Bruce Peter's Blog: Spirit of Britain

A couple of crossings of the Dover Strait on P&O's new flagship ferry Spirit of Britain. This will be the theme ship in Shippax Designs 2011 (see http://www.shippax.se/). I was accompanied by Klas Brogren and Mike Louagie - respectively owner of Shippax and photographer/editor of Cruise & Ferry Info. As you can see, throughout, the weather was perfect and there were good photographic opportunities at the beach in Calais (above and below):

After photographing Spirit of Britain's arrival, we made a little diversion to Dunkerque to photograph the DFDS Seaways 'D-class' in their new livery:

Then back to Calais and onboard Spirit of Britain, initially for an evening crossing to Dover. Here, Klas poses on the vehicle deck:

P&O's British food promotion in the 'Routemasters' truckers' restaurant:

My dinner in the Brasserie - a very fine steak it was too:

Next morning, we could explore the ship in daylight. She is very spacious and bright:

A DFDS Seaways 'D-class' leaves Dover:

More interiors on Spirit of Britain:

Breakfast in the truckers' restaurant:

Mike Louagie at work with his camera, documenting Spirit of Britain for posterity:

Klas gives a close inspection to all of the details of the Brasserie restaurant and the adjacent delicatessen shop:

Throughout, the vessel is decorated with facsimiles of vintage P&O trave posters:

A brief outline history of P&O in a hallway also proved very popular with passengers. Whenever I passed by, people were reading it and looking at the photographs:

Dover Strait passengers doing tradtional things on the sun deck:

Decks already in need of a good clean.

Arriving at Calais and the shop:

The very bright and attractive family lounge - here there was a lot of attention to design details:

The sun decks are also very attractive, but quite a lot of passengers were irritated by the height of the glazed screens. There is also a more swish Club Class sun deck with sun loungers (below):