Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me Simon Calder.

It's Friday the 10th of February and I do like to be beside the seaside, which is exactly where I am now.

At the port of Dover where I'm glad to say I'm just looking across from the western docks to the eastern docks,

the main ferry area for cars and buses and trucks, and everything seems to be moving fairly

swiftly or smoothly. There's a P and O ferry just waiting to depart for Calais.

There's another one coming in. I think that's DFDS.

Might be from Calais, might be from Dunkirk.

And all is looking very bright.

There's blue skies over the White Cliffs of Dover today.

However, yesterday it wasn't looking so good. What we actually got to see was the French

strikes which are about Emmanuel Macron's plan to raise the pension aid in France by two years

to a scandalous. 64. Cricy, imagine any of us being that old. Anyway, that closed the port from

basically about 7 in the morning till 5 in the evening. It didn't affect Dunkirk, but I'm afraid

if you are a ferry user, well, particularly if you're heading off maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow,

going to the French Alps, going to Disneyland, Paris, going who knows where, you could find that

unfortunately you are encountering some problems when you come back.

Let me explain what's going on.

The PCS union, which as you will know,

is engaged in a wide variety of disputes with the government.

Basically, they say we've been offered about 2%

and that's simply not good enough.

We will therefore go on strike until we get some more.

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