10 of the best: holiday destinations by ferry

The Spanish ports of Santander and Bilbao are gateways to a far less developed Spain and much more authentically ‘Spanish’ experiences than you’ll find on the Costas fronting the Mediterranean. Families will find masses of things to do on, and just inland from, the coast.

On the outdoor activity menu there’s surfing, canyoning, mountain biking, sailing and horse-riding as well as golf for older family members. It’s a great region for introducing children to the delights of gourmet dining, too, especially in San Sebastian, famous for its Michelin-starred gastronomy but also a fun place to introduce the kids to tapas, known here as pintxos.

Santander

The port of Santander is a city on the sea, ‘between the blue and the green’, as the local tourist office proclaims. In the 19th century it was the destination of choice for aristocrats escaping the oppressive summer heat of Madrid. It has sandy beaches that would be the envy of many purely ‘resort’ destinations plus gardens, a cathedral and an interesting old town, while the mountains are just a short drive away.

Santander is perfectly poised for a holiday than marries the sea and the mountains. Cantabria’s beaches, including the sandy crescent of Langre, east of Santander, and the pretty seaside village of Santillana del Mar have plenty of family appeal. 

Among the best day trips are trips the Altamira caves where you can see the prehistoric wall paintings, and south to Burgos for its Museum of Human Evolution and the archaeological site of Atapuerca. There are plenty of opportunities to inject a measure of education into the holiday, too. At Bilbao’s Guggenheim Museum, an overwhelming, magnificent work of art in its own right, the collections are not only exciting but there are special workshops for children and dedicated evenings for teenagers.

Bilbao

The old industrial city of Bilbao, with its tight warren of medieval streets, quirky shops and fun places to eat, is also well stocked with museums. The Museo de Bellas Artes galery is devoted to old masters, including Goya and El Greco. There’s also a Basque museum, housed in a retired Jesuit cloister, and a Maritime Museum. Bilbao is also a superb gateway for families who want to travel on into the high hills of the Basque country, taking the motorway to Pamplona, or east to San Sebastian and maybe nipping across to the French resort of Biarritz or the smaller, charming St Jean de Luz.

The menu for accommodation is long and broad, from historic paradores and self-catering rural casas to campsites. The latter, with a choice of mobile homes or log cabins, inland or on the coast, usually clustered around a large pool and often with activities arranged for children during the school holidays, are extremely affordable. 

The Lowdown

Getting there: Brittany Ferries operates three direct routes to to Santander from Portsmouth and Plymouth and to Bilbao from Portsmouth. LD Lines sails between Poole and Santander and Gijón. 

Price: Sample fare for a car plus two adults and two children with Brittany Ferries: Portsmouth/Plymouth–Santander £958 (£1,128 with cabin), Portsmouth–Bilbao £1,128, including four-berth cabin).

Most of the British Isles are Scottish. There are nearly 800 in totaland most of the 94 inhabited ones are linked by ferry. There are four groups: Shetland and Orkney in the north and the Inner and Outer Hebrides in the west. The islands vary enormously in topography. 

Some, such as Tiree and Sanday, are low lying; others such as Skye are as moody and menacing as Tolkien’s Mordor. And many feel remote and other-wordly. Some have castles, several are deemed holyand many are famed for their whales, dolphins and other wildlife, their distilleries, their Viking heritage, their dinosaur footprints. 

You’ll also be able to see visit well-known children’s TV locations, such as Balamory (Mull) or Lewis, where Katie Morag is filmed.

There’s no guarantee of sunshine, even in summer, but when you’re exploring the incredible deserted beaches on the western shores of the Outer Hebrides, watching the cacophonous conventions of seabirds in Orkney, or bagging your first Munro, Scotland’s islands will work their magic whatever the weather.

The lowdown

Getting there: Caledonian MacBrayne car carrying ferries sails to 24 destinations on the west coast, from Campbeltown on the Kintyre Peninsula to Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis. A Hopscotch ticket is valid for one month on a range of routes. An eight- or 15-day Island Rover ticket is valid on all services. Northlink Ferries serves Orkney and Shetland from Scrabster and Aberdeen and sails between the two. 

Price: Sample fare with Northlink Ferries: Scrabster–Stromness from £343.20 for a four-berth cabin.

Dublin is a good place to start a family holiday in Ireland. It is home to Europe’s oldest and largest zoo and the Viking Splash tour. Other favourites include renting a cruiser on the longest inland waterways in Europe, including the River Shannon and Lough Neagh, the biggest lake in the British Isles.

You can go whale and dolphin watching from Cork, or discover Celtic history in the Dingle peninsula, thick with ruined churches, ancient crosses, standing stones and hermit hideaways. Take a scenic drive along the Antrim coast road, stopping at Carrick-a-Rede to cross the rope bridge – if you dare – slung 82ft above the sea, and to step over the Giant’s Causeway.

Belfast Zoo is always popular with kids, while the Cliffs of Moher in County Clare are home to Ireland’s largest mainland seabird colony.

Two excellent museums tell the story or Irish emigration and the doomed maiden voyage of the Titanic.

The lowdown

Getting there: P&O operates ferries from Liverpool to Dublin and Stena sails between Liverpool Birkenhead and Belfast. 

From Wales, Stena sails from Fishguard to Rosslare, Holyhead to Dublin and Holyhead to Dun Laoghaire.

Irish Ferries sails between Holyhead and Dublin/Dun Laoghaire and Pembroke to Rosslare. 

From Scotland, P&O Ferries sails from Cairnryan and Troon to Larne, and Stena operates between Cairnryan and Belfast. 

From Douglas on the Isle of Man you can sail to Belfast, Dublin and Larne with the Isle of Man Steam Packet Company.

Price: Sample fares for a car plus two adults and two children: Cairnryan–Larne from £262, Troon–Larne from £342, Dublin–Liverpool from £228.

The Netherlands can seem like a world away for little ones. The language, for starters, isn’t something they will have encountered in school. Then there’s the fact that half the country lies below sea level, many people really do wear wooden clogs, the buildings look like advent calendars, the see-forever landscapes are studded with windmills and there are pancakes to die for.

There’s so much to see and do. Amsterdam is a huge draw and a very child-friendly capital. You can travel around by bubble-like boats, visit Anne Frank’s House, check out the narrowest house in the world, see Rembrandts in the Rijksmuseum and try some Indonesian food, a legacy of the country’s colonial past.

Everything is nearby in Holland. Arnhem, the site of the disastrous World War II paratroop drop, is also home to a superb open-air museum where scores of buildings from all over the country were saved from decay and demolition, dismantled and brought here. It’s a great place to show children what the Netherlands once looked like, and history is brought alive by costumed actors.

From Rotterdam you’ll be less than an hour from Kaatsheuvel and the charming Efteling Theme Park Resort. An interesting road trip would first take in The Hague, the seat of Dutch government and nearby Delft, where you can visit the famous porcelain workshops.

Then drive to the model village at Madurodam, before finishing up at the seaside of Scheveningen. If sea and sand arehigh priority, you head north to the Friesian islands to enjoy the wild sandy beaches.

The lowdown

Getting there: Stena has crossings from Harwich to the Hook of Holland. From Hull you can sail with P&O Ferries to Rotterdam, which is also an excellent gateway if you want to hook up to the German autobahn links, and from Newcastle you can sail with DFDS to Amsterdam.

Price: Sample fare for a car plus two adults and two children with Stena: Harwich–Hook of Holland – from £166; from £384 including a four-berth cabin.

Sample fare for a car plus two adults and two children with P&O Ferries: Hull–Rotterdam – short break (up to five days) from £348, long break from £458.

Sample fare for a car plus two adults and two children with DFDS: Newcastle – Amsterdam from £249.

If you go on a quest to see magnificent castles, such as the sky-high château of Brissac (the tallest in France), or Saumur perched on a rocky outcrop above the river, you won’t be disappointed. But the region of the Pays de la Loire has far more to appeal to families.

Besides the châteaux, other iconic sites include Fontevraud, one of Europe’s most impressive abbeys where three English royals, Henry II, Richard the Lionheart and Eleanor of Aquitaine, are buried. You can even stay at the abbey’s new on-site hotel (opening in June).

History comes alive at he region’s award-winning theme park, Le Puy du Fou. You can watch chariot races, soldiers storming the castle walls and King Arthur slaying a dragon. The park also has a dog-sitting service for those families who bring their pooches.

Museums range from the huge mechanical creations housed in the Machines de l’Ile in Nantes, including a gigantic merry-go-round, to Le Mans, which tells the story of the famous 24-hour motor race.

The city also stages a spectacular sound and light event, Nuit des Chimères (Night of Dreams), throughout July and August. In Saint-Nazaire there’s also a museum devoted to transatlantic liners, Escal’Atlantic.

Aside from the many manmade attractions in the Pays de la Loire, its number-one asset is nature. Families who enjoy being active in the great outdoors will particularly enjoy cycling, through the gently contoured landscapes of the Mayenne, or along the newly opened continuous path along the Loire Valley.

Less well known to British visitors are the gorgeous beaches of Noirmoutier, an island reached via a causeway, famous for its oysters. Bird lovers will be drawn to the reeds and water meadows of the Brière marshes, and just waiting to be discovered by families who like to get off the beaten track, is the Île d’Yeu. Simply leave your car on the mainland, catch a ferry from Fromentine or Saint-Gilles-Croix-de-Vie, and explore the island, following old smugglers’ trails on foot or bike.

The lowdown

Accommodation: The region has a wide variety of places to stay, from modest guest houses to luxury hotels with Michelin-starred restaurants and thalassotherapy spas. For a classic sense of place, you can also stay in converted medieval châteaux. In addition to a number of camp sites, gites, tepees and log cabins, self-caterers can rent river cruisers on the Mayenne, a houseboat moored on the banks of the Loire, or a troglodyte ‘cottage’ carved into a limestone cliff.

Getting there: So many routes, so many ferries. The shortest crossing from Dover to Calais is operated by DFDS, P&Oand MyFerryLink while DFDS also operates the route between Newhaven and Dieppe and from Dover to Dunkirk. 

In the west you can sail from Poole to Saint-Malo with Condor Ferries (via the Channel Islands) and to Cherbourg with Brittany Ferries. The latter also sails from Plymouth to Roscoff and St Malo and from Portsmouth to Saint-Malo, Caen, Cherbourg and Le Havre. 

Condor also sails from Portsmouth to Cherbourg and from Weymouth to Saint-Malo (again via the Channel Isles). DFDS sails from Portsmouth to Le Havre. There are several additional services that link Irish ports with those in France.

Price: Sample fare for a short crossing (eg Dover–Calais) for a car plus two adults and two children with P&O Ferries: day trip from £60, short break (up to five days) from £78, long stay from £100.

Sample fare for 2 adults, 2 children and a car with DFDS: Dover to Dunkirk from £45.

Sample fares for a long crossing with Brittany Ferries for a car plus two adults and two children: Portsmouth–Le Havre £518, Portsmouth–Caen £378 (£430 with cabin), Portsmouth–Cherbourg £438, Portsmouth–St Malo £563 (£658 with cabin), Poole–Cherbourg £398 (£450 with cabin), Plymouth–Roscoff £438 (£533 with cabin).

There’s a corny, end-of-the-pier joke about the Isle of Wight, about how you can climb up Tennyson Down, the highest point on the island, and on a clear see all the way back for 40 years. Not anymore. Like donkey rides on the sands, knotted hankies, saucy postcards and Lobby Lud, the Isle of Wight has been deeply etched into the history of the English summer holiday. But if you haven’t been back for a while you’re in for a few surprises. There’s a new energy about the place, and a slew of stylish places to sleep, eat and shop. There is still, however, a timeless, fairytale aspect to the Isle of Wight experience. There are flowers for sale in buckets at the bottom of cottage paths, ladies in vanilla whites playing bowls on the esplanade, and an all-over rural loveliness. You can almost imagine gnomes nipping out from under their thatches to the shops and Noddy parp–parping his way through the traffic. 

Half of the island is an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Children will particularly love the chines, gulleys and gorges exotically dressed in shaggy ferns, carpets of moss, exotic blooms and pungent wild garlic. They can walk in the steps of dinosaurs, go fossil hunting on Compton Bay (Red Funnel Ferries has a downloadable fossil guide while Wightlink has a free Dinosaur Island app).

Other attractions include Ventnor Botanic Garden, which has plants from all over the world, Appuldurcombe Owl and Falconry Centre, Brading Roman Villa and Queen Victoria’s Osborne House, with its grandiose children’s Swiss Cottage play house, nursery and the Queen’s bathing machine.

It’s the ‘Isle’ bit that has kept Wight special. We imagine the island to be further away than it really is and the business of getting there much more of a hassle, but that five miles of water is more pleasure than pain. One regular visitor says that catching the ferry is as relaxing as switching off the bedroom light at night.

The lowdown

Getting there: Red Funnel operates a car ferry between Southampton and East Cowes and a passenger ferry between Southampton and West Cowes.

Wightlink operates ferry services between Lymington and Yarmouth and Portsmouth and Fishbourne and a foot passenger-only catamaran service between Portsmouth and Ryde.

Price: A day return for a car and up to seven passengers from £39.50. A period return for a car and up to seven passengers from £52.

Brittany is an all-embracing maritime experience, one that takes in perfect beaches bookended by granite headlands and endowed with low-tide rock pools teeming with marine life. There are bracing walks along sea cliffs, glorious views, lighthouses to warn ships of menacing rocks and furious tides.

You’ll find villages where fisherman still sport stripy tops and, of course, the freshest of seafood (plus masses of crêpesand galettes for children who turn their noses up at a heaving plateau de mer).

And if you run out of things to do on the mainland, there are the islands of Batz and Belle-Ile-en-Mer to explore. You could even stay put in a port.

Bundled behind its don’t-mess-with-me ramparts guarding the mouth of the river Rance, St Malo is the most dramatic of all the French ports. Get your bearings with a circular walk around the ramparts, then head for the beaches (such is the tidal range that the sea doesn’t just go out but seems to evaporate, unveiling enormous sands in its wake). There are lots of shops, a hypermarket, aquarium and seafood restaurants. You can also hop across the estuary to Dinard, nicknamed the Nice of the north. With its palms and pines, coves, granite headlands and Belle Epoque villas, it’s as if you’ve arrived on the Côte d’Azur rather than simply hopped just across the Channel.

Dinan, a hive of half-timbered houses and cobbled wonkiness clinging to a 200ft green gorge, is just a short drive (or boat ride) up the Rance. Families who manage to prise themselves away from the pleasure of the littoral will also find plenty of interest inland, among the forests and farmlands, medieval towns and villages snoozing in the sunshine. This is where you will be made most aware of how Brittany is different, its unique culture rooted in its Celtic heritage. It has more than 5,000 standing stones. If your visit coincides with a local festival, such as Cornouaille in Quimper, regarded as the cultural heart of Brittany, you will see locals wearing traditional costume.

The website whatson.brittanytourism.com is a useful one-stop shop for dates and details of fairs and festivals. 

Both indoors and out, there’s a wealth of attractions for families, including aquariums, zoos, cycling, watersports and investigating those Arthurian legends hiding in the enchanted Broceliande forest, aka Paimpont, where Merlin was turned to stone by the sorceress Viviane.

Specific temptations include snorkelling with grey seals off the north coast, gathering shellfish on the Crozon peninsula, sailing the Gulf of Morbihan on a traditional sailing ship and cycling the Velodysse, France’s longest cycle route, which will take you, mostly off road, all the way from Roscoff to the Spanish border. You can also pedal east across Normandy and return home by ferry from Cherbourg. Brittany, in other words, ticks all the family boxes, including ease of access from the UK and affordable accommodation. There are 1,000 campsites and numerous village de vacances where British children can mix with French enfants. If you do drive further south you’ll find scores more dotted along the Atlantic coast and in the pine forests immediately behind.

The lowdown

Accommodation: The region has a wide variety of places to stay, from modest guest houses to luxury hotels with Michelin-starred restaurants and thalassotherapy spas. For a classic sense of place, you can also stay in converted medieval châteaux. In addition to a number of camp sites, gites, tepees and log cabins, self-caterers can rent river cruisers on the Mayenne, a houseboat moored on the banks of the Loire, or a troglodyte ‘cottage’ carved into a limestone cliff.

Getting there: So many routes, so many ferries. The shortest crossing from Dover to Calais is operated by DFDS, P&O and MyFerryLink while DFDS also operates the route between Newhaven and Dieppe and from Dover to Dunkirk.

In the west you can sail from Poole to Saint-Malo with Condor Ferries (via the Channel Islands) and to Cherbourg with Brittany Ferries. The latter also sails from Plymouth to Roscoff and St Malo and from Portsmouth to Saint-Malo, Caen, Cherbourg and Le Havre.

Condor also sails from Portsmouth to Cherbourg and from Weymouth to Saint-Malo (again via the Channel Isles). DFDS sails from Portsmouth to Le Havre. There are several additional services that link Irish ports with those in France.

Price: Sample fare for a short crossing (eg Dover–Calais) for a car plus two adults and two children with P&O Ferries: day trip from £60, short break (up to five days) from £78, long stay from £100.

Sample fare for 2 adults, 2 children and a car with DFDS: Dover to Dunkirk from £45.

Sample fares for a long crossing with Brittany Ferries for a car plus two adults and two children: Portsmouth–Le Havre £518, Portsmouth–Caen £378 (£430 with cabin), Portsmouth–Cherbourg £438, Portsmouth–St Malo £563 (£658 with cabin), Poole–Cherbourg £398 (£450 with cabin), Plymouth–Roscoff £438 (£533 with cabin).

The Belgian coastline is fringed by miles of broad, sandy beaches. Ostend, also known as the City of the Sea, is its best known resort, but De Panne, where you’ll find the Plopsaland theme park, Oostduinkerke and Blankenberge are all popular with families. Such is the scale of Belgium that you can easily explore all its highlights on the one holiday without subjecting your little ones to long car.

Bruges is always a favourite with British visitors, but Leuven, Antwerp, Ghent and Mechelen, which has a toy museum, all have plenty to occupy families.

For children these towns will seem more like the settings for a fairytale than living, working communities.

Common to all of them, of course, are premier-league chocolate shops. This year, throughout Belgium, there will be a number of exhibitions, musical performances and other events to mark the 100th anniversary of World War I. These will take place in Flanders, where more than a million soldiers were wounded, killed, or went missing in action, and in Liege, the first city to be invaded, Mons, where the first battle took. And at Plugstreet, the famous Christmas football truce of 1914 will be re-enacted this December. If your children are into Tintin, you might want to factor in a day or two in Brussels, home to the Comic Strip Center and the Tintin shop. While you’re there, head to City Hall, where you can see a quirky collection of costumes worn by the Manneken Pis, the city’s famous statue of a little boy taking the most public leak in the world.

You should also add two parks to the agenda: Walibi amusement park in Wavre and the animal park at Pairi Daiza, which has two giant pandas on loan from China. 

The lowdown

Getting there: P&O Ferries sails from Hull to Zeebrugge, but the French Channel ports of Calais and Dunkirk are less than a 30-minute drive away. 

Price: Sample fare for a car plus two adults and two children, including four-berth cabin with P&O Ferries: short break (up to five days) from £348, long break from £458.

From an educational perspective there’s Bayeux, with that 70m-long tapestry depicting the horrible history of Harold getting an arrow in his eye; Rouen, where Joan of Arc was burnt at the stake by the English at the age of just 19; and William the Conqueror’s Abbey at Caen. His story is best told in his old Château de Falaise although, for sheer drama, Richard the Lionheart’s Château Gaillard, high above the village of Les Andelys overlooking a tight bend in the Seine, is more visually impressive. 

But the most iconic of all Normandy’s manmade structures is the abbey at Mont-Saint-Michel, which looms across either the sea or the sand, depending on the state of the tide.

With 2014 marking the 70th anniversary of the D Day landings and the Battle of Normandy, Normandy’s beaches will have major significance for schoolchildren, especially those with World War II on their syllabus.

From Sainte-Mère Église in the Manche to the beaches of Dieppe in Seine-Maritime, the coastline is dotted with war memorials and museums. Among them is the new Overlord Museum in Colleville-sur-Mer, which commemorates the soldiers who lost their lives. Unique in the landing beaches area is the 360-degree cinema at Arromanches, which shows footage of the invasions and the Battle of Normandy. It’s a big hit with children, as is the Juno Beach Centre at Courseulles-sur-Mer, which handles the war in a particularly sensitive manner. Normandy is the region of France most closely associated with the Impressionists. They were particularly inspired by the Seine Valley, the chalk cliffs of the Alabaster coast between Le Havre and Fécamp and the beaches and still traditional resorts on the so-called Flowered Coast between Cabourg and Honfleur. 

Check with the tourist offices for local events and exhibitions that celebrate the area’s art heritage and painting courses There’s plenty of family fun to be had in the new Biotropica Zoo, housed in a giant greenhouse in Val-de– Reuil, and at the maritime museum in Cherbourg.

For outdoor action, Normandy has miles of signposted cycle trails and a number of equestrian centres for those who prefer four legs to two wheels. You’ll be spoilt for choice when it comes to finding places to stay.

The lowdown

Accommodation: Among those likely to excite children are one of only two lighthouses in the whole of France to offer accommodation, just a few miles from the pretty port of Honfleur and, for older children (minimum age 16), sleeping in a tent suspended in the forests of Fécamp where on-site activities include paint balling and zip wiring. Other accommodation options include yurts, houseboats and campsites.

Getting there: So many routes, so many ferries. The shortest crossing from Dover to Calais is operated by DFDS, P&O and MyFerryLink while DFDS also operates the route between Newhaven and Dieppe and from Dover to Dunkirk.

In the west you can sail from Poole to Saint-Malo with Condor Ferries (via the Channel Islands) and to Cherbourg with Brittany Ferries. The latter also sails from Plymouth to Roscoff and St Malo and from Portsmouth to Saint-Malo, Caen, Cherbourg and Le Havre.

Condor also sails from Portsmouth to Cherbourg and from Weymouth to Saint-Malo (again via the Channel Isles). DFDS sails from Portsmouth to Le Havre. There are several additional services that link Irish ports with those in France.

Price: Sample fare for a short crossing (eg Dover–Calais) for a car plus two adults and two children with with P&O Ferries: day trip from £60, short break (up to five days) from £78, long stay from £100.

Sample fare for 2 adults, 2 children and a car with DFDS: Dover to Dunkirk from £45.

Sample fares for a long crossing with Brittany Ferries for a car plus two adults and two children: Portsmouth–Le Havre £518, Portsmouth–Caen £378 (£430 with cabin), Portsmouth–Cherbourg £438, Portsmouth–St Malo £563 (£658 with cabin), Poole–Cherbourg £398 (£450 with cabin), Plymouth–Roscoff £438 (£533 with cabin).

The Channel Islands make up our southernmost archipelago, but lie just off the French coast. You can expect an altogether milder climate than the home shores as well as a distinctly different form of government. They are part of Great Britain and the Queen is their head of state (although she is known as the Duke of Normandy), the islands do not belong to the United Kingdom, so you can expect lots of French flavours as well as the familiar.

Aside from an abundance of sandy beaches sloshed by the Gulf Stream, which nurtures the islands’ gentle climate, the breadth of attractions is surprisingly impressive for such seemingly small blobs on the map. On Jersey, for example, they range from rock pool expeditions at low, really low, tide to a German underground hospital. Two of the best beaches are St Brelade’s Bay and Beauport. Families will also discover one of the best zoos in the country, Gerald Durrell’s Wildlife Park. If you’re planning to visit during the school summer holiday don’t miss the island’s annual Battle of Flowers on 14–15 August, a celebration of spring that dates back to the 1902.

Guernsey offers a similar blend of summer pleasures, from the long sandy sweeps of beach on the west coast to secluded caves in the south. There are cliff-top walks and rural rambles, many of which little legs will be able to manage. Like Jersey, Guernsey was occupied by the Germans during World War II and had an underground hospital. Learn about the island’s history at La Valette Underground Military Museum, which is housed in a complex of tunnels built by slave labour during the war, and the German Occupation Museum.

Other attractions include Castle Cornet, a 13th-century harbour island linked to the main island by breakwater and bridge with stunning views across to Herm and Sark, the seashell-covered Little Chapel and Victor Hugo’s beautifully decorated Hauteville House, where he wrote Les Misérables. 

Outdoor activities include cycling on designated tracks and horse riding. Aside from its shops and bistros, the lively harbour capital of St Peter Port is also a jumping-off point for visiting the sister islands of Alderney, the third largest island which lies just eight miles from France, Sark with 40 miles of picturesque coastline and no cars, and tiny Herm, just 1.5 miles long and half a mile wide – ideal for families who love to get away from it all and enjoy unspoilt beaches and a car-free environment.

The lowdown

Getting there: Condor Ferries operates car and passenger services to Jersey and Guernsey from Portsmouth, Weymouth and Poole, plus inter-island services. 

Price: Return fare from the UK to Jersey or Guernsey costs from £336 for a car plus two adults and two children.