Was Calais a transport backwater before the Channel Tunnel opened?

[PTR 444]

Calais is a place that has for centuries been synonymous with cross-channel travel, for both good and bad. It makes sense being located at the closest point between continental Europe and the British mainland, but even so this hasn’t always been the case.

Since the advent of the motor car, Calais had been in competition with Dunkirk, Ostend and Dieppe for cross-Channel ferry crossings. Even though Dover - Calais has always been the shortest crossing, Dieppe was closer to Paris while Dunkirk and Ostend had better onward road connections. The Belgian motorway network had started construction as early as the 1930s while the A25 linking Dunkirk with Lille (and onwards to Paris via the A1) was completed in the 1960s, but Calais wasn’t connected to the French autoroute network until the late 1980s with the extension of the A26.

Even when the Channel Tunnel opened in 1994, it was still tricky heading east into Belgium since the A16 autoroute along the coast had not yet been completed, while there were still lengthy customs checks at the French/Belgian border. This all changed however in 1997 and with the significantly faster journey time from Calais to Belgium, the ferry to Ostend (and to a lesser extent Dunkirk) became redundant.

So to conclude, did circumstances of history make Calais a backwater in comparison to Dunkirk and Ostend? I‘m aware that much of the old town was virtually destroyed during WW2 so wonder if that had anything to do with it.

 

[Sir Felix Pole]

A good proportion of the leisure motor traffic from the UK was (and is) to the South and SW of France so Calais (and to a lesser extent Boulogne) was always the optimum choice, autoroute or not. Townsend Brothers started competing with the Southern Rly in 1928, and BR responded with dedicated car ferries after WW2. The sea crossing to Dieppe was too long, unless you were touring in the area or lived on the south coast in the UK.

 

[Snow1964]

Until the 1980s and early 1990s, nearly all the ferry routes used much smaller ferries, and had to drive through the towns to reach any Route Nationale or Autoroutes. The motorway around Calais and introduction of double deck link spans to ships increased capacity.

Used to be lot more routes to France, from Ramsgate, Folkestone, Southampton, Poole, Weymouth etc. Before M2 and M20 were built could take 3 hours to get to Dover area from central London

Ended up with bigger ferries on lot less routes.

Depending on where you live, anyone driving to Brittany or Vendee etc will probably prefer the longer western ferry routes, yes they cost more, but lot less driving (and fuel), and most of the Autoroutes were built with EU money so are free unlike those in Eastern and Central France, which helps offset higher fares.

Ireland has benefited from Brexit with more ferries to France, but that is more to do with avoiding paperwork for freight.

 

[adamedwards]

Calais was the premier route by train and ship through the now closed Calais Maritime station. The "fast" day train was the Golden Arrow from Paris connecting to a fast passenger only ship and then a Pullman train from Dover Western Docks (also now closed) to London Victoria. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Arrow_(train) So never a backwater as far as rail linked services were concerned until the Channel Tunnel.

Boulogne was traditionally linked to Folkestone, so shorter in France, but then the advantage was negated as the trains from Folkestone Harbour had to climb the steep hill up to the main line and reverse to get to London. The fastest journey you could do from Paris to London was when Hovercraft ran from Bolougne to Dover as Boulogne Aeroglisseurs (litterally air sliders!) station was part of the hoverport and, when I did the trip in 1983, the train was a RGP gas turbine high speed unit. Even with the bus from hoverport to station in Dover I think this took around 6 hours instead of 8 if on a ferry. That assumed of course the weather was ok. Eurostar is vastly better than being bounced around in a hovercraft!

 

[Gloster]

Calais was too far from Paris to be in its orbit, but was on the edge of Liile’s. Unlike most places its local importance was severely limited by the fact that more than half of what would normally be its hinterland was the Channel (hintersea?). It was, although a fair sized town, only of moderate importance. Elsewhere such a town would have been a fairly important calling point on a long-distance service, but here the only such services were the cross-Channel ones, which were atypical.

In 1987, for example, it had a sparse local service to Dunkerque, which was only likely to be of use to local travellers. There was a reasonable, by French standards, local service to Lille, but the only long-distance trains over this route were international ones connecting with the ferries. There were three early train to Paris via Boulogne, the last of which departed just after 08.00. After that the only through trains were ones from the Maritime; there was a fairly good local service, particularly as far as Boulogne, and a few of the trains connected for Paris at Amiens or Longeau. Personally, I think that by the French standards of the time it did surprisingly well.

 

[61653 HTAFC]

In the 80s and 90s prior to Le Shuttle starting there was already a significant market for day trips to Calais from Dover (and to a lesser extent Boulogne from Folkestone) due to the sub-90-minute crossing times. A large chunk of this was the "Booze Cruises" which were quick to shift to the tunnel once it opened, though some of the ferry companies did their best to compete by reducing fares for day crossings.

Foot passengers used to be more common on the ferries too, many of them day-trippers from campsites and hotels in the areas surrounding the English channel ports. These day-trippers wouldn't have got much further than Calais or Boulogne towns before they needed to get back to the ports.

 

[A0]

I think before border controls were abolished, if you were heading east into Belgium etc it was probably easier to take the ferry to Zeebrugge or Ostend.

Certainly Calais was a busy port in the 1980s - I remember using it for family holidays back then - and indeed it still had a sleeper service with car transport through to Avignon which we used on one occasion.

 

[Vespa]

I tend to bypass Calais it in in my car off the tunnel and the same coming back, I never stop in case a migrant try to sneak in using my car or lorry as I get fined so by not stopping there is no opportunity to do so.

Unfortunately Calais has been affected by this through no fault of their own as its an interesting city, circumstances has created it.

 

[A0]

I tend to bypass Calais it in in my car off the tunnel and the same coming back, I never stop in case a migrant try to sneak in using my car or lorry as I get fined so by not stopping there is no opportunity to do so.

Unfortunately Calais has been affected by this through no fault of their own as its an interesting city, circumstances has created it.

Calais not the only one affected - in 2018 we came back through Caen (Ouistreham) and on the final mile or so from the edge of Ouistreham there were alot of immigrants loitering on the roundabouts etc clearly looking for UK vehicles. Once in the port they went over all vehicles with a fine tooth comb.

Interestingly didn't see the same at Cherbourg or Dieppe when we used those. That said, I wouldn't use Dieppe again, but that's for other reasons.

 

[islandmonkey]

It does strike me as interesting that Dover and Calais are both a little run down as towns.

 

[spyinthesky]

while there were still lengthy customs checks at the French/Belgian border.

Was this a HGV thing as between 83 and 96 my regular trips to and from UK/Germany I was only stopped once at a lesser known crossing in the early hours between Germany and Holland. Never France/Belgium.
Ostend tended to be the favoured route but the Herald of Free Enterprise which some of my colleagues missed that night and went on to Calais, this became the norm for all of us.

 

[Cloud Strife]

I think before border controls were abolished, if you were heading east into Belgium etc it was probably easier to take the ferry to Zeebrugge or Ostend.

Yes, one of the things that killed off the Oostende routes was exactly this. Previously, before Schengen (and especially before 1993 when customs controls still existed on EU borders), you still had to go through a very small border crossing in De Panne, and this was (by the 1980s) very unpredictable. The French were also very keen on checking people buying things from Belgium in order to take back to the UK.

Was this a HGV thing

No, but by the 1980s in Western Europe, systematic border controls were dying. The borders still existed, but controls were often just a matter of being waved through or a very cursory glance at a passport/ID card. Still, they were always manned in some way, and none of the borders were officially open. So, it's very likely that you were simply waved through most of those crossings, especially as traffic was far lighter between countries prior to 1993.

 

[Gloster]

There were plenty of minor crossings between various countries which had no permanent staff: you could mostly drive from one country to the other with nothing but an empty booth or a post to mark your passage. But flying controls would set up from time to time and they would stop everybody and check them thoroughly. If you needed to have some check made (I once had to formally surrender a residence permit) you had to go via one of the permanently manned crossings.

 

[Cloud Strife]

There were plenty of minor crossings between various countries which had no permanent staff: you could mostly drive from one country to the other with nothing but an empty booth or a post to mark your passage.

Yes, there were quite a few systems used. Usually, you'd see a sign saying that the crossing was only for those with nothing to declare, although others (such as the Czech Republic) would allow people to cross provided they were within the customs limits *and* they had a passport from one of a given list of countries, usually CZ+EU. These crossings were often only open during daylight hours too.

There's a good example here of a typical sign found on the Swiss borders:

Google Maps

Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.

www.google.com

And the same location in 2008, before Switzerland joined Schengen:

Google Maps

Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.

www.google.com

It was the traveller's obligation to proceed to a manned border crossing if required, such as if they needed a stamp in their passport or if they weren't covered by the EEC/EC/EU freedom of movement rules.

Going back to the topic:

Calais was quite important from the late 70s, as Townsend Thoresen had introduced the new Spirit ferries, which could load through double deck linkspans among other improvements. The British Rail/SNCF Sealink were also on the route then, along with Hoverspeed's hovercraft. I'd actually say that the glory days of the town were from roughly 1980 to 1999, especially as fares could be obtained for next to nothing for daytrips. It was duty free ending that changed Calais, although there was this period from 1999 to around 2009 where the ferry companies would throw away dirt cheap car+passenger day trips with even wine thrown in for free.

I remember calling P&O to ask about a daytrip fare in the mid 2000s, and without even being asked, they offered 12 bottles of wine and a fare for 10 pounds. The wine was just cheap French plonk, but it was easily worth more than the fare itself. The only condition was that you had to get it from the duty free shop, and so I asked the bloke what was going on. He said that the idea was that travellers would buy more in the shop instead of going to the huge wine warehouses, and that if I wanted, it was possible to leave my car onboard and simply return to Dover without even leaving the ship.

The overzealousness of UK Customs didn't help Calais, and people were often discouraged by reports of Customs taking apart family cars when searching for cigarettes. The French increases in tobacco duty also shifted a lot of the trade to Belgium, but then the French started stopping cars as they left the tobacco warehouses in Adinkerke.

The Channel Tunnel didn't hurt Calais that much, as Cite Europe (the large shopping centre next to the Channel Tunnel terminal) increased business in the town, and the aforementioned fares wars drove a lot of traffic into Calais for daytrips to take advantage of the duty paid limits.

I think it was really fuel prices that drove Calais as a port after 1980. The longer sea routes were no longer viable, and the coming of the A26 autoroute connecting Calais to Paris in the 1980s also drove traffic towards Calais as opposed to other ports. It seems strange to think about now, but Boulogne was only connected to the autoroute network in the 1990s via Calais, with the direct connection to Paris opening in 1998 I think?

If I remember rightly, Calais was also well developed as a terminal in the early 1990s.

 

[nw1]

Calais was the premier route by train and ship through the now closed Calais Maritime station. The "fast" day train was the Golden Arrow from Paris connecting to a fast passenger only ship and then a Pullman train from Dover Western Docks (also now closed) to London Victoria. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Arrow_(train) So never a backwater as far as rail linked services were concerned until the Channel Tunnel.

I never used Calais railway stations back in the old pre-Tunnel days but did use the car ferry for family holidays on four occasions in the 80s.

I do recall Calais Maritime having a lot of coaching stock parked up, some (IIRC) with far-flung destinations shown on the windows.

As for road travel we used it to reach the Auvergne (twice) and Black Forest (twice) in preference to any other port. The shortness of the crossing was the key thing; the A26 started somewhere further south on all four occasions and on the earliest (1983) it was mostly N-road all the way down to the Auvergne, with the A26 only extending to Saint-Quentin. But N-road travel (as A-road travel in the UK) was just accepted as necessary at the time. It did make, of course, for a more interesting journey as you'd pass through many villages and towns.

We also did SW France (Landes) in 1981 but, living in W Sussex, Calais would obviously be a huge detour so we did Portsmouth-Cherbourg.

 

[Cloud Strife]

But N-road travel (as A-road travel in the UK) was just accepted as necessary at the time.

Yes, it seems hard to believe now with the excellent links to Calais, but Calais wasn't even connected to the Belgian motorway system until 1997, unless you count going via Lille. The rest of the A16 was opened in 1993 I believe, but the final part had been left as it would have required building a border crossing.

I think another factor in the success of Calais was that it's simply very easy to access. The A26 extension straight into the port was and is in contrast to to the awkward accesses to Dunkerque and Boulogne, although I believe the A26 completion to Calais was because of the Channel Tunnel and not because of Calais as such.