I confess I wasn’t looking forward to taking Buzz the Honda Civic Type R to France for our holiday. The front spoiler, which has already had paint, is just over four inches off the deck and this is a standard car. I’ve already replaced all the undertrays at a price which shall remain nameless just in case Mrs English reads this, and the prospect of meteor-strike potholes and sleeping policemen made of, erm, railway sleepers filled me with trepidation.
Fortunately, we were travelling with Brittany Ferries, the steamer company founded by the farmers of Bretagne to export their agricultural wares to us Brits, who found a tourist ferry side hustle was even more lucrative. They are, how you say? Sympathique to low-slung cars which need to take the bumps gently and at the diagonal, with racing clutches which like to take the whole deck ramp in one go. Clean boats, too, with comfy beds and pretty good food; so count me in.
The 112-mile, six-hour Plymouth-to-Roscoff service also has a dog-friendly cabin service, though the bureaucracy and sheer intrusiveness of taking pets abroad convinced us to leave Herbie our Labrador at home with my daughter Scarlett for a week of girl-and-dog adventures.
