Isle of Wight Ferries - Advice please
Isle of Wight Ferries - Advice please
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Discussion

Gerald-TVR

Original Poster:

4,896 posts

213 months

Sunday 11th April 2010
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Going to in the IoW in August on a family holiday (in the dailey driver not Gerald TVR S2), whats the best and/or most reasonable ferry crossing.

Help and advice please guys

Norman

knight

5,227 posts

295 months

Sunday 11th April 2010
quotequote all
Used Wightlink from Portsmouth last year and will use them again this year mainly because Portsmouth is closer than Southhampton.

H_Kan

4,942 posts

215 months

Sunday 11th April 2010
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About 18months ago we used Red Funnel from Southampton, took around 1hr iirc.

Boat was clean enough and they weren't badly priced.

Also, both going and coming back, we arrived early to the port and they put us onto the next ferry as there was space despite us having booked specific crossings as they were cheaper.

On the way there, to be on the safe side we'd left quite early and ended up arriving in Southampton about 1.5 hours early. Now at 8am on a Saturday morning there isn't much to do there, so them getting us on an earlier boat was a real bonus.

Dogwatch

6,330 posts

238 months

Sunday 11th April 2010
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If you are thinking of a weekend crossing I'd get the booking in pdq as Saturday especially has always been bad.

Parents always preferred the Lymington-Yarmouth route which has recently got new ferries. They are a bit bigger than their predecessors which I think were Pompey route cast-offs.
Also avoids Pompey traffic queues.

Huntsman

8,828 posts

266 months

Sunday 11th April 2010
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From a boat trip persepctive, Southampton or Lymington are nicest. Southampton easy to get too, M40, A34, M3, straight down The Avenue.

IF you get the Southampton ferry, you'll go past our house, give us a wave.

DanGPR

991 posts

187 months

Sunday 11th April 2010
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I found Portsmouth to IOW pretty extortionate last year, £50 return.

You can go to France for half of that! I'm not sure how the others compare though.

Agrilla

834 posts

199 months

Sunday 11th April 2010
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£50 would be great - I want to go first week of August and saw online that for the car, 2 adults and 2 kids it was £122


DanGPR

991 posts

187 months

Sunday 11th April 2010
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That was around August last year, without pre-booking, just bowled up around 12 o clock. 2 adults, 1 car.

OnTheOverrun

3,965 posts

193 months

Sunday 11th April 2010
quotequote all
I use all three routes on a pretty much daily basis depending on where I'm going.

The lymington - Yarmouth route is best for cheap special offers. Checkout the Wightlink website for 'Dream Ticket' £10-15 crossings at odd times.

Personally I try to avoid the Redfunnel Soton-East Cowes route, especially in the summer as it's the grockles route and usually full of screaming kids and dented people carriers. If you're a nictone junkie bear in mind you can't smoke at all on the redfunnel ones now, not even outside, but you still can on the Wightlink routes. On the wightlink routes on most decks you an stay in the car if you want, not on redfunnel.

Handy hint - they pack the cars in tight when it's grockle season and excited kids getting on a ferry for the first time tend not to think before swinging open Zafira doors, so always stay in your car with the windows down until all the cars round you are parked and emptied before you leave your car.

Oh and please read the bit of the ticket that tells you to disable your car alarm - there's nothing worse than being on a ferry full of wailing car alarms that idiots have left on! ranting

PS - welcome to the island! smile

Gerald-TVR

Original Poster:

4,896 posts

213 months

Monday 12th April 2010
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Thanks every one most helpful