Rouen; Friday, 06 July, 2018

The previous day a power failure just up the line from me had wiped out our train service with the station closed for most of the day and nothing running until late evening. Consequently, there had been dire warnings about delays and cancellations all day on the Friday as trains and drivers would all be out of place.

I’d already worked out a couple of different plans, in case things did turn out to be as dire as predicted, but in the end, there were only a couple of cancellations and things didn’t appear to be too bad, but I still left home at 18:30 a good hour earlier than I needed to just in case.

I got to East Croydon without any issue and changed there onto the first train heading towards the coast, which given a number of trains were showing as delayed was probably the best idea.

The train I was on to Brighton did the usual trick of loosing a couple of minutes each stop so by the time we finally got to the coast it was almost 20 minutes late and my 19-minute connection time for the train round to Newhaven had evaporated. The connecting train was running late itself, but only by a couple of minutes, and as I was at the far end of the platform and it was still swelteringly hot I decided it was just as easy to walk to the concourse, grab some water and wait for the next train.

The next train was, naturally, delayed by 10 minutes, so by the time I got to the Check-in counter at Newhaven harbour it had already opened, rather than having a 50-minute wait which I would have had if everything had run correctly.

I checked in and waited in the lounge for boarding to start, which in the end only commenced about 15 minutes before the ship was due to leave. The foot passengers are the last to board – after all the lorries had gone onboard – and it was already gone 11 by the time we were finally driven up to doors of the ship and allowed to board.

I headed up to reception where there was a long queue of people trying to enquire about cabins (which were all fully booked) and, thankfully, a much shorter queue of people who had pre-booked cabins waiting to get their keys.

After picking up my key I headed down to my cabin which overlooked the bow doors of the ship, and so to the sound of the ship starting up and the bow doors closing, I turned in for the night to get a couple of hours sleep