Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me Simon Gorda,

coming to you from a very, very fast Catamaran, somewhere off the coast of Sorrento in the Bay

of Naples. And I'm heading off actually to the island of Capri today but I'm not talking about that I am talking about

ferry links basically that links that did exist once and that perhaps may exist again let me explain

if I may in the olden days and I'm going back half a century now there were links

right across the UK all kinds of ports going to all kinds of locations abroad even in the

21st century there was a fair old choice ferries, for instance, from Newcastle to Norway.

But many of them have gone and even the heavily subsidised Rosythe to Zaybrugger ferry is no longer with us.

But the fact that thousands of families heading for France have endured huge delays last weekend,

I thought it would be fun to look at, well, what very links might be coming back.

And actually, there's an announcement today from Stenna Line, which says that there is an extraordinary surge in people taking their cars abroad,

whether that's to the Netherlands, where they sail Harwich to Hook of Holland, or across the Irish Sea to the Republic.

And they say that is entirely because of the high price of car rental when abroad.

I guess there might also be the preference over flying.

And the thing about routes which are not starting from Dover is that while in general Dover is a really

efficient machine a kind of conveyor belt for getting thousands of vehicles and

people and buses and trucks and cars across the channel to mostly Calais but also

a bit of Dunkirk.

If you use other ports, it tends to be more relaxed.

So New Haven Diem, for example, which I've done earlier this year,

oh, what a glorious crossing.

It's an old ferry, but that's fine.

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