Talk:Dover

From Hitchwiki
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Hey, I'm on an editing roll :) I edited these out since it seems too confusing to me - why send people to all these places when they can just stay at the bus stop near BP? I didn't want to erase things that might be useful, so I'm copying it all here. What do you think? Can anyone confirm any of these options as alternatives to BP? (Are there cases in which any of these would be better than BP?) Otherwise my suggestion is to edit them out. If eventually anything happens to the BP spot, we can edit it again :)

Here's what I erased from the page:

* There is a small park at the entrance in front of this hitchhiking point. If there are any drivers you might try to ask them.

  • You can try your luck inside the Travel Centre or on the car park in front of it. The problem is that both are nowadays very quiet as most people book on-line. If you speak to people here, you will have to convince them that they don't pay anything extra for taking you across and possibly that you are not an illegal immigrant. Grégoire was told by a person working at a ticket office that you can also directly ask to the people making the queue if they have room in their car before they buy the ticket, so that they can verify it is legal. He found a car in ten minutes, but thinks it should be done discretely. Pete the Temp found some leads by approaching cars but there was much suspicion and many people coming to buy tickets were crossing as foot passengers.
  • you are allowed to stand at the rail of the last roundabout leading into the port, i.e. before the port property. You'll be standing at the height of a truck driver who can see you clearly and can pull aside just in front of the Port Police building after the roundabout. This is far from ideal, and some police don't like it.
  • much better are the normal bus stops on the main seaside road with a sign that says France. [recommended]
  • if you're really stuck you can also try at the Western Docks, there is a truck park where drivers carrying certain types of goods or from outside the EU have to stop to complete some paperwork.

Also, there was a lot of contradicting information on being/not being able to spend the night in the ferry terminal. Does anyone know what the current situation is?

And I think the entire Channel crossing/Maidstone/Dover/Calais scene should be reorganized so that information is easy to find. I'll get to that soon if no one stops me ;)

OlcheMaith (talk) 20:51, 6 July 2017 (UTC)


-I just added a new page English channel to get all of this information in one easy-to-read place. Add/subtract from it as you see fit but let's try to keep it as short and succinct as possible. We should definitely do some clean up on the Dover, Calais, Maidstone Services, and Channel Tunnel pages. I'll start working on that soon. I see questions about hitchhiking the English Channel so often on facebook groups, it would be really nice to have one short and all-inclusive page to send people to. TBF (talk) 23:00 9 July 2017 (UTC)

Great, thanks! Yes, that's what I feel as well - too much (partially contradicting) information on an issue that shouldn't really be *that* complicated. I think it was just being edited in little chunks for a long while... I'll start working on it too. OlcheMaith (talk) 22:07, 9 July 2017 (UTC)