To be deluded in thinking the Kent/France chaos will be over by Tuesday?

[OutOfUsernames]

What are the chances?

We’re doing a 3 week road trip across Europe with hotels booked and a big family event in one country so can’t cancel.

The thought of sitting in gridlock for hours and hours to get on the Eurotunnel, before all the driving we’re going to be doing anyway, is starting to make me feel slightly anxious.

I'm not sure what magic bullet would make all the problems disappear by Tuesday I'm afraid.

If your travel is not essential I would reschedule or find an alternative port. People continuing to turn up even though they know it's chaos are only adding to the problem.

We’ve done it this morning and really it was fine. Yes, frustrating, yes, took a long time (fine until the last 2 miles then that took 3.5 hrs) but the euro tunnel itself was running pretty well - and once you're on, you're in France in 30 mins which is pretty fab.

Just be prepared, know it will take a while and it’s totally doable. Think about upgrading to flexiplus & going late at night /v early morning if you’re really worried about it.

We are also going on Tuesday but staying at a premier inn a few miles out the night before. Ferry at 11.

Am wondering if we you change to a ferry at 6am and scrap the hotel.

I can drive to Dover whilst hubby sleeps in the car and he can do the 3.5hrs on the other side.

Not sure which will be the lesser of two evils.

The issues are with the ferry port rather than the Eurotunnel I believe

I think you're just going to have to embrace it. Take lots of food and books and water.

Would fewer people be travelling on a Tuesday than a weekend? Perhaps.

Apologies I’ve just read the news properly and it sounds horrendous! We left a week ago and had no issues (other than it being a lot more expensive than usual)

We are keeping an eye on the news as we are also off on an European road trip next week. We're staying near(ish)by the night before and then doing the final few miles to the tunnel the next morning so I'm hoping we can avoid some of the traffic jams if we travel early morning. We have 6 different lots of accommodation booked so rearranging isn't an option for us. I'm just hoping things improve next week.

It's a fact of nature that multiplying entities exponentially increases outcomes.

So you have the competence of the UK government multiplied (not added too) the capabilities of the French government.

I leave it to the reader to draw their own conclusions.

Eurotunnel was horrific this morning.

We left home at 4am, hit the back of the traffic jam on A20 (so we went the long/back way to avoid M20) at 6.45am.

Then it was literally standstill traffic for HOURS. Kids were playing on the grass verges type traffic.

We finally got to the front about 11am.

Once into the terminal it was fairly quick and we got the 12.20am train.

I think leave really early if you can, we got caught in yesterdays back log which still hadn’t cleared.

The traffic was bad but everyone was wonderfully British about it all and spirits were high and no drama in that sense.

Sorry typo, hit the traffic at 5.45am

So 6 hour delay for us today.

I cannot imagine it being smooth but hope for your sake it is better than today.

We left York at 12.30pm yesterday (Friday) and got to Calais at 8.10am local time. So a journey time of 19h? We stopped once for ten minutes. The rest was actual traveling. It was very largely due to the M20 closure further to a horrific accident in the morning. Folkestone doesn't have the infrastructure or space to manage the volume of traffic post Brexit. Double whammy. Utterly exhausting.

I would like to walk along the queue and ask anyone who thought Brexit was a good idea to move to the back ...

@Lindasllama

Well if you could get your mates in the EU, (the French), to supply sufficient staff there wouldn't be a problem.

Is it just traffic heading into France that's the issue? We are due to drive to the UK on Friday.

It’s not just about staffing - what was a fairly quick glance over a passport that took maybe 30 seconds per vehicle now requires them to swipe/scan the passport, check any thing that pops up against that passport and then stamp it. Even if the computer runs quickly what was 30s per car would be about 60seconds per passenger, add that up across the volume of traffic and it’s pretty easy to see why there are backlogs.

the low staff exacerbated the situation, it didn’t cause it

Ahhh OK - so we cause this shit show and it's the French at fault 🤔... and they need to supply more staff ?? How about 'they' don't need to do anything. This is entirely a problem of our own making. Those who voted for 'taking back our borders' surely realised this was a pretty obvious result.

I don't think that really answers the OP's question.

I can't see the queues magically disappearing by Tuesday. All schools have broken up now so more people will be travelling.
Take plenty of drinks and sandwiches and be prepared to wait it out.
Enjoy your holiday when you get there.

I'm not sure - we're booked for the week after and DH thinks it will all have cleared by then, but I'm not so sure and think problems will just build up again over the weekend.

We've got an early morning train booked (not that it makes that much difference as they'll just put us on whatever one we make I assume) but am already assuming we'll get stuck in traffic with people leaving more time to get there, even if the bigger issues have been solved by then.

Google maps today looks much better.
The M20 still dead slow but Dover itself not gridlocked

Exactly.

Dover is ok now though apparently the problems have just shifted to Folkestone (eurotunnel) because m20 still a lorry park.

Tuesday is still 2 days away though, I think things will have improved a bit by then.

Also exactly this. The French are not to blame. Not their brexit, not their responsibility.