![\"\"](\"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/20190520_222434-3830x2154-1024x576.jpg\")
<\/p>\nWell, well.\u00a0 Off again – and I have only just finished the Myanmar and Oz saga!<\/p>\n
Those of you who are in the know will have heard the tragic story of our ferry crossing.\u00a0 Well parts of it anyway!\u00a0 Our boat, the Brittany Ferries flagship, the Pont Aven, caught fire and sank in the Bay of Biscay a few weeks ago.\u00a0 Well it didn’t actually sink. That bit I made up.\u00a0 But the fire cooked one of the engines, of which the boat has four.\u00a0 It was diverted to Brest where it got stuck.\u00a0 Our sailing was Sunday 19th May.\u00a0 No worries mate!\u00a0 It’ll be bonza by the 12th.\u00a0 Except it wasn’t.\u00a0 \u00a0But it did creep back to work for the 14th.\u00a0 Brilliant.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 She’ll be right for our crossing.<\/p>\n
Except she wasn’t.\u00a0 \u00a0Back in Brest with a boatload of angry punters who had just spent two days (or in some cases much longer) in sunny Santander!\u00a0 This time it was “hydraulic problems” or, possibly “propeller trouble”.\u00a0 Either way it was deemed unsafe to put to sea.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 I logged 310 calls on my mobile.\u00a0 (Sad isn’t it? – the thing counts how many times a number is dialled before getting through!)\u00a0 We wanted to talk about cabbages and kings and whether Brittany Ferries had any concrete proposals for getting 2000 of us to sunny Spain.\u00a0 Well at least two of us – the other 1998 can sort themselves out.\u00a0 \u00a0Presumably they were all working on the problem for themselves and that’s why the phone lines were jammed.\u00a0 Selfish people!<\/p>\n
The “concrete proposals” started with an offer of an overnight crossing to Roscoff (Brittany) on the Sunday night – but all the cabins were full.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 No guarantees mate!<\/p>\n
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!\u00a0 OK.\u00a0 We give in.\u00a0 The 75 pence compensation on offer was a strong selling point… NOT.<\/p>\n
So we arrived nice and early for the 10.45 night-time ferry.\u00a0 About three hours early.\u00a0 Better than an hour late… apparently!\u00a0 We asked everyone if we could get on early to get to sleep and have a nice early breakaway the next morning.\u00a0 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!<\/p>\n
We just had to take pot luck\u00a0with everyone else – how unfair!\u00a0 I ask you…<\/p>\n
Well, as chance would have it we found ourselves on the boat just one back from poll position.\u00a0 Neat!<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
That’s us right in the middle, in front of the red car.<\/p>\n
Of course no self respecting trip by the Tapps would be complete without a serious incident or two.\u00a0 Leaving aside the trials of actually getting on the water, we did have a small incident during the night.\u00a0 We were boarded by pirates!\u00a0 Dozens of the blighters dressed in dark camouflaged gear and heavy black boots scralling up grappling ropes from little boats along-side.\u00a0 I ask you – pirates!\u00a0 In the English Channel!\u00a0 However, we limped into Roscoff on schedule with no loss of life and nobody being robbed!<\/p>\n
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!).\u00a0 Having experienced what turned out to be nocturnal, military exercises…<\/p>\n
So it was definitely France, not Spain!<\/p>\n
Our 40’s and 50’s experiences to follow in the next exciting episode.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Well, well.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Well parts of it anyway!\u00a0 Our… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spain-may-2019"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1901"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1901\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1921,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1901\/revisions\/1921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}