Brittany Ferries operates all five direct routes from Portsmouth to France and Spain: Caen, Cherbourg, Saint-Malo, Santander and Bilbao. It’s the only operator running these crossings, so there’s no competitor to compare it against on this site, only the choice of which route suits your trip.
Routes from Portsmouth
The ships
Brittany Ferries rotates several ships across its Portsmouth routes rather than fixing one to each. We’ve sailed on the “Santoña” and the “Saint-Malo” (sister ships), and seen the “Guillaume de Normandie” and “Galicia” in port. See our ships page for what each is actually like on board.
Our own experience
We’ve sailed with Brittany Ferries ourselves, most recently a family trip in August 2025 via Saint-Malo and Cherbourg. Their staff pushed our car off the ship by hand after a clutch failure, arranged a tow, and let us rebook the return sailing on a flexible ticket while the car was repaired. That’s the kind of thing that only shows up if you’ve actually dealt with the operator, not just read their route list.