Anyone living near the M20 or travelled through Eurotunnel recently give an update?

[TattiePants]

I’m booked on the Eurotunnel this weekend and the news seems to have gone quiet following the queues last weekend. I’d like to think things have improved but not sure if that’s the case (and obviously this weekend will be busier than midweek).

it looks like the M20 is fully open but with a contra flow, is that correct? If you have travelled via the tunnel this week have there been delays?

I've not used the tunnel, but I live 5 minutes from there and the roads have been fine for the past few days. It was dreadful last week, but things are moving fine now.

It must be awful for the locals having to deal with all that traffic. I’ll be watching the news closely from tomorrow to see what happens. I’m hoping last week was just a perfect storm of busiest weekend in 2 years, new procedures, understaffing, major accident etc and it’s not as bad this weekend.

The roads are currently fine but then it wasn’t till the weekend that things really kicked off last week. Saw a news report that it’s meant to be bad again this weekend but who knows for sure

You need to check the current situation with operation brock because it changes constantly. The M20 contraflow isn't usually too bad but last week it started spilling onto the A20 between Folkestone and Dover and that's when it all went to shit.

nationalhighways.co.uk/travel-updates/operation-brock/

Apart from that, I'd just keep checking the roads. I would get there early though. We theoretically had nearly a 3 hour delay last week and that was before the chaos! But actually we got on a much earlier train than we were supposed to be on.

I basically went and checked in our dog and on my way out asked a member of staff what the wait would be. He asked me what my letter was and told me to just go straight to boarding so we did and got on the next train! As I was driving out of the car park there, I passed cars with earlier letters than ours on their hangers all hanging around in 5w terminal.

So if there's any delay, just chance it. There was a Dutch bloke who came through passport control and did a u turn to bypass the going into the terminal altogether. He got on the train just before us.

It was clear yesterday however they are warning that there will be issues at the weekend

I’ve got the national highways page open on my phone and I’ve been checking it since last weekend. We’re travelling to Ashford for an overnight stay first then, in theory, it’s a 15 minute drive to the tunnel the next morning. The kids will be gutted if they have to miss their Premier Inn breakfast!

@Clymene I added the API and car details to the booking today and I couldn’t find where to enter if you have a roof box or are towing anything. We’re usually in with the coaches as our car is too high for the car section so hoping that won’t be an issue.

How weird! They definitely asked when I booked our car. But the app is really shit. We came back today and it said we should go in the small car lane. We have a roof box and have to follow the large car one.

Just do that. There was a tiny golf in front of us which had obviously gone in the wrong lane but no one seemed to mind.

We travelled on Tuesday. The M20 contraflow was operating but there were no hold ups. Trains were delayed though - as an over height vehicle we were delayed an hour despite having checked in 2 hours before. Compared to what had been going on over the weekend we were very happy with that!

Just to update in case anyone is doing a similar journey this weekend. We’ve driven to Ashford today and there are no problems on the roads. The contraflow is in use between junctions 8-9 but didn’t cause any delays.

Just back from Ashford down M20-

All clear down to Dover in both directions 😊