Surfing whilst sailing .. or clicking whilst crossing?

Recent news in from Irish Ferries that Wifi is now free to all passengers on their Irish Sea crossings.

Having a quick comparative look at the other ferry companies to see whether they do Wifi or not, as I blogged about in 2009, NorfolkLine (now DFDS) offer free wifi to their passengers, and Brittany Ferries offer free Wifi in their port buildings but charge onboard the actual Brittany Ferry boats (at a rather steep £4 per hour or £8.50 for 3 hours).

Condor seem to only have Wifi in the Jersey port (but its free) and LD Lines seem to offer Wifi onboard the boats that Transmanche ferries operate (Côte d'Albâtre and Seven Sisters), but not the boats that sail under the LD Lines company name.

Surf's up !

Consolidation on the high seas - DFDS and LDLines joint venture

Building on the back of the announcement that DFDS and LDLines were launching a Dover-Calais ferry service earlier this year, the two companies have now announced that they will form a joint company for ferry routes on the English channel and between France and Tunisia.

This new service is expected to come into formal operations on 1st July and will comprise the following ferry routes:

• Dover-Dunkirk (which is currently operated by DFDS)
• Dover-Calais (the existing DFDS / LD Lines partnership)
• Portsmouth-Le Havre (currently an LD Lines service)
• Newhaven-Dieppe (LD Lines operating under the Transmanche Ferries banner)
• Marseille-Tunis (LD Lines)

There is further details of the company share ownership, passenger numbers and ferries on the DFDS press announcement.

Not directly related to the joint venture, but I guess a sign of good customer takeup on the Dover/Calais service that started on 17th February, DFDS have announced a second ship for this route.

The new vessel will be known as the 'Deal Seaways'.

And where did the Deal Seaways come from? It's our old friend from Brittany Ferries, Barfleur, that ceased service on the Poole Cherbourg route in 2009, came briefly back into service last year, but has spent most of the intervening years moored up on a river inlet in Caen.

Now showing a sparkly new Blue and White DFDS paint scheme she's back in service at long last now.

Wonder what colour the DFDS/LDLines joint venture boats will be painted? Barfleur could set a record time for the shortest paint-job on a ferry if it's anything other than Blue and White!

LD Lines closes down their Boulogne service and runs aground at Portsmouth

A double oh-dear this month for LD Lines.

First up after I reported that there was no clear future for Dover operations for LD Lines early last month, the company has have now confirmed to the BBC that the LD Lines service from Dover to Boulogne will cease on 6th September. One of the boats has already been transferred onto a new France/Spain service and the second will be considered to be used on the same route as a freight-only service, but this appears to be "a possibility".

LD Lines withdrawal now means that there are now no passenger services running into Boulogne at all.

And with a second "oops" for LD Lines they've also had to announce a temporary suspension of the Norman Arrow service from Portsmouth to Le Havre after the fast cat hit a buoy coming into Le Havre port on Sunday.

We just got back from three lovely weeks at our Brittany Gite on Sunday morning (2am) and quite by chance travelled back on the Norman Arrow into Portsmouth. The incident must have occurred on the sailing immediately after the one we were on - lucky we missed that one then !

I'll be writing some blog posts about our holiday and will upload some photos of the Norman Arrow as it really is a lovely ship and it really zips across the long western channel crossing from Le Havre.

LD woes, "no clear decision on the future of Dover operations"

Quick news-spot, ThisIsKent wrote today of LD Lines putting their two Dover ships up for sale as the company reports "we are indeed suffering, just like our competitors, from a very depressed market with very low volumes and an aggressive policy from Eurotunnel and therefore from other operators".

LD Lines started a Dover/Dieppe service and a Dover/Boulogne service in early and then mid 2009, reported that their service was so popular that LD Lines was buying a second boat for the Dover service and now only a year-and-a-half later the Dieppe service has gone and they're reporting "staff reduction may unfortunately be on the agenda" for the rest of the Dover service.

Hope they don't go the same way as SpeedFerries that went bust in 2008 ...

Travel updates - new services from Euroferries, Celtic Link, LD Lines and RyanAir

Been making some updates to the French ferry and airline routes page for our self-catering Brittany cottage.

First up, thanks to Richy who left a comment on my last Euroferries posting, as at long last Euroferries finally launch their Ramsgate to Boulogne service with a crossing time of 1 hour 15. Bookings are now being taken for sailings from November 14th and a few searches indicate that Euroferries are being quite price competitive with return crossings coming in for £66.50.

You can book up to April 2010 (but not beyond) so whilst the peak summer crossings are not yet available you can at least book a Christmas or Easter break.

Next, I've also added newcomer Celtic Link who are operating LD Lines' Roscoff to Cherbourg service for them and additionally running a Portsmouth to Cherbourg service of their own.

There's also some been some changes to the LD Lines service as they've moved their fast cat from the Dover/Boulogne service onto Portsmouth/Le Havre - slashing the journey time from 5 ½ hours to just 3 ¼ hours. Dover/Boulogne still continues with a conventional ferry but obviously takes a little longer without the fast cat.

I also noticed that RyanAir have introduced new services from Birmingham to Dinard, Bournemouth to Nantes and Leeds Bradford to Nantes so more updates there as well.

Phew !

If anyone actually travels with Euroferries or Celtic Link then please do leave a comment to say what you thought of the new services.

LDLines moves Irish ferry service from Le Havre to Cherbourg

LD Lines have just announced that they're replacing the LDLines service from Rosslare to Le Havre with a new crossing service from Rosslare to Cherbourg.

By doing this they'll be able to cut sailing time from 20 hours to 17 hours, offer an increased service frequency and pickup more freight service that goes through Cherbourg.

Cherbourg is a new port for LDLines so it'll be interesting to see if they look to expand their services further with crossings from the UK into this part of Northern France.

Of course this service now directly competes with IrishFerries route from Rosslare to Cherbourg, but LDLines are offering a slightly quicker service crossing time with 17 hours vs. 18 ½ hours so I expect there'll be a new price war looming. LD Lines have already kicked this off with an opening offer of €79 each way single crossing price.

Required yet more changes to be made to our website of different travel choices for getting to our holiday cottage as a result of this new service.

LDLines Norman Arrow proves so popular that there's talk of a second vessel

Cross channel success with Norman Arrow

Just read an interesting report on International Freighters Weekly about how well LD Lines' high speed Catamaran Norman Arrow is doing on the Dover-Boulogne route.

LD Lines is quoted as saying that they are definitely planning to introduce a second high-speed cat on the Dover/Boulogne route so that they can run an hourly service across the channel; and goes on to say that LD Lines are also considering introducing a similar service on the Portsmouth/Le Havre route.

Cut price ferry tickets to France

As I blogged back in November, December and earlier this month, following the demise of SpeedFerries I'm having to look for other travel options to enjoy a holiday in our French Holiday Home.

For once we've got ourselves organised this year and have booked ourselves in for a two week stay at Easter and then a three week August summer holiday. In 2008 what with moving house and a difficult project at work we only went over to the Gite as a family once, at Easter, so it'll be lovely to take more time off and relax a bit more.

For Easter I've booked an outward crossing with Condor Ferries from Poole to St Malo which gives us a few hours stop-off enroute in Jersey (which I've never been to), and then a quick hour-and-a-bit drive at the other side from St Malo to the Gite. We're returning back through Dieppe with LD Lines, so it's a bit of a longer drive, but it's some £70 cheaper and is overall probably slightly quicker too.

I've been trying to decide which route to take for August and as we intend to take our dog Dexter with us, and as Liz gets really stressed out with the thought of him "all alone" in the car, it's better if we take one of the shorter crossings.

As luck would have it I've received a couple of emails special offers in the last few days so the choice (and cost) has been made a bit easier.

First arriving in my mailbox was LD Lines who are promoting their new Dover Boulogne route with single journey crossings costing from just £24. I noticed that that the email was sent to the email address I've used previously for SpeedFerries, and in the LD Lines email they explained that they've bought up the SpeedFerries customer contact list from the company administrators.

LDLines have also managed to bring the start of their new Dover/Boulogne service forward, originally it was due to commence in July 2009, now it starts on 12th February.

For the three week period I wanted in August the cost of a Saturday to Saturday return crossing came in with LDLines at £79. To this I'll have to pay roughly £40 of fuel and £15 of tolls each way, so at £189 total cost it still compares extremely favourably with the £400-500 cost that I'd have to pay with Brittany Ferries for the shorter western channel routes. Don't get me wrong, the BF boats are lovely, spacious, and with good onboard facilities, and the shorter drive is nice too, but it's still an awfully large price premium to pay.

Next I took a look at the same August dates with Norfolk Line from Dover to Dunkerque.

Depending on what time of day I travel at single tickets range from £17.50 (for a silly o'clock in the morning) through £29 and up to a maximum of £42. In the past I've noticed a slight saving by buying two single tickets with NL as the return sailing from France is priced in Euros (and the prices can vary during the day), so maybe I can save a few quid, but as it's another half hour drive up the coastal motorway to Dunkerque there's probably not much difference in cost overall when compared to LDLines.

And then I received an email from Ferrycheap.com. Just for good measure I received the email twice, one that was sent direct to me from FerryCheap, and one that was sent through the email address I've used with SpeedFerries (so looks like Ferrycheap have also bought up the SpeedFerries customer contact database).

FerryCheap are running a NorfolkLine special offer of a car with 4 passengers on their Dover-Dunkirk route for any date up to 17th December 2009.

There's just two different ticket prices:
  High Season (3rd-19th April and 17th July-6th September) - £29 each way
OR
  Low Season (any other dates) - £19 each way

And all tickets are fully flexible with no amendment fees so you can change your booking any time you want - as long as there's space on the boat of course!

Only other condition of this special offer is that you must book your crossings by 18 February 2009.

So we'll be NorfolkLining it in August methinks.

Reducing Euro rental prices and LDLines delays Dover/Dieppe route

Details of a couple of quick website updates:

For the last year or so to broaden the appeal of our Brittany Holiday Home to Euro-zone customers (principally from Ireland, but occasionally Holland and France), we've offered rental rates in Euros as well as British Pounds.

Now as the Pound edges ever closer to parity with the Euro I've taken another look at the rental prices we charge and significantly reduced the Euro holiday rental rates across the board.

---

On the travel options part of our website I've been adding details of the new French law that requires you to carry a high-visibility jacket as well as warning triangle in your car when driving in France, and also added a link to the AA's travel advice for motoring in France.

Also I've updated our website after noticing that LD Lines has changed the start date of their new Dover/Dieppe ferry route which was due to commence operation in January 2009, but is now shown on their website as starting on 2nd February.

---

Just remains for me to wish everyone a Bonne Année, and I'll see you all next year!

LDLines Frequent Traveller Programme and Dover/Dieppe route

LD Lines

LD Lines is the only cross-channel ferry operator that offers a chairman's Blog, written Pierre Gehanne, direct to LD Lines' customers. The Blog has established itself as a good two-way communications mechanism with Pierre openly responding to customer comments and concerns.

Recently following on from LD Lines' announcement of a new Frequent Traveller programme (full details and Terms and Conditions are on the main website) there's been quite a bit of customer feedback on the Blog about the loyalty scheme with many people requesting information and some customers saying that they feel it's not rewarding enough.

Also on Pierre's Blog under the LD Lines routes, questions, comments and suggestions page there's news that they're due to start running a Dover/Dieppe service from January 2009 with Cote d’Albatre, Leaving Dieppe at 1300 on Monday to Friday and returning from Dover at 17:45 each weekday.

I've added this to the Travelling to the Gite page on our website.

LD Lines are of course also due to start a Dover/Boulogne route carrying both freight and of course cars (in competition against SpeedFerries) from July 2009.

LD Lines splashes the cash on a new boat, more sailings and a new route

New LD Lines RORO Ferry

LD Lines announced today that they're purchasing a new boat, currently under construction in Italy, and due to come into service in November 2008.

The as yet unnamed boat is similar to LD's M/V Sorrento which operates between Italy (Rome) and France (Cote d’Azur) and will be able to 800 passengers with 110 cabins plus reclining seats, sleeper seats and the usual bars, restaurants and lounges.

Once the boat comes into service it will be used to add a second crossing on the existing Portsmouth/Le Havre route, leaving at lunchtime from Portsmouth and in the evening from Le Havre; complementing the existing crossing which currently runs overnight from Portsmouth and in the evening returns from Le Havre, but will probably be re-timetabled to balance the new service.

On the weekends LD Lines will operate their new boat on a completely new route from Rosslare in Southern Ireland to Le Havre, leaving France Friday evening, arriving in Ireland just 20 hours later on Saturday, and then returning back to Le Havre for Sunday.

This'll provide some competition for Irish Ferries who currently operate unchallenged two routes from Rosslare to Roscoff (Brittany) and Cherbourg (Normandy peninsular).

LD Lines is spending $110M on the new boat so they're clearly serious about growing their share of the French ferry market.



Further details of the new LD Lines ferry are on their website as are details of current summer sailing offers.

LD Lines and TransManche announce new timetables and some special offers

Following my posting about LD Lines taking over Transmanche Ferries just over a week ago, I received an announcement from LD Lines today giving details of the new ferry timetable:

New LD Lines ferry routes

The new timetables are as follows (all arrivals and departures in local time):

Newhaven – Le Havre (daily service)
Depart	Arrive
Newhaven: 12:30 (UK time)	Le Havre: 6:30pm (French time)
Le Havre: 8pm	Newhaven: midnight
Newhaven – Dieppe (Low season, October to March)
Newhaven: 5pm and 11pm (Mon-Fri) 7am and 10pm (Sat) 7am and 7pm (Sun)	Dieppe: 4am and 10pm (Mon-Fri) 12pm (Sat) 3am, 12pm and midnight (Sun)
Dieppe: 3am, 6pm and midnight (Mon) 6pm and midnight (Tue-Fri) 8am and 8pm (Sat) 8am (Sun)	Newhaven: 6am and 9pm (Mon) 3am and 9pm (Tue-Fri) 3am and 11pm (Sat) 11am (Sun)
Newhaven – Dieppe (High season, April to September, daily service)
Newhaven: 1:30am, 7am, 6pm	Dieppe: 6:30am, 12pm, 11pm
Dieppe: 00:30, 8am and 1:30pm	Newhaven: 05:30, 1pm and 5:30pm
Portsmouth - Le Havre
Portsmouth: 11pm	Le Havre: 7:30am
Le Havre: 5pm	Portsmouth: 9:30pm

There are also a number of special offers available including £69 in France from 30th April to 27th June for up to 5 nights stay. See the LD Lines and TransManche Ferries website for full details.

I also noticed that TransManche Ferries website has now had a makeover and looks very similar to LD Lines' site and uses the same booking engine. Only difference between the two is the colour scheme. Reflecting I guess the continued taking on of TransManche into LD Lines' operations.

LD Lines takes over Transmanche and offers new service from Newhaven to Le Havre

Strolling over to LD Lines today I noticed that they've quietly announced a deal to run Transmanche Ferries, and for Transmanche to become a sister company of LD Lines.

There's little other details of the actual deal on LD Lines' website, but what they do say is that this will mean that Transmanche's Newhaven <-> Dieppe service will continue and LD Lines will charter one of Transmanche's boats, The Seven Sisters to run a new summer (May-September) service from Newhaven to Le Havre.

Transmanche's Seven Sisters

The new service looks to be sensibly timetabled, arriving at Le Havre at 18:30 and leaving for Newhaven at 20:00 with a 5 hour crossing both ways. Le Havre is just 4 hours (pretty much straight down the motorway) from central Brittany so I've added details of this new service to the ferry and airline travel options for getting to our Gite.

Why do I keep on forgetting about LD Lines?

This week I've been sorting out ferries for the February half-term holiday as Liz is going over to our Gite for a week's holiday, and taking the kids and her parents as well. I can't go as I've not got enough holiday left for this year :-(

I was intending to make the booking on SpeedFerries high speed catamaran as I'd already paid in advance for 10 Speedferries open tickets for £24 each way but some 'concerns' were expressed about it being a long drive from Boulogne to Brittany so I was 'advised' (by the boss) to look at some other ferry options.

St Malo is the closest port to our Gite, about 60 miles away, but Brittany Ferries only run one boat a day there which is overnight out and daytime back, but for half term, both Saturday crossings are overnight, which wasn't acceptable as "I can't sleep on the boat". Going Portsmouth/Caen was a possibility but it was going to cost £313 for the return journey and Poole/Cherbourg was another which was cheaper at £297 return.

Both of these prices were more than I really wanted to pay. So back and forth with looking at different options we agreed to go out with SpeedFerries and back with Brittany Ferries, Cherbourg/Poole which was £183 for the single.

And then I remembered, LD Lines!

Last year LD Lines took over P&O's Portsmouth/Le Havre route and run one boat a day (out overnight from the UK at 11pm, return from France in the evening at 5pm). For some reason we've never got around to using them yet but we had heard positive reports that they provided a good straightforward service and at a reasonable price.

A bit more surfing later and the deal was done, out via SpeedFerries (for £24) and back via LD Lines (for just £100). Considering I'm booking with only a month to go, £100 is I think a good price to pay and it's eighty quid cheaper than BF.

I'll write about what the family think of the LD Lines service after they've travelled but I suspect we will be using them again (well if I manage to remember them again that is!)

New LD Lines ferry service from Portsmouth to Le Havre

Last year P&O Ferries announced that they were withdrawing from the 'Western channel' and would no longer run ferries from Portsmouth to Cherbourg and Portsmouth to Le Havre. This news didn't go down well with those of us who own holiday properties in Brittany and Normandy as the worry was that Brittany Ferries would then hold a near service monopoly and increase their prices. In fact they wouldn't hold a monopoloy as Condor Ferries also run a successful high speed service from Poole and Weymouth to St Malo and Cherbourg, but Condor are owned by BF and competition would definitely be reduced.

I heard recently from Martin Selway who owns a lovely Gite close to us and the town of Josselin (useful if we're full or you've a large group who want to holiday together but not be on top of each other) about a new ferry service from LD Lines that's taken over the P&O Portsmouth/Le Havre route - Martin's tried it and can recommend it:

A tip for your blog - have you seen the new ferry line just started from Portsmouth-LeHarve with LD Lines? They have taken over the defunct P&O route and seem to have slashed prices. Next week we are paying £130 for a return crossing with outbound cabin for myself, wife, and two daughters. This beats Brittany Ferries hands down as they are charging £348 for the same trip. They have a special offer on at the moment for car + 2 for up to 5 days for £47. Perhaps the prices will go up when they get more established?

Pont de Normandie bridge

Thanks for the tip Martin, happy to add pass it on and I've added it to the travel options page of our holiday Gite website.

LD Lines currently run a daily service that leaves Portsmouth at 11pm (arrives at Le Havre 7.30am) and then returns back from Le Havre at 5pm (to arrive in at Portsmouth at 9.30pm). It's motorway almost all the way from Le Havre to our part of Brittany so should take less than 4 hours to drive, plus you go over the fantastic Pont de Normandie bridge that towers over the River Seine.