Lft to travel home from France - 3 days starts when, do you think?

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So we have found a provider of an lft to help us get home. We are on Eurotunnel Saturday morning, leaving 1030 ish getting back 1025 ish gmt.

The gov.uk link says three days before.

We can either get them tomorrow - Wednesday between 0900 and 1100 or Thursday same time. Thursday is safer bet but we need to travel then so it feels like cutting it fine. Wednesday is more comfortable arrangements wise but it is on the cusp of 72h and what is 3 days? We'd, Thurs and Fri?

Advice or thoughts please?

72 hours before arrival in the U.K.

When we travelled back from France a couple of weeks ago there was an example given on the gov website that stated 3 days. They said if you're due to travel Friday then you can have the antigen test any time Tue or after that. So in your instance Wednesday would be fine. If you want to be really precise then go for the 11am slot so it's within 72 hours but otherwise that's fine. From memory we had ours at 1pm and we travelled at 12.20, so just within the window.

I was under the impression you could get an LFT from most (all?) pharmacies, could you find another that offers slightly later appointments?

Or somewhere in Calais before you catch your train/the night before? Or wherever you're stopping overnight? These time limits are an added stress you really don't need, aren't they?

It is 72 hours before departure from France not arrival in Uk.

It's at any time within 3 days of travel. Not 3 days before.

You can take it the same day as travelling, as long as you have the results.

I had mine 2 days before, then no problems if delayed.
So Thursday pm for Saturday flight.

So we read the instructions on gov.uk again and saw that example about Tuesday to Friday. I'm interested in people saying 72h as that doesn't show on the website at all.

So we went along today on that basis, queued for 3 hours so it means that we are now within 72h. Small mercies I guess. Hopefully it will all be ok

Queued for three hours?!? Where did you go?

Pharmacy.

The one that offers it in the next town. One or two other people also wanted one

Damn, this wasn't in my holiday plans...

We did a recce yesterday and they warned us there was lots of people. So we got there super early (but not early enough!)

Just fyi for anyone who is planning a trip to France, you can order LFTs in the UK to take out with you which saves all the hassle of finding a test site/ queueing in France. We used a company called C19, paid £29 each for a test kit that arrived the next day, did the tests in our apartment this morning and certificates have been emailed to us already.

Yeah we would have done that but we booked super last minute. It seemed good.