David Williams

BF have been referring to Portsmouth - Cherbourg as High Speed Sailings not NEX when discussing unpublished timetables.

I believe that the Channel Islands are duty free (like the Canaries), therefore up to now this was a benefit compared to going from France. Come next year it will go as both Condor and BF can sell Duty Free. Re Promoting Condor to the main boards, when they recognise Club Voyage and give us the 30% discount I will be in favour of it !

However, they will lose the advantage of duty free - the BF Ships will have that as well

It is showing as 11:15 UTC, ie 12:15 UK time,

So she has now done a trial in Cherbourg and Portsmouth, I really don't know what you may be suggesting ! Has NEX done trials in the Channel Islands ?

I suspect that Club Voyage (the BF discount scheme) is being confused with the Caravan Club (or something similar). If booking through a third party full passenger info is not always passed through to BF - however I believe that BF will add contact details if asked, ps - I did ring BF recently and one of the questions on the telephone routing was whether you are a CV member - don't know if that jumps the queue !

BF have stopped providing sailing updates which is a shame, they used to update the sailing update pages after they had texted everyone involved. Now they don't. - the CF changes would have been on it !

Re Sailing updates, I note that CF has been having major delays and using Plymouth instead of Portsmouth to speed things up. Re Ed's hijacking of the thread, the cheapest way for a foot passenger to get to the UK from France is BlaBla Buses, fares are dirt cheap

I ) Ask Portsmouth port on Twitter what options there are. 2) Find someone with a folding bike to lend you 3) Go at a time when the trains are running.

Thanks, that is useful - I had missed the bit about the ones next to the lifeboats. Have you been in the ones at the back (7902 - 7916), they seem to have decent windows - not sure whether they are a different grade ?

Easy to track with any tracker as there are so few passenger ships moving in the ocean at present, she appears to be the only passenger vessel on the route to the Red Sea. Sad really. I also got thinking about how the other 2 ships will bunker on their delivery voyages and saw that the main bunkering ports can now cope or are planning to cope with ship to ship LNG transfer which is impressive https://sea-lng.org/why-lng/bunkering/

The BF booking system seems to allocate cabins in a fixed sequence. Because I book early, I always get the same ranges of cabins. I go for an outside 4 berth and always get deck 6 for Normandie and Deck 9 for MSM. I usually ask to change to deck 7 on the Normandie as car alarms are an issue on Deck 6. I don't normally change the MSM ones, however am getting complaints on the stairs when walking straight up from 5-9 and we are encouraged to leave the lifts to those that need it ! The question is are the MSM Deck 7 outside cabins standard 4 berth ones and are there any particular

Yes, each Country has signed up to one of the 3 conventions which covers the IDPs, however most then have specific exemptions to specific Countries. The English speaking Countries are generally the most flexible with UK licences as they don't require translations. Before we signed the Withdrawal agreement, there was a useful page on the government web site which listed what each of the European Countries were prepared to accept - most of them would accept the photocard license for a short period of time and some would even accept the paper one. Spain would accept both, France neither !.

They will return it if you ask !

Is anything being said about the possibility of this in France either as a French initiative or a joint European one ?