he Channel crossing that used to be 25 minutes on a Hovercraft now takes 35 minutes on leShuttle using the Channel Tunnel.  If loading and unloading times are taken into account, it used to take the Hovercraft 35 minutes and leShuttle now takes 50 minutes.    

In the days when I commuted to Paris every six weeks, I could drive door to door from my office in London to the office in Paris, including the channel crossing by Hovercraft, in as little as 4 hours.   The South Circular Road round London was the route’s longest hold-up.  

My longest Tunnel crossing with the car was 12 hours.  I was on the first train to be stuck in the middle of the Tunnel in its early days.  Crossing from France to England, the brakes seized at approximately the 12-mile point, which is essentially the mid and lowest point of the Tunnel.  

The train is about half a mile long and part loaded weighed c.1,200 tons, I believe, so a massive beast to move with seized brakes.  I need not detain you with the tales of failed air conditioning, overcrowded and inadequate toilet facilities and general inconvenience for families with screaming children, nervous pensioners and people like me being cross about inadequately trained staff and no information.  

All the while, attempts were being made to unseize the brakes, inching the train forward a few yards at a time and then stopping again, raising and dashing hopes of immediate release from the misery of entrapment.  At this point, a rescue train was dispatched from Folkestone, travelling through the Tunnel that normally runs in the opposite direction.  We passengers disembarked the crippled train, made our way through the service Tunnel (with its interesting builders’ graffiti) and embarked on the rescue train.  To add to the discomfort, the rescue train was another car train with no seating, so we all had to stand for the return trip to the Folkestone depot, where we awaited our cars still in the stranded train.  While waiting in the depot news reached us that Eurotunnel had sent down an antique diesel engine to pull the 1,200-ton half-mile-long train and its cargo of passengerless cars up the steep incline out of the Tunnel.  Even those of us uninitiated in the physics and engineering of high-speed trains grasped that this was a lost cause and we were proved right when the attempt failed.  At this point, the Eurotunnel management must have lost their collective presence of mind because they sent down another antique diesel engine to pull the first broken down antique diesel engine, the 1,200-ton half-mile-long train and its cargo of passengerless cars up the steep incline out of the Tunnel.  It will come as no surprise, Dear Reader, that this too failed.  With no sight of train or our cars, the travel-weary passengers were dispatched to B&B accommodation around Folkestone while further attempts were made to recover the stranded train and all the vehicles aboard.  How the train was finally recovered, I never discovered but the next morning we were told where we could recover our cars and I got home some 16 hours after leaving Paris.  

When driving that kind of distance, you either want a rest, so the ferry is best, or if you want to get home quickly, the Hovercraft was best at crossing the Channel.  The Hovercraft was noisy but in all the years of commuting this route, I was never delayed by weather, breakdown or queuing.  And it was quick.   Using the Hovercraft, The Blue Riband, door to door, Home in London to office in Paris was 4 hours.

Even when it took a more usual 4 hours 15 minutes, it was still quicker than using Eurostar, LeShuttle or flying.  

In later years, after 1999, the journey home by car came with significantly more room for “duty-free” than the average airline or rail passenger could carry.  

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