Rotor

P&O ferries Bilboa to Portsmouth route finished? I cant seem to find it on their site?

lynnxa

here you are

http://britishexpats.com/forum/showt...rtsmouth+ferry

Dick Dasterdly

Still not clear what's happening with the Brittany Santander ferry.
Is it continuing all year with alternate trips to Portsmouth and Plymouth ?

Bigger Jim

Not too sure as when I looked at the programme I couldn't find dates available in Jan and Feb but then it always used to close in the worst months of the year. Maybe starts up again in Spring.

Jim

Fred James

Brittany Ferries have taken over the Portsmouth-Bilbao route.

http://www.brittany-ferries.co.uk/ro...tsmouth-bilbao

battlezone123

It would have been better if a different company took over the Portsmouth/Bilbao route - more competition.

Fred James

Sorry I don't follow that - Brittany Ferries is a different company to P&O.

Surely you don't expect to have two different companies supplying such a very underused route?

There really aren't that many people using the route especially as the Santander option is still running.

battlezone123

Brittany Ferries is now doing both routes - Bilbao and Santander. At least when P&O were doing the Bilbao route there was some competition with prices between the two companies. But now it is just Brittany Ferries supplying both routes there is no competition with prices.

We use the Santander route regularly and the only reason we rarely used the Bilbao route was because of the length of the crossing. If I remember correctly it was about 34 hours compared to the Santander crossing of 24 hours.

At the end of the day you will have a choice of which port to go from, but I doubt very much there will be any variation in prices. If a different ferry company had taken on the Bilbao route then perhaps there would have been a price competition - and maybe even a lowering of prices!

Dick Dasterdly

From what I've seen of those two companies, they never offered each other serious competition,even on shared routes, most of which they eventually carved up between them.
They generally advertised different price structures, but at the end of the day it was swings and roundabouts and gave the impression of joint price fixing.

EsuriJohn

We used both and found prices remarkably similar. The advantage for us was at this end where the Santander motorway south is just superb and completly toll free. The new to Brittany Cap Finistare also was the quickest and does the trip in a round 24hrs.

When we checked the Brittany offers for November/December it seemed to say that they were putting 3 boats on this Autumn Pont von, Cap Finistare and another but that may only have gone as far as Roscoff hard to tell.

Bigger Jim

They never offered shared routes until this year. P&O went from Portsmouth to Bibao and Brittany went from Plymouth to Bilbao.

When P&O said they were pulling out there were reputed to be half a dozen firms looking to take over from them, in the end it looks like Brittany has stitched up the competition by taking over Portsmouth to Bilbao and opening up Portsmouth to Santander.

If you are travelling from Bilbao to Cadiz or Santander to Cadiz, Michellin says there is a 15 minute difference on an eleven hour run.


Jim

Dick Dasterdly

I'm not referring to just Spanish routes.
For instance they now have an almost clear monopoly on S.W. UK and S.Ireland into N.W. France routes, but strangely don't seem to compete at the other busier end of the channel.