Off to France on the ferry shortly and I’m wondering how strict they are with the vehicle length limits. I misread the length (honest, I did) as 5m + rear load, not 5m inc.[/u] rear load. Silly mistake, but that’s what I’ve done. My car will be 5.2m with the rear carrier – are they likely to stop me getting on?

Brittany ferries, Portsmouth – St Malo if it matters.

Don’t know, but I’d risk it fwiw

You’ll be fine.
“overlength” will be 6m+ and even then they dont really assess it.

I think it’ll be the “If it looks massively over, we will kick up a fuss” sort of thing. 20cm isn’t going to be easy to assess so I suspect you’ll be fine.

Just don’t bring your dog or they’ll bum it as punishment. Other than that, you’ll be fine, probably.

EDIT: Nice ‘i’m off on holiday’ humble brag.

My gut feeling is I’ll be ok, but I thought I’d ask 🙂

As for the humble brag, I’m off to France for a couple of weeks in a caravan with the Mrs and kids. Check me out 😉

I’ll wave at you from my local beach in Ryde as you float past on the Brittany Ferry.

My estate car with the bike carrier on is over 5m – done that trip loads of times with the carrier on and Brittany Ferries have never pulled me up on it.

Now we’ve done the serious bit of the thread, can we draw attention to the op trying to squeeze 8 inches into his rear end?

He’ll get thoroughly inspected in the port

At 5.2m including the car and bike rack that’s got to be one compact caravan the OP is pulling.

I have never had a problem with Stenna line over height. Some times i use a roof box others i dont and some of those times i had not booked under the correct height limits. Like said above, as long as you are not taking the pi$$ and ferry not at absouloute capacity you should be fine.

There’s a joke somewhere chaps, keep trying 😉

g-d – I’m hoping the caravan is already there waiting for us 🙂

Never a problem with P&O (Hull-Rotterdam/Zeebrugge) crossing.

DFDS though, pedantic to say the least. Problem was only outbound from Newcastle, with return from Amsterdam check-in staff not batting an eyelid. Landrover with 2 bikes on roof extending 10cm above the height of caravan attached to the back of car. Check-in staff asked for ~£60 extra for bikes as we’d not added them to booking (our mistake) as “you’re too tall for the ferry”. Tight Scottishness won and I took them off and stuffed into caravan for ferry.

Got on board ferry and we – along with every other caravan – are in same section as coaches/lorries with LOADS of headroom…

He’ll get thoroughly inspected in the port

Sounds painful, especially if they put gloves on. 😯

especially if they put gloves on.

I’d prefer with gloves, than without.

I travel on Brittany twice a year in the T5 with the bike rack. Always enter less than 5m plus rear rack, never had any problems. They were measuring cars with a tape measure when I travelled in May but got through no problems.

I did have a friend who forgot to add the height of his roof box on and was bumped at the terminal to the next day. So if you haven’t added the rack to your booking it would be worth calling them and adding it now.

I’ve booked it with extra height (2.6m) & up to 5m long, but I have also specified a roof load and rear carrier (fnarr fnarr):

Vehicle details Height Length Registration
Car Up to 2.6m Up to 5m —–
Rear bike carrier
Roof Load

Just as an aside if anyone is planning to go with Corsica ferries they h ave people at the check in with a tape measure as I also forgot to tick the box about a bike carrier. They very efficiently fleeced me for an extra 90 euros.

We did Brittany from Portsmouth to St Malo last weekend.
Car was just under the 5m but we’d bought a new caravan which was 0.5m longer than the size we’d booked.
We got pulled up and ‘checked for size’ but the only thing they pointed out was the sestposts on the bikes on the roof made them just too tall.

I think it is the height they worry about more. As long as the car you are driving is in the correct category you have booked and you’ve declared correctly what you’ve got on the rear of your vehicle they don’t seem to give a stuff. My SMax plus the 4-bike tow-bar mounted cycle carrier I used was a very long vehicle, but yet when we booked it was just a ‘large family car with rear mounted cycle rack’. So no specification about how many bikes were rear-mounted.