Low-cost midlife crisis

The boat was on time. It left exactly on schedule (precisely 7 minutes after we got on) and arrived on time too at 6.30pm. There was a train to Lille at 7.30 and another (the last) at 8.30. It looked like we would get the earlier one which would have been nice. We joined the other foot passengers in the holding area where we had to wait for all the cars and lorries to leave first. I have no idea why this is the case but it is. Another example of the foot passenger as third class citizen.

This particular boat, weirdly, had as many foot passengers as anyone else. There were a few lorries and one or two cars but 59 foot passengers. Well there were supposed to be 59, the problem was that only 58 could be located. We waited and waited, and nobody else showed up. It seemed to me like the most likely explanation was that someone on board had bumped into someone they knew with a car and got a lift. But the officials said that was illegal – but no one mentioned to foot passengers that it was and obviously I have no idea if anyone told drivers. And nearly all the checks in this post Brexit border happen on the side of the Channel that you’re leaving, not when you’re arriving. So, who’d actually know?

Eventually they gave up looking for the fugitive and led us down to the car deck, where the vehicles heading to the UK were already driving on. We waited a bit longer in that car deck smell of petrol and fumes. Eventually a bus arrived and all 59 58 of us piled on. They drove us round the port to the terminal building from where the buses to Calais centre run. We arrived there at precisely 19.15. The last bus left there for the town at… 19.11

So we had been held on the ferry for exactly the right amount of time to miss the last bus. The free bus, no less. Among the 58 there was a lot of tired anger. My inner Karen re-emerged and I accused the woman in charge of deliberately making us miss that bus in some kind of act of spite. She tried to placate people by saying she’d called the taxi company and they would be picking everyone up. Not for free of course. Good business for seemingly the only taxi company in Calais. I’m still angry about this 21 hours later.

We did at least get to Lille because that last train, though pretty early at 20.31, was still catchable after the ferry company stitched us up. But seriously… ouanquères.