After sailing schedules were suspended throughout yesterday, ferry services to and from the French port of Calais have now resumed normal operation with spaces available, as both P&O Ferries and MyFerryLink twitter streams have confirmed.
P&O Ferries, which is part of the DP World group, tweeted last night that its first service from Calais with the Spirit of Britain would resume at about 18:30 h GMT.
All sailings are now running but “roads in and around Calais are heavily congested”, said P&O Ferries in a recent update, while asking customers to allow extra time for their journey to the port. Despite the strike ending, the Danish ferry company and channel operator DFDS warned this morning that “freight traffic continues to queue entering all ports at Dover, Calais, and Dunkirk”.
Last night at about 19:00 h GMT time, MyFerryLink tweeted that, “industrial action in Calais now over and ships returning to service immediately” while apologising to all affected by the severe disruption caused by the port workers’ strike over job cuts. This escalated to travel chaos with main traffic links (ferry/rail/road) connecting the United Kingdom to the Continent severely affected throughout yesterday. The striking MyFerryLink workers blocked the port and “broke into” the Channel Tunnel where they allegedly started a fire, prompting the cancellation of all passenger and freight services, The Independent reported.
This disruption also gave hundreds of migrants the opportunity to try to travel to the United Kingdom by attempting to board UK-bound lorries in France.
This post was sourced from IHS Maritime 360: View the original article here.
