Getting Around Part II, the Channel Crossing

In 1980 I crossed the English Channel and back again.  One way was by ferry and the other by Hovercraft.

Back then the trip was like this:  You took a train from London/Paris to Dover/Calais, and somehow you ended up at the terminal where you then boarded your ferry to cross the Channel.  At the other end, you got on a train and proceeded to your final destination.

Me, sleeping peacefully on the train from London to Dover in 1980

Now, I get that forty years have blurred some of the details, but I do remember that it was relatively straightforward and this was the way millions of people crossed the English Channel every year.

Now fast forward a few decades and there is a high speed train called the Eurostar running under the channel between London and Paris and there is no longer a Hovercraft crossing.  There is still a ferry, but it is mainly intended for vehicles (you drive on/drive off) and only a handful of "foot passengers" ever bother to cross this way anymore.

BUT I DIDN'T KNOW THAT!

Let me back up...

I took the Eurostar from Paris to London through the Chunnel on my recent trip.  It was about a two hour trip from Gare du Nord to St. Pancras, and about 20-30 minutes of that was actually under the Channel.  

It's a quick and easy way to go, but it can be expensive, and if you're skeevy about being 250 feet beneath the sea bed, like I am, you might think the ferry sounds like a good alternative.

So I decided to return to France via ferry.  On a Sunday, no less. (If you've spent any time in France, you know why that is significant, because almost everything is closed.) I'll just say that this was NOT my best idea, and I should have never assumed it was 1980 all over again.

The P&O Transport Ferry between England and France

My day started in London on a Sunday morning (Oct 13, which should have been my first clue as to how the day would go) when I got an Uber from the hotel to St. Pancras to start my journey.  I had scheduled my ferry crossing for 1:00 pm and left in plenty of time to make it.  Or so I thought...

When I arrived at the train station in Dover - forty years since I last set foot there - I asked how I could get to the ferry terminal.  The woman seemed somewhat perplexed by my question, and this was where they speak English!  I assumed that people arrived by train to catch the ferry from Dover every day, but from her reaction this seemed to be an unusual request.  No, she told me, there was no bus and no taxi going to the terminal.  "But you can walk, love, it's less than three miles."

Yeah "less than three miles," and I had ALL my luggage with me.  But I had no choice and set out on foot.  I walked through the rather deserted backside of town on a Sunday afternoon dragging my gigantic suitcase behind me and reached the terminal 45 minutes later only to find out I had missed the shuttle to the ferry for the 1:00 pm departure.  I was "lucky" there was another crossing at 3:00 pm, so I settled in to wait, mindful of the fact that I had already booked my train ticket from Calais to Lille and didn't want to miss it.

The White Cliffs of Dover as we left the coast of England

When the shuttle arrived to take us to the ferry, there were only about a dozen of us taking the trip.  We piled on a bus which drove us right onto the ferry and let us out.  Then I started to get the picture - there were tractor-trailer rigs, buses, and cars driving on but nobody just walking onto this ship.  The "foot passengers" as they called us were just an afterthought, the main purpose of the ferry was to transport vehicles.  People can drive on and drive off the other side and go on their way but the ferry is no longer intended to provide service from station to station, since that mode of transportation is now served by the Eurostar.

Approaching the coast of France

The crossing was enjoyable, and I'm glad I got to view the coasts of England and France, and experience the expanse in between ON the water, not UNDER it.

Docking in Calais

But my experience in Calais was even worse than Dover.  Now I had to find out in French how to get to the train station, and it turned out to be about six miles away - not walking distance - and again there was no bus running there from the terminal.

Not only that, but there were no Ubers available, and the lone person working at the terminal again gave me an incredulous look (She wants to go to the train station?  From the ferry terminal?  On a Sunday?) The best he could do was give me a number for a taxi. I had to make the call in French, and I was told that it would be a while, they couldn't tell me how long it would be, and they didn't even sound too sure they would come at all.

Here was the problem at this point:  It was late Sunday afternoon.  My train was leaving from a station across town in half an hour, and there was no other train to Lille if I missed that one.  The docks are far from the city center so even if I could get a hotel reservation I had no way to get there, the restaurants would all be closed, and the terminal was emptying out for the day - plus it was getting dark.  I was on the verge of being stranded alone with nowhere to eat or sleep. 

THEN...

I overheard another American woman on the phone shrieking about the taxi she'd been waiting for for over an hour.  I asked if we could share it - if it ever came - and she agreed.  Thankfully that taxi finally did show up (maybe they were impressed with her screaming at them hysterically in English!) and I was able to get to the station just in time to catch my train to Lille.

Gare de Lille Flandres