TerryDorset

That's good to hear because we will be on her tomorrow night. To be fair, it's usually a pretty comfortable ride on her, with the exception of the de-luxe cabins which, being at the front, feel the worst of any appreciable swell. A strange place to put them.

Presumably this is affecting the Cap Finistere's Sunday crossings too

Interesting post, thanks Auchmill. We always use the 2 nighter as well, we're booked twice next year, January and June. We don't need a pet friendly cabin but Mrs Dorset does like her comfort so we go for a deluxe. The only drawback with them is, being at the front they do tend to catch the worst of the pitching when it's a bit choppy. We tend to go for a nightcap in Planets bar before turning in for the first night, breakfast in the cabin just before the stop at Roscoff. Then either a main meal lunch in the restaurant (plenty of time for elderly digestive systems to do their thing) or lunch on deck 10 as we go round Ushant. Time for SWMBO to get her nails done during the afternoon. Not forgetting the chance to buy the over-strength Gordons gin in the shop. Tuesday morning is either an early continental breakfast in the cabin, or, if we're up and about, the full monty in the restaurant. We aim for somewhere around Zaragoza for the first night, but NOT the dreadful municipal campsite there, known affectionately as Beirut! A second night at Altomira and then a short run down to Benicassim. I'm getting itchy feet already.

...and the next thing they'll have to demonstrate about will be the introduction of PAYE in January...

Diesel situation should ease with the increase in fuel duty being suspended. Panic buying yesterday at Challans had queues from HyperU spilling into the roads. Glad I still have half a tank and a week to find more.

At last our travel plans coincide with Honfleur's schedule. We're booked on her, but not until November next year. At least that gives enough time for the teething troubles to be sorted out!

Great vid Tony

Has anyone else received a survey from BF about their last 2years travel? Amongst all the seemingly pointless questions it asks how you would feel about Club Voyage changing or merging with another loyalty scheme like Tesco Clubcard, Nectar etc. God forbid☹️

That isn't my experience of being diverted on BF. The one time it happened to me they paid me a mileage allowance for the extra driving distance. Can't remember if there was any fare adjustment too. In the case of Brest to Bilbao that would be substantial.

Whilst I'm not overly impressed with the beta site, no particular reason, probably just because I'm a stick in the mud old f*rt, I am very impressed with the can-do attitude of Millard and his team, which probably comes down from BF management. When I was a software developer the pressure from above to go live with a system that hadn't been properly tested or approved by users was enormous. They seemed to think they knew better than the developers. That's probably why in-house IT in the civil service got such a bad reputation. So well done guys. ☺️

All things being equal we should be on that return sailing, having put the mobil-home to bed for the winter and topped up with wine for Christmas

It depends what you want. It'll be dark for sleeping and quiet, apart possibly for the lapping of water as it's probably below the water line. We had a cabin on deck 1 once and it was perfectly satisfactory for what we wanted at the time.

Bit of a drift off topic here I think. Dragging it back, wasn't there discussion about the new deposits a little time back. I seem to remember airing a theory that it was to help compensate for not being able to charge a surcharge for credit card payments?

Yes, you just book on board, usually in the shop.

Hope it's built to last, we'll be using it on Sunday!