Well, well. Off again – and I have only just finished the Myanmar and Oz saga!
Those of you who are in the know will have heard the tragic story of our ferry crossing. Well parts of it anyway! Our boat, the Brittany Ferries flagship, the Pont Aven, caught fire and sank in the Bay of Biscay a few weeks ago. Well it didn’t actually sink. That bit I made up. But the fire cooked one of the engines, of which the boat has four. It was diverted to Brest where it got stuck. Our sailing was Sunday 19th May. No worries mate! It’ll be bonza by the 12th. Except it wasn’t. But it did creep back to work for the 14th. Brilliant. A round trip to Santander to clear Plymouth docks of a squatters village comprising largely of Sunday’s customers – and presumably the same with the encampment in Spain. She’ll be right for our crossing.
Except she wasn’t. Back in Brest with a boatload of angry punters who had just spent two days (or in some cases much longer) in sunny Santander! This time it was “hydraulic problems” or, possibly “propeller trouble”. Either way it was deemed unsafe to put to sea.
So we got a message late on Friday basically to the effect that all the happy work we had done in getting the caravan locked and loaded, was based on misplaced confidence and was, largely, a waste of time. I logged 310 calls on my mobile. (Sad isn’t it? – the thing counts how many times a number is dialled before getting through!) We wanted to talk about cabbages and kings and whether Brittany Ferries had any concrete proposals for getting 2000 of us to sunny Spain. Well at least two of us – the other 1998 can sort themselves out. Presumably they were all working on the problem for themselves and that’s why the phone lines were jammed. Selfish people!
The “concrete proposals” started with an offer of an overnight crossing to Roscoff (Brittany) on the Sunday night – but all the cabins were full. We moved swiftly on to an offer of a trip to Santander on the following Sunday – but this came with a warning that they were expecting iceberg damage on the way from Brest to Plymouth. No guarantees mate!
The next option was to have a more or less definitely likely overnight crossing on Monday night with a club class cabin thrown in – at our expense! OK. We give in. The 75 pence compensation on offer was a strong selling point… NOT.
So we arrived nice and early for the 10.45 night-time ferry. About three hours early. Better than an hour late… apparently! We asked everyone if we could get on early to get to sleep and have a nice early breakaway the next morning. From the girl at the check-in booth to the security screeners to the queue managers to the guy with the radio talking to the ship’s master about what he wanted pushed aboard next… NO CHANCE!
We just had to take pot luck with everyone else – how unfair! I ask you…
Well, as chance would have it we found ourselves on the boat just one back from poll position. Neat!
That’s us right in the middle, in front of the red car.
Of course no self respecting trip by the Tapps would be complete without a serious incident or two. Leaving aside the trials of actually getting on the water, we did have a small incident during the night. We were boarded by pirates! Dozens of the blighters dressed in dark camouflaged gear and heavy black boots scralling up grappling ropes from little boats along-side. I ask you – pirates! In the English Channel! However, we limped into Roscoff on schedule with no loss of life and nobody being robbed!
So we arrived in the wrong country, on the wrong boat, on the wrong day and on the wrong side of the road (well, the right side actually!). Having experienced what turned out to be nocturnal, military exercises…
So it was definitely France, not Spain!
Our 40’s and 50’s experiences to follow in the next exciting episode.
A great start then!!!!
Looking forward to following your travels
Your trips are never straightforward are they? We leave today for Croatia, Slovenia and the Greek islands. Will follow your blog with WiFi and hopefully keep in touch via WhatsApp.
Hi John , nice one I see there is still a space on the car deck to the Port side of you van BF missed a trick there but they do have Grayling’s £50m to keep them going.
Best wishes from those other travellers who have just found out that he ferry home is dead in the water?
You couldn’t make it up!!!
Pia and Grant
You always have all the fun. our caravan adventures are never so eventful ….. thank goodness