I am planning a trip to the Pyrenees in September and the plan is to take ferry on foot and meet a mate on the other side (he lives in france) for the drive down. All good so far.

I'm just a little nervous about losing sight of the bike during the trip, in case it gets nicked (were on a boat so unlikely) or damaged in some way.

Anyone done something similar? What should I expect from bike park facilities?

Yes ,we took ours to France years ago We had to lock them up on the car deck .Take a couple of bungee straps to secure it otherwise a rough sea journey will have it thrown all over the place

Thanks Edric good advice!

Yes.

Outrageously, there were no bike facilities whatsoever.

Three minutes after departing Sandbanks we arrived at Studland though so all was okay.

done it on the Rosythe / Zebrugge ferry. No problems at all

Supercat to Dublin. We were on and off first :o)

Done it on Dun Laoghaire to Holyhead a couple of times never had a problem. Cycle on, lock bike (probably unnecessary but made me feel more comfortable) enjoy ferry ride, unlock bike, cycle off. Grand!

yes, but not very much space. Stupid 12 person ferry. no bike locking facilities what so ever 🙁 (It did only last roughly a minute though, Salcombe and East Portlemouth are not very far from each other) 😀

i've done rosyth -zeebrugge ,santander- plymouth ,dover- calais,quite a lot and i always take a long cable lock with me , that a few bungees and it is all good but remove any thing that is pocketable

yes… done it about 7 years ago from Portsmouth to Le Harve.

took bike on. locked it and the trailer. went up on deck. got quite stoned and then a bit drunk. arrived in Le Harve late at night and a little bit scared… not the nicest town at night whilst you're high and drunk. big climb up to the campsite, too….

If it helps, we came back from the isle of man once in a very rough storm.
We were in the car but I gather there had been some sort of cycle festival on the island at the same time and there were lots of cyclist on the ferry back.

Anyway,the ferry was all over the place. The toilets were jam packed full of people throwing up, so much so that when I took my son in for him to be sick, the only free receptical was a sink so he threw up into that and I had to push the bits down the plug hole with my finger. Nice.

When we docked at liverpool, we all went down to the car deck and one of the cars had been merrily rolling around and had smashed into a couple of other cars and a big pile of bikes tied to the bulkhead, it had fecked them over good style. My car was two lines away though and was fine.

HTH.

Several times to various ports in Brittany and Normandy with a fully loaded tandem for touring trips. Maybe not as obviously stealable as a "pride and joy" MTB, but more valuable than even the median on here I'd imagine. As others have said, you just roll on, secure and lock – panniers containing any valuable were taken with us.

Same here – all very straightforward. Lock *and* bungee is preferable – lock for security, bungee to stop it flapping about. Bike is unlikely to get completely nicked as only crew + cameras during voyage – but anything that might look vaguely interesting to a sticky-fingered seaman should be taken with – although TBH if they're interested in thieving, they're prob more likely to go poking around caravans, MPVs with laptops, GPS, Gameboys or whatever…

samuri very helpful indeed 🙂

Thanks to everyone for advice, bungee's now on order!

Actually, as an afterthought – a little compression strap might be better than a bungee – less chance of the freaking thing whipping your eye out, like.

did it with a trail motorbike to Spanish Picos.

as Eric, in our case we had to strap bikes to railings (*how about old toeclip straps, or zippies and make sure a pair of snippers to hand on way off), and something easily available to go between bike and railing etc to stop scrapes etc(ps sea can get VERY rough so secure well), try to pick a location away from walking to/from stairs routes and thta it looks like staff use, and I guess I'd make sure anything left on bike was hidden and secured, we didn't have issues and car deck should be out of bounds to passengers during travel – so pack appropriately.

We've been using the west coast calmacs a lot recently, I'd suggest taking a little bit of padding material if you take any pride in your bike.

My racer is still box-fresh and very pretty, so it was a little painful lashing it to a bare metal pole in the bilges of the MV "Isle of Mull" then watching some clumsy asshat wrestle his bike in beside it, bashing mine about in the process (I'm not usually this precious, but I'd swear he was doing it deliberately… 😡 )

I've done it Belfast-Stranraer, wouldn't think about it twice.

done , bluff/stewart island – that was rough on a small boat but they were strapped to a pallet

also done picton to wellington via cook strait – it was similar to monks mv isle of mull experiance …

took em in , used one pannier to pad the pillar i was locking it too and locked it up , took my other pannier with me.

I'm doing Portsmouth – Bilbao and back in September, so this is really useful stuff. 🙂

Our club do a trip over to France every year, park in Dover then take the ferry across to Calais and ride down to Wissant. There's usually about 15 of us as foot passengers, we just leave our bikes in the car deck without any problems, take a strap or short piece of rope to tie the bike to the side of the ferry. Never used a lock in the last 8 years we've be doing it.

Just back from 3 days riding in Normandy. Went with LD Lines on the seacat from Portsmouth to Le Havre. On and off the boat first which was nice. Bikes are put in a corner tucked right in the front right hand side of the boat, so no danger of being squished by a car. They have padded rails to lean bikes against, and just to be safe, I put a cable lock around. All very civilized.

Anyone done something similar? What should I expect from bike park facilities?

The bike park facilities on our journey were atrocious – no chair lift, no jump skills area, no North Shore, just a single mincing green trail down the length of the boat and the queues for lunch were terrible. But we did get across the water.

IGMC.

Ive taken bikes on a few ferries and its just as everyone says. One extra tip if you dont want to have to tie your bike too tight is to take an elastic band or two for your brakes, simply pop them on your levers and youve got a nice parking brake to stop the bike rolling about too much.