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Ali AT SEA
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This year's CM Ferry Focus takes on a different format as our team samples the busiest route at first hand.
Every year the boats and trains of Dover and Folkestone carry in the region of three million trucks and five million light vehicles on the short hop across the English Channel.
Five companies handle the vast majority of this traffic. Eurotunnel's route goes under the water from Folkestone to Sangatte on the outskirts of Calais: Hoverspeed, P&O and SeaFrance all use the traditional and shortest route from Dover to Calais; while Norfolk Line sails a bit further east to Loon Plage, near Dunkirk.
We took a snapshot survey of all five routes on a wet Wednesday two weeks ago.
It would have been nice to have taken a fleet of fully freighted artics on our trip, but this would have been impractical so we followed the example of thousands of Brits every day.
Taking the opportunity of refreshing our view of the sector, we intended using five different vans in the region of 2,800kg GVW Unfortunately despite last minute negotiations, we only managed to extract vehicles from Fiat. Mercedes,Vauxhall and Volkswagen, so our latest long-term van, a Nissan Terrano was pressed into service,We also tried out a variety of satellite navigation systems.
Our chosen route was from CM'S ivory tower in Sutton. Surrey,crossing the Channel at around 8am then regrouping at St Omer for lunch and the return at around Opm.Naturally, a van review is no use without sampling payloads so we selflessly stopped in Calais to take on some supplies. Despite the name, Hoverspeed doesn't hover across the Channel any more.The famous hovercraft were pensioned off in 2000; on the short crossing from Dover to Calais the service uses a pair of Seacat highspeed catamarans. Our crossing was in the larger of the two, the 81m Diamant. Hoverspeed still operates out of Dover's Western Docks, from a berth next to the old hovercraft slipway. But instead of landing at Dunkirk it sails into a quiet berth at the eastern end of Calais harbour. On arrival at around 7.15am, there were three check-in queues of around four vehicles each; we were processed very efficiently in under five minutes.
The small terminal building houses a Little Chef Express, a coffee shop and a sandwich bar, as well as a general shop and a dutyfree outlet. Although we were only in there for 10 minutes everything seemed as it should, apart from all the sandwiches in the shop having the previous day as their sell-by date.
The Seacat service has a height limit which effectively rules out anything bigger than a 3.5-tonne van but these made up a fair proportion of the load, and most seemed to be commercial rather than booze cruisers. On the outward journey, apart from van