‘Total gridlock’ at Dover as 8,000 travellers face new EU border checks on busiest day of year so far
Get Travel Insider with Simon Calder. A newsletter packed with tips, deals, inspiration, and the latest travel newsGet the Travel Insider newsletter with Simon CalderGet the Travel Insider newsletter with Simon CalderThousands of travellers heading out of the UK on a bank-holiday break were trapped in grid-lock queues in blistering heat for up to four hours outside the Port of Dover on Saturday as EU border checks are introduced. Ferry passengers travelling to Europe faced hours-long waits while they wait to pass through border checks, the Port of Dover said.However holiday-makers reported waiting a further two hours just to get into the port itself, with traffic in “total gridlock” in the surrounding roads. Saturday was expected to be the port’s busiest day of the year so far, with more than 8,000 travellers forecast to use it.After a day of delays, the port said in an update on Saturday evening that traffic at Dover was now “free flowing.”Anyone who missed their ferry crossing because of queues can travel on the next available slot free of charge, it added.Families had to put up with unusually high May temperatures as they waited to board their ferries.Dover was expected to reach a high of 25 degrees on Saturday and an amber heat alert is in place for the South East. Gridlock outside the Port of Dover as families travel out of the UK on ferries (Rosamund Hall/ The Independent)The village of Frittenden, in Kent, hit 30.3 degrees on Saturday, with forecasters saying temperatures would continue to rise, bringing forward the possibility that multiple records could be broken over the coming days.The highs already seen on Saturday are warmer than the temperatures forecast in Athens in Greece, Split in Croatia and even Victoria in the Seychelles.This is the first holiday period since the implementation of the EU’s entry-exit system (EES), which involves people having their fingerprints registered and photograph taken. The full system at the Port of Dover is not up and running yet, and is still awaiting installation of French technology. As a result French border police were manually creating traveller records at the eastern docks. However, at around 9:30am, passport control made the decision to suspend the EU entry-exit system and revert to analogue stamping of passports in a bid to ease the queues that had built through the town. Doug Bannister, chief executive of the Port of Dover, told The Independent that the mitigations were put in place “because the congestion was just so severe through the town”. Rosamund Hall, who was travelling to France with her partner Paul and four-year-old son, spoke to The Independent at about 8:30am on Saturday morning and said they had been trying to get into the port for over two hours. “All of the roads leading into Dover are total gridlock,” she said. “The traffic management control don’t seem to have a handle on what’s going on and it’s very difficult to get information on what the processing time is like. “I’ve travelling in convoy with my parents to France and they are ahead of us. They said that when they got into the actual port area that was also incredibly slow. You are going into another log jam. They got into the port area at around 6:50am and they’ve only just got through passport control, so that’s nearly an hour and 45 minutes, and that doesn’t account for the huge amount of traffic to even get there.”Rosamund Hall is one of thousands of travellers who are facing queues at Dover on Saturd (Rosamund Hall)She said that her car was still about a mile away from the port entrance but that the “roads are looking like a car park, it’s gridlock, everything static”. Ms Hall, who writes about wine for The Independent, described the situation, saying: “There is really heavy traffic approaching from the M20 and gridlock traffic coming down from the A2 entrance, which are the two major roads that come into the port area. Those people who are coming through Dover itself and trying to feed in are being sent back to the main arterial roads. “We’re travelling with P&0 ferries and were supposed to have a 9am crossing. They told us to not arrive any more than two hours before check-in closes, so for my 9am ferry that would be 6am. We followed those instructions are were aiming to arrive at around about 6:20am. It’s laughable that it’s like this and this isn’t going to get any better when summer comes along.”Traffic queuing for the Port of Dover in Kent on Friday (PA Wire)Simon Calder, The Independent’s travel correspondent who is at Dover, said: “Unfortunately if you are one of the 8,000 families who are heading abroad this morning and during the rest of the day, getting the ferry to either Calais or Dunkirk, then you are in for a wait. “I am looking across and there are cars waiting all the way back down the A20 that goes into Dover. Ahead of me, I can see about a thousand cars that have been here since dawn. “Normally they would be hoping to process about 800 cars an hour, I am not seeing anything like that rate.”In an update on Saturday afternoon, the port said: “The Port and its approach roads are now free flowing on our peak day of the May half-term getaway weekend.”Cars at a standstill as they wait to enter the Port of Dover on Saturday (Rosamund Hall/ The Independent)It thanked the Police Aux Frontieres for supporting efforts to resolve long waits by suspending the extra checks.The port said anyone who missed their ferry crossing because of queues can travel on the next available slot free of charge.The disruption came amid what is expected to be an exceptionally hot May bank holiday weekend.According to the Met Office, records could be broken for the hottest May day in the UK and England, currently 32.8C; the hottest May day in Wales, currently 30.6C; as well as the UK and England’s hottest bank holiday, which sits for now at 33.3C.
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