My worst travel experience EVER!!!! what's yours?

[rubber_jonnie]

Well, yesterday came along and it was time to leave our retreat in France and head home. It's normally a long journey, 12 hours or so, consisting of a 3 1/2 hour drive in France, about 6 hours faffing around with a ferry and a 2 1/2 hour drive in England.

It's a long journey, but well worth it, though we do often suffer delays on the English side on the way home due to the M25 being a horrible motorway.

However generally speaking it averages out around 12 hours.

This time though, the forces of evil were truly against us, resulting in a huge 28+ hour journey that started at 11:30 on Sunday 26th October and ended today, Monday 27th October at about 16:00.

Everything started just fine and our 3 1/2 hour journey to the ferry terminal went great and we boarded after a relatively short wait. The ferry left Dieppe a little early if anything at 16:00 (CET so 1 hour ahead). Journey time was the usual 4 hours, arriving pretty much bang on 19:00 GMT in Newhaven.

That's when things began to unravel. We were asked to leave our cabins and so all found a spot to sit, but the call for us to join our cars never came. After some time we were told the bow door lock mechanism was not working and they couldn't open the door to let us off. Nor could we go out and reverse in as Newhaven doesn't have a suitable dock for that kind of operation.

Portsmouth does apparently, so that's where they decided to send us. That was after some time listening to machinery being tortured by engineers with big hammers...

By this time we were back in our cabin and trying to get some much needed sleep. Eventually we pulled out and we thought "Ahh, we're off to Portsmouth. Except we weren't. About half an hour out, we get a message - "Portsmouth won't agree to take us, so we're going back to Dieppe. From there please make your way to Calais and present your boarding details and you will be put on another ferry to Dover there." Dieppe to Calais is about a 2 1/2 hour drive.

Admittedly Calais to Dover is just 90 minutes, but we still have another 2 1/2 hours from Dover to home.

Then knowing that if we want to go home we need to get to Calais, we get down to the car deck for yet another super exercise in waiting around for ages!!! The reason? Lorries were being reversed off out deck onto the jetty. In the dark...

Once they were off, cars were being three point turned to drive off normally. That killed another couple of hours. We'd been told 'Just go to Calais, it will all be sorted for you".

Thankfully, it was, but it didn't really make up for the lack of information (We were really kept in the dark to an amazing degree)

So by the time we got home, we'd done 8.5 hours driving. The remaining 20 hours was either spent sailing from Dieppe -> Newhaven -> Dieppe, waiting on the ferry whilst they attempted various fixes that didn't work, sitting in our cars waiting to disembark, getting through passport control leaving Dieppe for Calais, waiting for our tickets at Calais, going through 2 lots of passport control after that at Calais (Luckily that meant no passport control at Dover) and then waiting 2 hours for the ferry to Dover to arrive. Ho Hum...

It's been frankly awful and it totally wasted a day of annual leave for me...

I can say we survived it though :)

[exxos]

Modern technology failing us all again then :roll:


:dizzy:

[Acsi]

Had a great time on the trip but the worst was flying between Heathrow and Edinburgh.
Family trip with the 5 of us having just flown in from 5 days in LA and a changeover to BA for the flight to Edinburgh which got delayed after delayed, after about 6 hours and 2 boarding calls which got cancelled we finally got on the flight at around 8pm.
During the flight we get a message about there being no refreshments as they didn't stock the plane... not a major as it's only a short flight.
Get to Edinburgh and waiting for our 5 suitcases... and waiting... we managed to get 3 of them. Mine and my daughters were missing.
No BA staff or anyone else for that matter available and a bunch of other people in the same boat.
Next day I got a sim for my phone and rang BA. That's like banging your head against a wall but less productive. Spent ages trying to get them to understand it was two bags not one.
So after spending 5 days in Edinburgh and having to figure out the NHS doctor area thing so I could get replacement medication (The doctor, staff and pharmacy were great BTW once we worked it out) we then spent around 2 weeks in Europe all the time asking BA for updates and advising on where to send the bags. Just before arriving in London for the last week of our trip BA advised that my daughters bag had been found and sent to our hotel. Still nothing on mine.
Get to the hotel in London and its my bag not my daughters...
We advised BA to send the last missing bag to our home in NZ given the timeframe.
Back in NZ and two months later we get a call from the courier saying they have a suitcase to drop off... Yay
So we got the suitcase but it had unfortunately been a victim of the Auckland flood two weeks earlier as it had a tide mark halfway up and everything inside was pretty much mold ridden and stank to high heaven.

Otherwise a great holiday

[stephen_usher]

Goodness! What a journey!

[HigashiJun]

@rubber_jonnie

:shock:

I guess I would have lost it if it had happened to me...

[rubber_jonnie]

Modern technology failing us all again then :roll:


:dizzy:

Apparently the locking mechanism was stuck. At least it means that the door couldn't open accidentally...

[rubber_jonnie]

@rubber_jonnie

:shock:

I guess I would have lost it if it had happened to me...

I'm shocked that I didn't, but tempers were definitely fraying amongst the passengers.

[rubber_jonnie]

Had a great time on the trip but the worst was flying between Heathrow and Edinburgh.
Family trip with the 5 of us having just flown in from 5 days in LA and a changeover to BA for the flight to Edinburgh which got delayed after delayed, after about 6 hours and 2 boarding calls which got cancelled we finally got on the flight at around 8pm.
During the flight we get a message about there being no refreshments as they didn't stock the plane... not a major as it's only a short flight.
Get to Edinburgh and waiting for our 5 suitcases... and waiting... we managed to get 3 of them. Mine and my daughters were missing.
No BA staff or anyone else for that matter available and a bunch of other people in the same boat.
Next day I got a sim for my phone and rang BA. That's like banging your head against a wall but less productive. Spent ages trying to get them to understand it was two bags not one.
So after spending 5 days in Edinburgh and having to figure out the NHS doctor area thing so I could get replacement medication (The doctor, staff and pharmacy were great BTW once we worked it out) we then spent around 2 weeks in Europe all the time asking BA for updates and advising on where to send the bags. Just before arriving in London for the last week of our trip BA advised that my daughters bag had been found and sent to our hotel. Still nothing on mine.
Get to the hotel in London and its my bag not my daughters...
We advised BA to send the last missing bag to our home in NZ given the timeframe.
Back in NZ and two months later we get a call from the courier saying they have a suitcase to drop off... Yay
So we got the suitcase but it had unfortunately been a victim of the Auckland flood two weeks earlier as it had a tide mark halfway up and everything inside was pretty much mold ridden and stank to high heaven.

Otherwise a great holiday

Bloody nightmare when your luggage disappears...

I'd be in the same boat having to replace medication, can't imagine it'd be much fun and it totally messes your plans up trying to replace stuff instead of doing what you'd intended.

[alexh]

It may be of little consolation but you could claim for compensation. You would be entitled to 50% the face price of the ticket. Payable within one month.

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/maritime-pa ... ur-journey

[rubber_jonnie]

It may be of little consolation but you could claim for compensation. You would be entitled to 50% the face price of the ticket. Payable within one month.

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/maritime-pa ... ur-journey

Yeah, we will be putting in for compensation, more on that when it transpires.

Frustratingly I had a day of leave yesterday to chill out, unfortunately it was a complete bust and i've been so exhausted today I had to tell work I can't work today. Still wasted now but have to go into the office tomorrow, which is another 2 1/2 hours travel...