Portsmouth Ferries is an independent guide to the Brittany Ferries routes out of Portsmouth. We don’t sell tickets, take bookings or operate any ferries. If you have a problem with a booking, Brittany Ferries is who you need, not us.
What this site is
Portsmouth is the busiest passenger port in the UK for crossings to France and Spain, five direct Brittany Ferries routes, plus Condor Ferries to the Channel Islands. This site covers all of them: what each crossing is actually like, what the port itself involves, and the practical details that don’t show up in a standard operator listing.
Where we’ve made a crossing ourselves, we say so and use our own photos. Where we haven’t, we say that too, and write from route research and current operator information instead. We’d rather be clear about the difference than blur it.
Who writes this
Portsmouth Ferries is written by Jan Willem van Tilburg, co-founder of FerryGoGo, an independent ferry travel guide covering routes across Europe. He’s made more than 25 ferry crossings, with family, with a dog, overnight in a cabin, and as a foot passenger, and has a particular soft spot for night ferries.
This site grew out of a family trip in August 2025: Saint-Malo to Portsmouth on the brand-new “Saint-Malo”, then home via Portsmouth to Cherbourg on her sister ship the “Santoña”, the return delayed by a car that broke down disembarking in Portsmouth. That trip is where most of the photos on this site come from, and it’s exactly the kind of detail (what happens when something goes wrong, not just when it goes right) that a standard route listing leaves out.
How we research this
Ferry information goes out of date quickly: ships get reassigned between routes, timetables shift by season, and fares move constantly. Where we haven’t made a crossing ourselves, we say so plainly rather than writing as if we had. Where we quote a price we paid, we date it and treat it as a real example, not a current rate, always check current prices directly with the operator.
Spotted something out of date or wrong? We’d rather fix it than defend it, get in touch via the contact page.
How the site pays for itself
Right now, links to Brittany Ferries and Condor Ferries on this site go straight to the operator, we don’t currently run any affiliate or booking links. If that changes, we’ll say so here and it won’t change what we write: we’re not steering you toward a route because it pays better, there’s only one operator running most of these crossings anyway.
Elsewhere in the FerryGoGo network
Portsmouth Ferries is a specialist companion to FerryGoGo, which covers ferry routes across the UK, Ireland and Europe more broadly, including route maps, fare research and first-hand reports from other crossings.