JOOO…(Jonny off on one)

We’ve noticed a change in our hotel stops in the EU this trip. We’ve not had any hotel with those little disposable bottles with shampoo etc in, every hotel has had wall mounted dispensers, which has been great, especially as trying to get the top off those little bottles in the shower sometimes with wet hands is quite tricky for us pensioners.

Another thing that has also changed, and not for the best, is the disappearing bog brush.  Why do hotels no longer put them in the loos? Our last hotel even had a sign asking you to go to reception if you wanted one! – the walk of shame to the reception desk followed by the “Could I borrow a bog brush please as I had some rather spicy chillies last night” surely puts most people off?

And the latest thing was the hotel putting a note on the wall saying the towels were anti theft.  How? I was almost tempted to take one to see what happened!

Anyway, our route took us through Dunkirk which looks much like you’d expect Dunkirk to look,  with only the odd magnificent building surviving – the town hall in particular – and finally we arrived at the ferry port.

We’d had some significant issues trying to get tickets for the Dunkirk to Dover crossing and it started with Irish Ferries. We had planned to cross back into England via Calais and I’d tried to book with Irish ferries. 

Every single crossing showed on line as full, day or night any day of the week. Select Bicycle, the date, passengers, all full.  I head for the online chat, which was apparently experiencing unusually high call volumes..

Why do they not just say we don’t want to employ staff as they cost money so we don’t really care about you having to hang on here as most customers won’t and it’s cheaper to piss you off rather than staff the call centres properly…..grrrrr……..Anyway, I eventually got through to the Danish office as the UK office was even busier than unusually high busy, and the lady then had to contact the UK for me to find out they didn’t take bicycles, but happily let you select one when trying to book.  Why don’t you take bicycles I asked. Because we class them as foot passengers and we don’t have the facilities to deal with foot passengers. But your web site says that cyclist have to board along with cars on your other ferries so how are we classed as foot passengers? We cycle onto the ferry with the cars….. You can’t do that as you are a foot passengers and we don’t have the facilities…!! Blah blah blah. 

How about the Chunnel? Sorry we need 10 days notice  to take a tandem….. Why? God knows.  So what about DFDS.  2 pax, 1 bike, £121! P&O were £27, but we won’t sail with them after they sacked all their staff, sorry cheaper staff – not the management obviously, and replaced them with cheaper labour, oh and closed the canteens and replaced them with vending machines and repeatedly failed safety tests for their ships, though that probably introduces a bit of excitement when you board – “Do you think we’ll sink en route?”.

So back on to DFDS chat line, which admittedly was quicker to answer than Irish Ferries. I asked “Why, when you tout your green credentials on your web site, are Tandems £121, Cars £80 and motorbikes £40?  That flummoxed them. 

Its because Tandems are longer than normal bikes which are £21. They’re not 6 times as long are they!  You’d be best to book two single bikes then they said.

But it’s still more expensive than a motorbike but shorter, how is that possible?  The poor chat line then fell into the corporate BS of length of bike etc, instead of just saying we didn’t program it correctly and should have had another option for tandems, which just irritates me! Just be honest DFDS

As we’d not been able to buy a ticket for the tandem, we finally purchased the two single bike tickets, which obviously then confused the hell out of everyone at check in. “But you have two single bike tickets, why didn’t you just buy one?” “Cos your flippin system won’t let you!” “Oh but you only need one bike ticket for a tandem and can just book a tandem at the ticket desk here” Thanks that’s helpful, next time we’ll remember to cycle down to Dunkirk, book a ticket, then cycle back to NL for our holiday, or maybe you could just program your web page properly…

Still, on the brightside we got boarded first – which was a first – we were walked on to the car deck before anyone else and then first up to the Premium Lounge, first with the free bubbly and first ploughing our way through the free food ensuring DFDS made a loss on the extra we paid for a premium upgrade.  Really nice, but I’m not sure two glasses of bubbly and a full stomach before we head out of Dover and up the white cliffs was the wisest plan…