Ferries to Southern Spain

Just a quick question and maybe a simple answer but why are there no ferries from the UK to Southern Spain (Malaga)? I appreciate it would be a long crossing but large port etc and I expect there would be a high demand as many do the Santander route and then have the drive down through Spain?

Karen

This has been covered before; search EOS under the heading 'P&O to cease operating Portsmouth-Bilbao'; I reiterate and add to my post on that thread...

...An interesting proposition but a bit of a non starter I think since such a trip would be prohibitively expensive to operate.

Yes it would be nice to have a service from say Portsmouth or Southampton to Algeciras or Cadiz, but I dont think many haulage companies would use it. Its one thing to have your drivers lounging around for 24 / 36 hours, quite another if they are unproductive for three or four days...

Consider too the type of ship required to operate the service; nothing less than a vessel similar in size to Britanny Ferries Pont Aven would suffice to cope with the demands of a full blown Atlantic storm. A ro-ro ferry would not suffice.

The whole point of the Santander / Bilbao destinations is that jointly they serve all of Spain, South Western France, and Portugal. A service to Cadiz or Algeciras would be ideal for say the Algarve or the CDS but totally counter productive for someone wanting to go to Murcia or Valencia; they would still have a 1000km drive in front of them after disembarking much as they have now from Santander. Given that there are probably more Brits on the Costa Blanca than on the Costa del Sol these days it would be a non-starter for them. As for using Malaga again more time spent at sea; time which could just as easily and more cost effectively be used drivinf from Santander.

The only plus point over the Santander / Bilbao route would be avoiding Madrid (and if you use the M50 around Madrid thats not really a problem anyway!),

Pont Aven is the biggest ferry in Northern Europe, and carries 650 vehicles; to make a Cadiz / Algeciras route viable the new vessel would have on a par with this capacity and be full both outbound and inbound and I doubt that any company would be prepared to operate under anything less; to do so would be financial suicide

As a pipe dream its nice; in reality I dont see it happening!

fb

This message was last edited by foxbat on 03/07/2010.

In the early 1970's P & O ran a ferry service Southampton - Lisbon - Tangier.  We used it at the end of 1971 but I've no idea how long it operated or how much it cost.  As far as I can remember if wasn't bad and didn't feel like a car ferry (especially when compared to that horrid Pride of Bilbao), we took a car, caravan and toddler to Morocco for 5 months using it.  I can remember lots of people being ill going through the Bay of Biscay and that everything slid off the table and onto my lap at one meal.

No much good for CDS as you'd then have to ferry it back from Tangier which is a nightmare.