Dieppe; Sunday, 21 May, 2017

I had a relatively early breakfast and checked out of the hotel. I went for a stroll along the promenade down into the town centre where I arrived in time to get a ticket, and a good seat, on the first Petit Train departure of the day.

Back at the harbour side about an hour later I went for a further wander through the city centre before making my way up to the impressive castle that sits on a hill overlooking the town centre.

I had a wander around the grounds and walked up through the castle courtyards and out the drawbridge onto the esplanade behind it from where there were impressive views of both the castle and the town centre.

I headed back down to the castle in time for the afternoon opening of the museum that is housed inside the main buildings. I had a long look round that before walking back down the hill to the town centre and picking up a late lunch.

Lunch completed it was time to head back over to the hotel, collect my luggage and make my way back to the ferry terminal for what had become a very complicated journey home.

When I’d originally booked it was just going to be a relatively late arrival home, but a couple of weeks before the trip I’d been booked to attend a meeting the other side of Swansea on the Monday lunchtime so I now had to get up into London to the overnight hotel that work had booked me, at the same time as dealing with a new train timetable that had started today and had removed the late night and overnight services from Brighton into London. Consequently it meant the ferry had to run, had to be on time and I had to catch the 21:34 train from Newhaven, and make a four minute connection in Brighton to make the last direct train.

Consequently, it was with some thanks on my part that boarding started almost the moment checkin closed and 15 minutes before our scheduled departure time we were already clear of the jetty and starting to head out of port.

Sadly it wasn’t to last as the ferry managed to lose all that time and didn’t dock at Newhaven until the due time. It took some time to get the bow doors opened and by the time I finally got to passport control it was already 21:20. That would have been fine, if DFDS hadn’t insisted on putting larger items of luggage in containers on the car deck, that were located at the far end of the ferry and so had to wait for all the vehicles to disembark before they could bring them through and by the time I finally left the port it was already 21:50.

What should have been a relatively quick journey now extended long into the night as I had to wait for nearly 20 minutes in Brighton for a train to London Bridge, which just missed the last tube of the night and then a long and expensive cab journey over to my overnight hotel.