NEVER AGAIN!!! Never having travelled on the Portsmouth to Caen crossing, we needed to "pop over" last Thursday and decided to give it a try as we were only going for a long week-end. We caught the 11.15pm Thursday night , which was not full, but were only able to book a two birth cabin with bath and shower. The boat, which I expect many of you who have travelled this way will know, was called The Duc of Normandy and, I think, was last refurbished in 1989!! but, as I say, never travelling this route before, either going from Portsmouth to Cherburg on the express or using the tunnel, which we have decided is THE WAY TO GO!! - we made the best of a bad job. Needless to say Friday was a complete wash out , having both worked Thursday, travelling to and from London and back home again and then commencing our journey to Portsmouth - perhaps we are not as young as we thought! so, after pottering around for several hours Friday morning yawning our heads off, we had to give in and have "40 winks" - mine lasted three hours! Saturday was great. Sunday we had to leave the house at 2.30pm to catch the 16.30. Everything started out well. This time we were very impressed, we were travelling on The Normandy,a much more refined boat and we had a four berth cabin with amenities. Tres Jolie!! or so I thought. Suffice to say that half way across the weather deteriorated and I was poorly, to put it politely. Finally, 930pm, we were due to dock but no, they could not secure the boat to the quay, so it was another 20 minutes before we finally disembarked and we arrived home at 12.20am and so I say again, NEVER AGAIN. PS I did read the ships magazine on the outward journey which mentioned a new bigger boat coming into commission for 2002 called The St Mount St Michel, so I think we can safely assume that this why BF have put their prices up. Bon voyage!! Rosemary
