Dover and Eurotunnel queues: Travellers warned of third day of delays

By Dulcie Lee & Marie JacksonBBC News

Holidaymakers and hauliers are being warned of another day of disruption at the Channel Tunnel and the Port of Dover after two days of gridlock.

Overnight, people reported sleeping in cars on the road as the approach to the Eurotunnel remained gridlocked.

One tired family said the last three miles of their journey took 21 hours.

In Dover on Sunday morning, traffic appears to have eased and cars were facing 15-minute queues on Sunday to reach border checks, P&O Ferries said.

Andrew Dyer-Smith and his family, who are heading to France for their summer holiday, spent 21 hours in bumper-to-bumper traffic on roads around Folkestone.

“We arrived at Folkestone at 9am yesterday morning for a train at 10.30 and then have been slowly crawling along for the last 21-plus hours,” he told BBC’s Breakfast.

He said his children in the backseat were dishevelled but had managed to sleep a bit, while he and his wife had taken the wheel in shifts to snatch some sleep.

While speaking live to Breakfast, the family erupted in cheers as they were finally able to board the train.

Image caption,

After 21 hours, Andrew Dyer-Smith and his family finally boarded their train to France

Eurotunnel said once people get to the terminal, they were able to board within a couple of hours and blamed the huge waits on local roads over which it had no control.

It said it was alerting passengers to the problems on its social media and website.

Eurotunnel is expecting 7,000 cars to cross on Sunday, slightly down on the 8,500 cars on Saturday.

The Port of Dover is also expected to be busy with 6,500 cars due to make the crossing, down from 10,000 the previous day.

The Kent Resilience Forum, which coordinates the county’s emergency planning, has predicted Sunday will be another challenging day, with delays and disruption for both holidaymakers and hauliers.

Port officials and Eurotunnel worked through the night to begin clearing the backlog of 1,500 lorries parked on the M20.

Natalie Chapman, from haulier group Logistics UK, said some lorry drivers had waited to cross the Channel for “well over 18 hours” in queues with no toilet facilities.

Media caption,

Watch: Aerial footage of thousands of lorries stacked on M20 outside Dover

John Keefe, director of public affairs for Eurotunnel, said Saturday’s traffic disruption had been caused by an accident on the M20 on Friday.

A major incident was declared on Friday amid gridlocked routes around the Kent terminals and four-mile queues on the eastbound M2.

Kent County Council and the Road Haulage Association are urging the government to build more lorry parks to get heavy goods vehicles off the roads when there is cross-Channel disruption.

The Department for Transport said it was investing more than £30m to improve lorry-parking facilities in England.

The delays at Dover led to clashes between French and UK officials.

The UK government said French authorities had failed to find enough border staff to check passports, demanding they resolve the “terrible situation”.

But French Transport Minister Clement Beaune hit back, saying France was not responsible for the additional border checks brought on by Brexit.

Image caption,

Anna Parkinson faced long delays while travelling with her three children

Holidaymaker Anna Parkinson took seven hours to travel two miles to the Eurotunnel terminal on Saturday – with three “fractious” children sitting in the back.

She said she felt for local residents who “currently can’t leave their local villages because they’re hemmed in by all of us desperately trying to get on the train that we should have caught five hours ago”.

Jane Dennis, her husband and their five children, aged between three and 11, barely moved for six hours while trying to reach the Eurotunnel terminal.

Between around 07:00 and 13:00 they advanced roughly 70 metres before deciding to take a detour that friends had used.

She said the queues weren’t being managed by anyone, but traffic was flowing more freely on the detour.

They eventually arrived in France 12 hours after setting off from home in Hampshire.

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