With the credit crunch beginning to bite, John Hillman offers us all with a touch of advice about how P&O Ferries can help out with the post Christmas blues

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A January shopping binge is essential to our wellbeing as northern Europeans so don’t let the global financial crisis stop you.

Shady characters with sub-prime morals may have done their best to ruin it, but in these times of crisis we can still rely on our British maritime traditions to get us out of trouble.

Cross the straights of Dover with P&O Ferries and you will find a treasure trove of booty so cheap you’ll feel like your thieving pirate ancestors must have done, as you load it all into your car whilst cackling with hearty laughter.

Prices really are so good that the cost of a day-trip will still allow you to return home quids in, with the added satisfaction that British supermarket bosses and their recession proof infinity-pounds-a-minute profits won’t be coming from you this year.

But even if you prefer British supermarkets, you’ll still find all the major ones in Calais offering you everything you need for a touch of bargain shoppery. For example, Champagne and wine is between 50% - 70% less expensive than supermarket prices in the UK.

Choice is another reason to use P&O Ferries as your 2009 credit-crunch crusher.

Calais is so much more than a place for Brits to buy cheap booze; with as many French and Belgians heading to the huge shopping facilities around the city, you’ll find an enormously choice of goodies on offer to satisfy the gourmet in you. Stock up on cheeses, fois-gras and other wonderful delicacies that would normally cost you an arm and a leg back in the UK.

Those of you really interested in good local produce should take advantage of the regular weekly markets, which often sell organic food straight from the farmers themselves.

Place d’Armes on Wednesday and Saturday mornings, and Place Crevecoeur on Thursday and Saturdays, are excellent markets; places where you can browse past stall after stall of intersecting colours and aromas. Shop ‘till lunch then enjoy some of the finest seafood in a traditional Gallic eatery.

Some good advice is to try and go in the week if you can as Saturdays can be extremely busy, although the bustling Saturday atmosphere is probably a bit more fun if you’ve got the energy for it!

Indeed, although many people see Calais as either a place to buy cheap alcohol or somewhere you drive through on your way to your holiday home, there really is no reason why you can’t make a bit more of it.

Although the city was pretty much destroyed during World War II, there are still some interesting sights to take a look at while you are there. The renaissance style hotel de Ville is about as impressive as town halls come and the nearby statue of the ‘six burghers of Calais’ is well worth a look too.

Tags: Britain, P&O Ferries by John Hillman
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John Hillman laments the continental view of Albion

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Next time you head over to Rotterdam with P&O you might want to find out why on earth they think that the English are responsible for their bad weather.

Apparently a common enough slang for grey miserable rainy days is Engels Weer, English weather, which, when you consider that we get about half the annual rainfall that Holland does, is ever so slightly galling. We may as well start refereeing to our balmy summer evenings as Irish sunsets if we’re going to play by those rules.

Strange how much of a mistaken view of the English still exists on the continent, notably that we all eat bad food which, having lived in Europe myself, is another deeply irritating falsehood that you get fed up with hearing.

Even the tiniest village in the English countryside has a top quality Anglo-Indian restaurant and our supermarkets have more choice in them than any other I’ve been to from Berlin to Hawaii. The trouble is that we picked up a bad reputation about 100 years ago and can’t seem to shake it off.

There are few places in the world where you can experience as much gastronomic eclecticism as you can in England. For a nation that invented the pie, the steamed pudding and real ale to have such a bad culinary reputation represents a serious miscarriage of justice.

Tags: Belgium, Britain, France, Lifestyle, Netherlands, P&O Ferries by John Hillman
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John Hillman slips into the P&O club lounge and tells us all about what he finds inside

There was a time when travelling between countries was a great excuse to indulge in a bit of glamour; when even a couple of bus conductors from Birmingham would magically transform themselves into Lawrence Olivier and Vivien Leigh the minute they dusted down their passports.

Heading over to Calais last week it was reassuring to see a small part of this tradition still exists thanks to P&O Ferries’ Club Lounge experience.

Located at the top of the ship (where else) you find yourself gazing out across the English Channel whilst casually leafing through the Saturday papers, sipping chilled champagne and eating smoked salmon.

This might sound like a bit of a snooty reason for the added expense of the Club Lounge ticket but the truth is that when you are travelling from London to Calais, and back again, in the space of 12 hours, then being able to recline into a deep sofa and enjoy a bit of peace and quiet starts to feel like more of a necessity than anything else.

Of course it’s easy to develop a taste for these things so the concern is that you’ll ruin yourself and be unable to enjoy the salty delights of cuing up in the food hall for some greasy goodness next time you pop across to France, but then these are the choices one needs to make in life and as a lifelong subscriber to Darwin I’m all for the evolutionary process continuous self-advancement. More shampoo anyone?

Tags: P&O Ferries by John Hillman
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John Hillman looks towards Amsterdam, the perfect setting for a New Year’s Eve Party

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There are few spectacles in life as exhilarating as a stroll through the picturesque streets of Amsterdam on New Year’s Eve.

Not that picturesque is a particularly truthful description of the riot that’ll be going on around you; with an entire city cooking on gas it’s more a case of: if you can stand the heat then get yourself in that kitchen.

As a city famed for its liberal attitudes and tolerance, it’s no surprise that a colossal free street party attracts thousands of revellers from Sydney to Solihull each year. And with the tiny town centre full to the brim with champagne swilling, firework throwing party animals you will be pleased to hear that you won’t find a criminally-overpriced mini cab in sight, or need one for that matter.

If you are happy to throw shapes with the global party people then the central squares of Rembrandtplein, Leidseplein, Dam Square and Nieuwmarkt are packed out with people who have travelled by ship, plane, train and automobile for one purpose only – splendid japes.

The surrounding areas, such as the Jordaan district, are more likely to be full of low key locals trying to avoid the international car-crash in the city centre, but offers up a more laid back local vibe.

Remember that this is a city where New Year’s Eve means lots of fireworks and an attitude to health and safety that mirrors George Bush’s attitude to the correct use of the English language, so be prepared for some hairy moments, but don’t be put off because a New Year’s eve party in Amsterdam is one of life’s little experiences – and it makes the other 364 days of the year seem worthwhile.

Tags: Lifestyle, Netherlands, P&O Ferries by John Hillman
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John Hillman sticks up for the humble buoy - a little lifesaver

Floating about on the high seas sounds like a wonderful life to some but during these icy cold winter months spare a thought for the lonely buoy.

No-body knows who first had the idea of floating a marker out at sea in the hope of preventing shipping accidents but we can guess that it must be as old as seafaring itself.

Throughout the years they have probably saved as many lives as all other emergency services but you can bet that they won’t be getting a mention in the Queen’s New Years honours list. They’ll just quietly get on with their job, whilst providing a useful spot for birds and seals to rest on.

The millions of buoys around Britain’s coastal waters provide us with everything from the seemingly mundane, such as channel marking for ease of navigation, to the MI6 ‘spook’ buoys that the navy uses in its anti-submarine defence systems.

Tsunami buoys have now been developed and float all over the Indian Ocean, acting as early warning systems that will, should another similar quake occur, prevent the catastrophic loss of life that we saw in 2004 in Thailand and Sri Lanka.

So you see, buoys might seem mundane to the casual observer but they are actually amongst the most useful inventions known to man; making a greater contribution to humanity than most people ever will.

Tags: P&O Ferries by John Hillman
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The English Channel is not just a formidable geographic barrier, but a blanket for centuries of human history. John Hillman wonders just what’s hidden beneath the waves.

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The prospect of deflation is unfortunately all around us, but not it seems in the world of the treasure hunter.

With the price of gold looking set to go through the roof over the coming years, as more and more investors sink their cash into the stuff, the prospect of unearthing a treasure trove of pirates’ booty has never seemed more appealing.

The English Channel is rumoured to be full of old shipwrecks laden with treasure, a fact that is endorsed by the ever present sight of private treasure hunting companies on the P&O route between Dover and Calais.

Some of these companies are so successful that they are actually listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange, with one apparently discovering more than $500 million worth of old coins just last year, and just few hundred miles off the west coast of England too.

It is quite amazing to think that as you sail across the channel on your way to have a holiday or do a bit of shopping, that you are actually floating over hundreds and hundreds of old shipwrecks dating from as far back as pre-Roman Britain.

In fact it would be quite a sight to behold if you could drain the Channel for a few days just to take a walk through it all and have a look, it would almost be like some kind of historical maritime-vessel dump, albeit unfortunately dominated by debris from the Battle of Britain.

Indeed one of the best parts of being a professional treasure hunter (apart from the obvious) would surely be getting a real sense of just how much of our surrounding seabed is littered with these shipwrecks from the ancient past.

For historians and archaeologists the tempting prospect of what lies on the seabed of the English Channel must be enough to make them wish they had fins.

Thinking about all of this is enough to make you realise what a shame it is that ‘treasure-hunter’ is not a job that you see posted up on your average employment website; it’s almost certain that the reason we have so many social problems these days is because young men don’t have the opportunity to run away to sea like they used to.

There are currently at least two outstanding shipwrecks being actively salvaged in the English Channel. It requires high levels of skill and bravery to dive in these dark and murky waters and even greater level of expertise to begin salvaging what you can from them.

Before you even begin bringing things up from the deep you have to apply for permission to do so, by getting something called an Admiralty Arrest warrant, so you presumably need a team of lawyers on your team to deal with all of that.

And this is a shame. The idea of lawyers being involved in something as romantic as treasure hunting is really quite depressing; a bit like going on the biggest rollercoaster in the country only to be sat in between Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling.

Tags: France, Lifestyle, P&O Ferries by John Hillman
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Peter Moore urges us good Britons to get in hunter gatherer mode and race off to Calais.

Booze cruises are one of those glorious inventions. The mere mention of them is enough to get the old blood pumping a little more fiercely through our veins. The reason for this, one would suppose, is really quite straightforward. Humans, as we all are, are primed to hunt and to gather, and prefer being part of a tribe. Can you think of an activity that better satisfies these primeval impulses than the old booze cruise?

If you allow me to be silly for a moment, then I’d suggest that it is quite conceivable to think that William the Conqueror promised his mates in the summer of 1066 that he’d be back by Christmas, and ‘would anyone fancy a few vats of mead?’ Then there is good old Henry V. It’s hard to imagine that he didn’t promise some of the Welsh longbowmen a couple of crates of cheap red wine for their trouble.

The mere mention of a booze cruise is enough to get anyone excited.

Anyhow, enough of my silly pontificating. Suffice to say that if you fancy a seasonal stock up, then Calais is as much a duty free Mecca as exists, and there is no better way to reach the French port than by dashing down to Dover in a van of ample proportions, and driving over a rickety ramp into the belly of a P&O ferry.

Even before you reach the soaring supermarkets of Calais you can indulge yourself in a spot of shopping onboard your vessel. The P&O website announces that you can save up to 30% on beers, wines and spirits; that you can find fragrances and skincare products at a fraction of high street prices, and that even the kids are well provided for, with a host of books, games and travel entertainment accessories on offer.

So, what better times exists than now. Prices are cheap, the festive season looms large and there is a credit crunch that needs escaping. Bon voyage!

Tags: Lifestyle, P&O Ferries by Peter Moore
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Each and every medium of transport carries its advantages and disadvantages. Here John Hillman urges you to get on a boat, because quite simply it is the most wonderful form of them all.

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As a frequent business traveller I find most journeys tend to leave me feeling rather like an eight year old child in the back of my mother’s car

The “are we there yet?” gene is a strong and robust one, and no matter how many times we treat ourselves to another coffee, cake, beer or sandwich, the fact is that given the choice most of us would prefer to use the Starship Enterprise ‘beam me up Scotty’ mode of transport, and forgo the whole ‘waiting to arrive’ chore altogether.

But as this is not possible, we must look to the available options and decide which one will help us to arrive in the best frame of mind and in the shortest time possible.

Unfortunately ‘shortest time possible’ and ‘best frame of mind’ are a couple that you’re unlikely to meet celebrating their diamond wedding anniversary on a P&O Cruise.

The simple fact is that if you want to get to the continent in a hurry then most people will opt for the cramped, stressful option, and take to the sky; thus ensuring that they arrive at their destination tired, dehydrated and (usually in my case) suffering from a mild case of IBS, but is this really wise?

With British airports in the news so much and BAA being told to break up its monopoly on its South East’s airports, because this was leading to an inadequate passenger experience, there has surely never been a better time to consider the pleasures of reaching the continent aboard a P&O ferry?

Ask most people this question and they immediately react by stating the time factor, but let’s face it: time is the enemy of productivity. Whenever we structure our lives around a clock we soon end up going through the motions like a burnt out functionless droid, bereft of the essential juices that spark our creative energies and produce our best thinking.

The benefits of reaching the continent by ferry are so vast, so magnificent in their numerousness, that the limp and pathetic argument of saving time quickly starts to look like the defensive ramblings of a disconnected madman.

On board a P&O ferry a person can relax, work, exercise and rest, giving them space to think and time to reflect. Whereas on an aeroplane you are, quite literally, strapped into a chair and controlled, watered and fed like a small baby. On board a ship you can wonder the decks at will, sit in the comfort of the lounge and do bit of work on the laptop, or get some inspiration by gazing at the incredible force of nature that is the English Channel.

You do all of this relaxed in the knowledge that your belongings are exactly where you left them, safely locked in the boot of your car below, not waltzing around a carousel in Mumbai. And let’s not underestimate the fact that you arrive equipped with your own transport, no tricky negotiations with continental taxi drivers for you, just the freedom of the open road.

The truth is that that not all of us can chose how we travel, many of us are put on planes by bosses and sent to remote airports on board bargain bucket airlines with as much say in the matter as a turkey has at Christmas.

Tags: Britain, France, Lifestyle, P&O Ferries by John Hillman
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