A long day (Condor Ferries)

Member Name: yorkshire-lass

Product:	Condor Ferries
Date:	13/01/09 (115 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: ship was clean and modern, staff helpful, had a day in jersey

Disadvantages: delay on return, rubbish food

We decided to visit jersey while staying at weymouth. I decided to make sure this was possible by looking up the times for weymouth to jersey on condors website. From this we saw that thursay gave us the most time in jersey. However this meant the ferry set off at 6am and didnt arrive back til midnight! This was going to be a long day.

With the time and day sorted I booked the tickets via the website. This was very easy to do. Upon arrival to the ferry terminal we parked in the car park opposite the office. However the signs in the car park were confusing and we had to ask a steward what we should do.

We then made our way into the arrivals suite (we were foot passenges) where I prented the print out which acted as our tickets. These were quickly checked and we made or way through customs. Here we had our bags searched and asked a few general questions.

After a while we were allowed to bored where we made our way to our pre allocated seats suitated on the top deck. The ferry departed on time.

During the journey we decided to have something a breakfast. The food wasnt very good and tasted rubbery. Also on board was a duty free shop where you could buy all the usually duty free goods. There was also a newsagents which would accept both pounds and euros.

After a while sat down I decided to stretch my legs and have a walk outide. This proved to be a mistake as there was so much wind blowing you couldn't walk on the deck outside.

When we arrived in jersey we disembarked easily.

On the return journey there was a long queue to check in. We later found out that the reason for this was that no flights could leave jersey airport due to fog so they were all put on the ferry instead. This made the ferry very full with nearly every seat taken.

On both journeys we stopped via gurnsey which added extra journey time. The journey back was very rough and quite a few people were seasick.

On arriving back to weymouth at midnight we were expecting to have to go through customs however there was no-one there!

The plus points of condor ferries the vessel was clean and spacious. The staff were friendly and helpful even though they had to put up with some very rude customers.

Summary: a good way to visit jersey/gurnsey if you dont like flying.