KENT ALMOST ISOLATED FROM EUROPE – AGAIN!!

It will soon be 3 years before Kent lost its’ direct Eurostar services from Ashford and Ebbsfleet with no sign of them returning anytime soon. Since then, Kent residents have had to double back to London St Pancras and pay extra just to take a train across the channel to Europe. We are now asking Eurostar to offer free or reduced fares on the connecting HS1 services from Ashford International & Ebbsfleet to St Pancras run by South Eastern Trains.

In the meantime, the choice of cross channel ferry services from Dover to Calais for foot passengers is substantially reduced. DFDS no longer take foot passengers on any of their services and P & O have limited foot passengers to only 3 services a day. To make it even more unattractive P & O insist you to book in advance and check-in 90 minutes before departure. Just to make matters worse you then have to wait 30 minutes at the destination (presumably while all the cars & lorries go first), before they will let you disembark from the ship !

Before we had the Channel Tunnel and were not facing such a climate emergency, it was always easy to use the frequent service of ferries from Dover to Calais as a foot passenger. They were also very attractive for people in Kent making a day trip to France. Now we face a climate emergency, anyone in Kent has no real incentive to reduce their carbon footprint when travelling to/from France.