monique.hubrechtsgm Posted March 5, 2019 Share Posted March 5, 2019 Huge delays to enter UK by ferry and Tunnel.Suggest that you take a good stock of potatoes from Belgium for your fish and chips. Entering Calais from uk is already by computer in view off leave soft or hard. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Derek Uzzell Posted March 6, 2019 Share Posted March 6, 2019 More details here https://www.thelocal.fr/20190305/french-customs-brexit-causes-major-disruption-at-calais At Calais there was also a recent attempt by a large number of migrants to get on board a DFDS ferry https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/03/03/migrants-storm-uk-bound-ferry-port-calais/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
monique.hubrechtsgm Posted March 6, 2019 Author Share Posted March 6, 2019 It was the customs at Calais who not can handle trucks into the uk. And went on strike.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bulletguy Posted March 6, 2019 Share Posted March 6, 2019 monique.hubrechts@gm - 2019-03-06 3:54 PM It was the customs at Calais who not can handle trucks into the uk. And went on strike.. French aren't daft. The customs staff are checking documents of every truck, what we here call "work to rule" to highlight how congested the port roads will become as apparently like us, they are undermanned. If Brexit goes ahead then that will be on this side and as our border staff have been drastically cut....there simply isn't enough qualified staff to process documents of every single truck and it takes up to 18 months to fully train a border officer. A television news reporter spoke to Steve Applebee in charge of customs at Dover port. Listen to what he says on this clip as he shows the amount of documents which have to be processed for just one truck. He has just 35 staff. In order to cope he'd need ten times that amount of staff. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
monique.hubrechtsgm Posted March 7, 2019 Author Share Posted March 7, 2019 Yes corect Bullet guy. Fom belgium closed for trucks at present. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
monique.hubrechtsgm Posted March 7, 2019 Author Share Posted March 7, 2019 Dunkirk, Dover, Calais only via kortrijk. Or dutch ports. At the moment two days delay congestion of the short routes. At 80 euro per hour cost. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
goldi Posted March 9, 2019 Share Posted March 9, 2019 Good afternoon, The airports all over France are also working to rule for more money . Also Austria is facing disruption at its airports as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StuartO Posted March 10, 2019 Share Posted March 10, 2019 Arrived Calais from Dover this afternoon and delayed departure only partly due to high winds. As we drove off the ferry all went smoothly for a while then we joined a queue at French Customs. A group of five officers had closed all the traffic lanes except one for lorries, so we all had to filter in, then one of them was stopping each lorry to check the papers, holding everyone up as he did it. Obviously a deliberately obstructive initiative. This was obviously the “other reasons” cited by the Ferry Captain for the 90 minutes delay his schedule had accumulated. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matrix Meanderer Posted March 10, 2019 Share Posted March 10, 2019 We came back through the tunnel last night. Bloody mindedness from French Customs officials caused us a two hour delay. Fortunately we were well informed by using the Eurotunnel "latest travel updates" page, essential to read it regularly: https://www.eurotunnel.com/uk/traveller-info/latest/ A two hour delay as I write (Sunday night). We arrived just over two hours before our passage and slowly got to the check in after one hour. Plenty of customers being diverted to a holding area and definitely missing their timed departure. Ten check in lanes all rammed full and admitting about three vehicles every five minutes. Only three French customs gates open (always handy to have a large vehicle when jockeying for position :-D ) Most white van man vehicles were being redirected to the inspection area for "further checks" The drivers were very unhappy about this. The trucker queue stretched as far as we could see down the approach roads and onto the motorway. There were blue lights everywhere, presumably keeping the migrants off the trucks. We only saw four migrants during the daytime. Must have been my sunny smile (through clenched teeth) which got us past the customs check and just had the gas bottle check before squeezing onto the last carriage on our allocated departure. Having celebrated our good fortune we were then met with 15 or more miles of roadworks on the M20, doh! Still it was better than waiting another 30/60 minutes for a tunnel crossing. The Eurotunnel staff were very apologetic about the French customs behaviour and were handing out free bottled water. They have a complaints procedure if you want a moan. So be warned and check the Eurotunnel travel updates regularly. 8o| Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bulletguy Posted March 10, 2019 Share Posted March 10, 2019 Matrix Meanderer - 2019-03-10 8:03 PM We came back through the tunnel last night. Bloody mindedness from French Customs officials caused us a two hour delay. Take a look at that C4 news link i posted up thread. Listen to what Steve Applebee says and look at the file of documents he shows you which is for one truck. IF we become "third country", every single truck is going to have to go through that so the French 'work to rule' is nothing by comparison to what UK appears determined to foist upon itself. Having celebrated our good fortune we were then met with 15 or more miles of roadworks on the M20, doh! Accompanied by the incessant "bongs" from the gps warning of crazy average speed cams. Welcome back to cash collecting UK. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
myshell Posted March 11, 2019 Share Posted March 11, 2019 Do not stock up on Belgian potatoes prior to returning to the UK , many years ago I was searched by customs on my return to Dover and the potatoes we still had in the van where confiscated and destroyed. Phil Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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