How to take your bike on cross-channel ferries || Brittany Ferries between France and the UK

When you want to go cycling in France, there’s no point in taking a car at all. Taking just your bike on a cross-channel ferry is easy, cheaper than with a car, and you usually get to hop on and off first. Winning.

Need to get to the ferry by car? I use JustPark (lots of similar sites about) to book someone’s driveway near the ferry port. This isn’t sponsored, it’s just a great site for it.

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sliping to the [Music] [Music] [Music] front so one of the first things to do when you are preparing a bike to take it onto a ferry is to make sure that you’ve got a bag that’s easily accessible that you can take up onto the upper decks with you and leave everything else on your bike because you don’t want to be going onto the ferry into the bike storage area and then faffing with like loads of different things opening all your bags all of that kind of stuff so try and have that prepared before you get on then you just cycle as you were just drive a car really follow all the same signs you’ll often be separately directed by um someone else like a stupid I don’t know uh so you watch out for people waving at you and flagging you down because sometimes they send you to a different special car uh special bike lane it’s Sunrise so it’s not very good image but um yeah you just queue up with the rest of the cars really sometimes they Usher you to the front of the queue I think sometimes they don’t want cyclists stuck in monk cars it’s a bit dangerous but other than that just in the queue it’s bit like cycling through a drive-thru so once you’ve done your passports they’ll give you a little ticket for your bike and then tell you which lane to go to so you normally go to a bike only lane so they can load you on first or last you know depending on how the fair is set up so then if you’re leaving the shenen area like we are now then we went through a second we went through passport control before we just went through Qui checkin now we’re going to cycle I guess onto the F you can’t cycle onto the F itself you have to get off and then push your bike into the ferry it’s changed from the good old days it’s too dangerous allegedly [Music] yeah so St back there just told us to go to Lane 17 which is set fing car lanes that happens all the [Music] time Hill get up into the boat feel that on my legs [Music] [Music] so we just left our bikes in the bike specific Bike Locker we came on first it also means that we usually first off like now we just go up to the bar [Music] [Music] sliping to the front [Music] off the ferry and to the UK border that was it that’s how you put a bike on a fery so this video was going from France to the UK but it’s just the same going from the UK to France Just In Reverse there are a few other things though that I’d like to mention that are quite important so I didn’t show it in this video because it didn’t happen this instance but I have also been stopped by Customs twice going from the UK to France the first time in Plymouth you just cyle through the Customs area and they’ll flag you down if they want to speak to you so in Plymouth they just asked us questions like are you carrying weapons things like that um and then the second time in Portsmouth got pulled over and they just asked us to select a random bike bag and put it through the X-ray machine and you have to walk through the xray machine as well so you might get pulled aside by Customs but don’t worry about that it’s just the same as anything um but they’ll wave you down if they want you to stop and they’ll do the same with cars another thing to remember is that check in time is about 45 minutes it’s usually 45 minutes before the ferry departs and you don’t want to arrive so the final checking time is the time where you H everyone has to be checked in by and it will say on your ticket how far that is before the fair leaves um so our fa was 20 uh was4 8 and the final check in time was half 7 so 45 minutes before don’t get there really early because as a cyclist there’s no shelter for you there’s no where to go apart from standing one of those keys cars are fine they can just sit in their cars but cyclists are just stood there in the open so when you arrive and check in you’re then going to be ushered down a lane and then you’re just going to be stood there waiting for boarding so what you want to do is arrive really close to check-in time don’t like stress yourself out and arrive with one minute to spare although it’s not going to matter they’ll still check you in but obviously don’t be late but going out there we arrived 15 minutes before final check-in queued for 15 minutes and literally checked in on the dot which was perfect we cycled down our lane they started boarding and we boarded first because we’re cyclists on the way back we arrived about 20 minutes early huge about 10 15 minutes and then cycled down our lane um and then check and then check in had already closed so they started boarding within 5 minutes of us getting to the you know the final bit where you cycle onto the ferry this is ideal because you don’t you just don’t want to be stood outside like if it’s a lovely day then fine like it doesn’t matter but don’t arrive don’t check in an hour before final check and closes cuz you’re then going to be stood Exposed on the tarmac for an hour with very little to do there are toilets around usually so you can probably walk to a toilet if you need to but in general you just don’t really want to be stood around waiting for something so try and aim to get there pretty close to your final check-in time maybe 15 20 minutes beforehand allow yourself time to queue to check in and then to cycle to the front it doesn’t take very long at all bicycles are almost always loaded first so that’s really great you don’t have to wait you know a long time after boarding starts you’re boarded first because it would be too difficult to board cars and then try and get cyclists in between cars so cyclists always go on first pretty much and you’ll be directed by the people on the ship who work on the car deex they’ll show you you just wheel your bike you cycle up to the boat wheel your bike on and they’ll show you exactly where to go don’t tie your bike up they will do that for you because all the bikes will be loaded in the same place and then the staff there will will tie your bikes really secure don’t worry about it but when I said outside the hotel that you don’t want to be fuing around with bags you really don’t because sometimes there can be a ton of cyclists and you don’t want to be they all like trying to load their bikes and if you’re there getting loads of stuff out of your paneers it’s just going to slow everything down and be quite stressful for you so make sure you have a bag really easy to go you can just open a PA or something take it out and be gone the C deck is very safe like I mean don’t quote me but I leave all my stuff down there that isn’t a true valuable so I have all my valuables in my handlebar bag and I just take that straight off my bike and take it with me that’s cameras wallets passports phones that kind of thing take that all with you everything else your clothes blah blah unless you’re doing an overnight FY in which case pack some clothes for overnight and your toiletries in that like tog go bag leave everything else down there on the car deck you cannot access it just as you can’t access a car you can’t access your bike during the sailing so don’t forget anything that you might need while you’re on the boat um but equally don’t feel like you need to take all of your bags off your bike and take them up stairs to the upper decks because that’s just unnecessary mainly speaking though taking a bike on a fairy is brilliant it’s so much fun you get to get on first you almost always get to get off first and it’s just great it makes life so exciting and it just adds that little bit of Adventure to things so yeah I highly recommend it it’s cheaper to cycle on a ferry than it is to take a car by quite a lot of money you don’t have to spend specify if you have a trailer with you at least on Britany fars you don’t and when you go through the booking process it will be under like the vehicle section whether you’re taking a bike with you or not it’s pretty straightforward and I’m not saying that this is how all bikes and all fairies work but this is how the cross Channel fairies tend to work I hope this is useful and that you go adventuring by fairy soon because it is genuinely really really fun thanks for watching and I will see you in the next one oh