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?

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