• If you’re only taking a short crossing (e.g. Dover-Calais or the tunnel), then don’t worry. Assuming it’s cold to start with, your fridge will easily stay cold during the crossing
• For longer crossings, consider putting some frozen ice packs or bottles of water/milk/fruit juice into the fridge before leaving home. Pre-chill the fridge at home on mains hookup if you can and make sure it’s running on 12V during the journey to the ferry port. You can also run it on gas while you are waiting to board, but make sure you turn off the gas before boarding. Above all, don’t open the fridge before boarding and it will stay suprisingly cold, even on an overnight crossing.
• If you need the fridge to stay constantly cold – because of storing medicines, for example – then contact the ferry company beforehand and ask if any mains hookup points are available on the vehicle decks. Some ferries do have a limited number of these available – some refrigerated lorries require them.

Apparently, the current ship, the Pride of Bilbao, is reaching the end of its charter and as the service loses money, P&O can’t justify the cost of building a new ship and have not been able to find a suitable replacement to charter. P&O say that passengers with bookings up to and including the 27th September will not be affected by the change. Passengers with bookings after this date will be contacted by the company for “alternative arrangements or refunds”.

P&O Ferries chief executive Helen Deeble said: “We have examined every option very carefully and have been trying for more than three years to find a suitable replacement ship in order to continue the service profitably. The Pride of Bilbao has served us well but is now an old ship nearing the end of her commercial life and needs to be replaced.

“However, we have reached the sad conclusion that such a replacement vessel is not currently available and as this loss-making route is unable to fund the cost of a new purpose-built ship we have no alternative other than to close it.”

From a practical point of view it shouldn’t make much difference to motorhome travellers – assuming Brittany Ferries’ Santander service keeps running, it will still be possible to get a ferry to the north coast of Spain from both Plymouth and Portsmouth.

However, for anyone living in the north of England or Scotland, Dover and the south coast is a long drive – about 290 miles from where I live in Yorkshire, for example. That’s why we’ve started to use P&O’s North Sea crossings from Hull whenever we can.

P&O operates two North Sea routes, Hull-Zeebrugge and Hull-Rotterdam. Both are daily services, sailing in the evening and taking 9-12 hours. This means that you arrive at the other end refreshed after a night’s sleep and with a new day ahead of you for travelling into the continent (or back home in the UK).

2-berth, inside cabin on the Pride of Hull

Cabins are compulsory, with a range of options available. Cabins can be 2 or 4-berth and inside or outside. All cabins have en-suite bathrooms. There are also a number of suites available if you are feeling flush…

P&O seems to keep these crossings busy by promoting ‘Mini Cruises’ where a coach is provided to take foot passengers into Amsterdam or Bruges (depending on which crossing you use) for the day, returning them to the ship for the return trip in the evening. As a result, these crossings can be very busy on Thursday and Friday nights, with people on weekend trips (especially the Hull-Rotterdam route, thanks to the attractions of Amsterdam…).

Entertainment is mostly cruise ship style – there are two bars to choose from, plus a small casino and video game arcade. The main bar is a large, loud and bright ‘Showbar’, which has cabaret and similar entertainment through the evening. On the top deck, there is a second bar – this is more of a ‘hotel lounge’ type affair with live piano and sea views from the panoramic windows.

Top deck lounge bar on the Pride of Hull

There are plenty of food choices too, ranging from coffee/snack bar type food through to an a la carte restaurant. It isn’t especially cheap, but there are plenty of choices and you can take your own food on board if you want (although P&O doesn’t encourage this and doesn’t provide any indoor seating other than in bars and restaurant areas).

The whole ship is fairly modern and generally a pleasant enough place to spend twelve hours. The opportunity to travel while you sleep is very useful and for many continental destinations, Rotterdam and Zeebrugge are no further away than Calais. If your travelling in your own vehicle, you can board from around 4pm-5pm and access your cabin straight away – ideal after a long day’s drive.