Ferries in France and England

We spent the rest of our day in Arras doing touristy things. We explored the underground caves which were quarried under Arras in the 10th century and have been put to many uses since then. These include storage for the shops in the square above and shelter for civilians during two World Wars.


On Sunday 12th September we took a ferry from Calais to Dover. This was magnificent. To be honest, I thought it was going to be something like the New York harbour ferries that we had been on. To our surprise and delight it was much more like a mini-ocean liner. We were on the P&O 'Pride of Canterbury', which has 8 decks, a multitude of restaurants and cafes, games rooms, outdoor areas and more. Ellie and I went to a very plush restaurant where we sat next to a floor-to-ceiling window and dined on fabulous food. We spent almost the entire trip of 90 minutes in the restaurant, before ducking upstairs to take a few photos just before we landed in Dover.

There were a few buses and trains before we arrived at the delightful home of my cousins and friends, Janice and John in Privett, Hampshire. On Monday, the day before our flight, Ellie and I wandered about the fields of Privett, which meant that the next day I spent nearly an hour cleaning mud from our shoes so that we would pass Australian quarantine inspection. On Monday evening Janice and John took us to Portsmouth, for more boats and ferries.


John has a boat which he sails around the Solent and we visited it while he loaded up supplies for a trip. It was brilliant - amazingly compact and very carefully designed to maximise space. It had 4 berths, a miniscule kitchen and lots of creative ways to store things.

We then took the Portsmouth ferry across the harbour to a beaut pub with brilliant seafood. After a walking tour of old Portsmouth, guided by John, we sat down to a terrific meal, again seated next to huge windows. We watched massive cross-channel ferries, even bigger than our Calais-Dover one, on their way to Brittany and elsewhere. It was a real sight. We then took the little Portsmouth harbour ferry back to the other side, and toddled back to Privett.

On Tuesday 12th September we boarded an Etihad flight bound for Brisbane, which marked the halfway point of our round-the-world travels.