The horrors of last Sunday night/Monday morning, when 6,000 passengers were trapped on board ferries by gales, will not stop the pre-Christmas cross-Channel stampede. As a P&O Stena spokesman put it, "People's desire to travel does overcome their fears."
The French hypermarkets are gearing up for the annual onslaught, with Calais hypermarket openings extended to include Sundays.
Cross-channel operators are offering evening trips at below £20, allowing just enough time to shop and eat, and overnight trips at under £60. Hoverspeed, which is trail blazing with home delivery of duty-paid goods, has even added washing powders to its stores' ranges.
But the recent chaos does pose questions. It was not, insists P&O, that the weather made crossing unsafe, although both SeaFrance, with smaller ferries, and Hoverspeed, with catamarans, did cancel. For P&O's superferries, which remain relatively comfortable even in gales, the problem was that the Dover Port Authorities took the almost unprecedented decision to shut down.
Two of Dover's 16 berths were unusable, and manoeuvring in port was difficult. Ferries were already at sea when the decision was finally made, and because of their size, the ferries cannot use any other south-coast or French port. The rarity of the event seems to have taken everybody by surprise.
In the circumstances, all operators are bending over backwards to ignore their own small print and offer alternatives to inconvenienced travellers, even when they are not liable. P&O is offering a free ticket to all passengers who were booked last weekend, and Eurotunnel, which was unaffected, is offering exchange tickets to passengers who missed trains, even those on non-refundable tickets.
They all say, too, that they try to help where passengers are worried about travelling in storms, even if means missing unchangeable booked crossings, and to offer creature comforts. "We have run soup kitchens for lorry drivers during French strikes," P&O pointed out. "We want happy customers who will come back."
• Eurotunnel (0345 303030 www.eurotunnel.com) and P&O Stena (0870 600 0600, www.posl.com) offer evening trips at £15 for a car and up to five people. Hoverspeed (0820 003 555) has an overnight £59 ticket, for a car and nine people. Eurotunnel's Netsaver website special, available when it has unsold capacity, is three days for £75, non-refundable (five days for £101 - £149, depending on crossing times). Other special offers abound, giving discounts, free booze or hotel deals.
