which ferry to south Brittany?

[denialandpanic]

Have just excitedly scoped out a week at trinite la baie with eurocamp for our first camping holiday with DCs 5 and 3. I was very excited until the overnight ferry to St malo came out at £500 vs £50 for Dover Calais crossing. DP wants to do Dover - Calais and drive down (7-8 hours?). I'm wondering if this is madness? We have the kit dvd players etc but I'm worried that this will ruin the holiday of drive is a disaster.

What to do? Advice and experience welcome

The camping was coming out at £680 for the week, seems crazy to spend nearly the same again on the ferry!!!

We've done this for 10 years since ours were 3 n 5!!!!!
Have done all boat combinations
It's worth considering that if you go to calais you will probably need to use the motorways. When we did calais we paid over 100 euro in charges each way plus your petrol/diesel on a long drive. If you choose not to use motorways your journey will be much much longer as their sort of ordinary roads go thro all towns and are not like ours at all.
Overnight to st malo is very long but certainly is much closer and no motorway charges to la trinite (some motorways partic in brittany are free).
Our fav is portsmouth to cherbourg overnight so take a look at it too.
We travel from northern Ireland so have travelled thro scotland and england to france for many years. Now we travel thro southern ireland direct to cherbourg.

You will love la trinite!!!!! We stay at la plage campsite across the road. Both have direct access to a lovely family beach.

Contact me about anything. We'd move there if we could!!!!!

We've done both (and others) as well over the years & with small kids, I would utterly recommend the Portsmouth - St Malo route. It's pricey yes but you sleep while travelling plus the food is great onboard (even in the cafeteria). When the kids are awake, there's plenty to do onboard (cinema, facepainting, soft play, drawing, live floor shows (cheesy)) plus food etc. This is particularly good on the way home as it's a day trip back to Portsmouth.

For me, getting on the ferry at 7.30pm in Portsmouth is like you've already arived on holiday! Plus the less time driving on boring motorways with the DC is thumbs up in my book.

we have done Portsmouth - St Malo overnight and recommend it too - ferry is fab! Clean and comfy cabins with own shower and loos. Food was great - my DH was really impressed and he is picky! My kids loved it and we had a great nights sleep - a far cry from ferry journeys that I remembered. Would do it again very happily.
HTH

ok I'm convinced! Going to look at cherbourg and play with the dates to see if I can ferry prices down then work on do ;) Thank you! I'm soooo excited by this I've wanted to do this since all my neighbours were camping in France when I was growing up and my Dad refused to even consider camping.

We've done the fast cats to st malo and Cherbourg.

I hate that drive down from Cherbourg towards St Malo. It's all RN and you can easily get stuck behind a tractor.

I like to use Brittany Ferries, and the Portsmouth-Caen route is good.

I think you pay a premium to go to St Malo and it's only worth it if you are spending a couple of days in St Malo itself (which is fab). The drive back into St Malo isn't great.

All the options are wrecking my head. Its taken us three weeks to agree on a campsite. I'm not sure dp is fully onboard.........

Trinity La Baie was our first ever Eurocamp site too!

We used to go Brittany Ferries to Cherbourg but then have an overnight camp at Chateaux Les Eaux before driving on the following day.

Our preferred route is overnight (with cabin)Portsmouth to St Malo followed by return from Caen (afternoon boat) to Portsmouth.

To compare the cost of using the various ports, use [[viamichelin.fr].

It gives you the distance, time, and estimated cost. For example, it says Cthe drive from Calais in 6h22, and costs 94E for tolls and fuel. Caen is 3h20, Cherbourg is 3h59 and St Malo is 2h26.

The overall time is going to be quicker via Calais, taking into account the faster crossing time there. You will need some stops but the French autoroutes are brilliant at providing children's play areas.

Make that viamichelin.co.uk

This is all brilliant, thank you. Dps lie in today he is going to be bombarded when he wakes up :) I have the booking lined up and credit card armed. I have a feeling hes going to insist on going via Calais. I will agree and then look smug as he gets more and more tired and frustrated. Luckily we don't have far to drive to either portsmouth or dover at this end.

honisoit's got it I'm afraid... it is quicker - obviously depending on where you start from in the UK - and cheaper to go via Calais. Undoubtedly, it is much more fun and much less demanding to go the Brittany Ferries route. We live 45 mins from Portsmouth but will be driving to Dover for all our ferry crossings this year because I'm not prepared to spend twice the cost of entire campsite stay on a BF crossing. Although I would love to do so, I can't convince Dh or myself that its worth it.

Thanks for posting denial We're going to Trinitie too (La Plage in one of their Tithomes - v excited!!) so we're wondering the same thing..... I think we've settled on dover calais and then staying in a formular 1 or something similar on the way there.....
Can those who've been before please tell me that the weather will be fabulous in first week of July? :o

ooo condor ferries clipper portsmouth cherbourg for our dates is £240! 9 am sailing on way out 16:15 on way back.

Mrsmc they look lovely!

ok how soon after waking dp can I site him down and book all this??? spose I better let him wake up

Do it and present him with a "Taa-Dah" and am I not the best DP in th eworld to have taken the weight of descision from your shoulders !!!
< disclaimer....it might only work in this household >

Do both, drive to Dover and sail on the way out to the holiday - when you are fresh and excited about going away.

Then book the ferry from St Malo for the way home, when you don't want the last few days of your holiday worrying about the long drive home and know that you will have a shortish trip back to the ferry. Or if you want to add another 100 miles to the drive home sail form Cherbourg on the way home.

Another thing to do is to work back from when you want to arrive at your campsite (probably around 4pm, as that is when check-ins usually start). If you go the Calais route, you will want an early crossing, eg 8am (hitting the M25 before rush hour. We always use the tunnel now, so 8am would have you in France well before 10am there. Get a couple hours of driving in before lunch, another couple of hours in after before the children start getting restless again.

If you take an early morning ferry, you are looking at arriving in France around 2/3pm (obviously check the timetables), and to the campsite around 6pm. An overnight crossing means you will be looking for activities to kill a lot of time.

The Condor ferries is a much more realistic price and competitive with the cost of Calais plus the three hours extra driving.

It gets in at 1530 which means you won't get to campsite until late evening (8.30/9ish). Are you happy with that?

I can see arriving at campsite later being a problem, especially as we haven't done this before, know the procedures etc. I'm thinking dover/ calais route on way over to get an earlier start / with an overnight and condor ferries via cherbourg on the way back at present as ivykaty suggested. Dp getting moving we're going to book it all this afternoon :)

Last Summer we did Portsmouth Le Harve with LD lines. I think it was £180 return for 4 of us with a car.
Going out we had the posh reclliner seats, but would definately use the lie flat seats next time - they were sold out when we booked. That is an overnight crossing.
Coming back we just paid the standard fare and sat in the bar (where we could sit round a table) rather than the rows of seats.
DC were 7 & 10.

Check out the prices of LD Lines they are way cheaper and absolutely fine, though the canteen was not great.

Are you in a tent or mobile home, denial?

If you are in a tent, you will need to find the toilet blocks. In either place, you will need to make your beds.

The last time we had a similar holiday - we had a mobile home on a site in the Vendee - we left the day before and spent the night en route. By going out on a Friday, we saved enough money to pay for a fairly nice B&B. We were first in line at check-in and were settled in our place by 5pm. We had loads of time to kill, so had a leisurely (2hr) French lunch and a trip to the hypermarche, and were still early at our campsite. The British people who came straight from the ferry arrived between 7 and 8pm, but these were ferries leaving Portsmouth at 7am, not 9am.