Travellers crossing Channel from UK told to prepare for long delays

theguardian.com:

People trying to cross the Channel for the bank holiday weekend from the UK have been told to bring supplies and be prepared for long waits.

Friday is expected to be the busiest day of the long weekend at the Port of Dover, with drivers already taking about 90 minutes just to get through passport control.

Delays are also expected to popular road, rail and air travel routes, because of high levels of traffic. A general strike in France over pension reforms is also expected to affect travellers.

There have been concerns of a repeat of last weekend, when thousands of people faced waits of up to 14 hours to cross the Channel. The delays have been blamed on French border officials carrying out extra checks and stamping UK passports after Brexit.

P&O Ferries told passengers to allow extra time for the journey, warning them on Friday of “large queues” at the entrance to Dover’s port and “extremely busy” roads leading to it. DFDS warned there was a wait of about two hours for coaches to complete checks, because of the high volume of traffic.

Port officials said they held an “urgent review” with ferry operators and the French authorities in an attempt to avoid a repeat of the chaos of last weekend.

Doug Bannister, the chief executive of the Port of Dover, said on Friday morning it was taking drivers about an hour and a half to get through border controls but that clear weather meant the ferries were sailing well.

Bannister said it was “going to be a busy day,” but that ferry operators had been asked to try to spread the demand across the three days rather than all the traffic being focused on Good Friday. “I know that that’s challenging for the coach industry because they have itineraries that they want to maintain, but they’ve worked