Quote: Originally posted by CaddyClan on 30/7/2011
Yup we had our caravan thoroughly searched a couple of weeks ago but this was when we were leaving Portsmouth...perhaps the illegals are now wanting to go home after realizing things aren't so great here anymore? lol. We weren't checked coming back into the UK, either France side or UK.
No so unlikely as it sounds! We were behind a truck at Calais (on our way to France not home again) about three years ago, and it was stopped at French customs, and about thirty men piled out of the back. They were well hidden, the cargo was piled up inside the back door and they had to climb over to get out. They all looked to have the same very dark skin - and I did wonder if they were 'returning' immigrants who had not found Britain the honey-pot free-for-all which it's made out to be!
We spend about twenty minutes watching it all unfold before we were allowed to move on.
Don't forget to leave a review of the French and other European campsites you have visited!
It must have been over 10 years ago we were approached in the Calais Tunnel complex by a "chinese" looking woman with a small child. She asked for a lift through the tunnel.
We have had our caravan searched before. Now we are very careful ourselves.
At Zeebrugge they wanted us to open our trailer tent. We explained that there was no space for anyone to hide as it was full of canvas and framework. We also explained that it would be a pig to get closed again. And I told the young man that if he wanted me to open it, he would have to close it up again....... he sort of lost interest.
We had that one year too but sailing from Newcastle. Weird. The lady official was okay about us not opening it as long as I agreed to have a pat down body search instead. Double weird. Some sort of exercise? The worst bit though was that as I shut the rear car door to allow her room to do this, my OH thought I'd got back in the car and drove off! Once retrieved by a couple of other somewhat p*ssed off officials Hubby and I did have to open up the TT after all because we were behaving suspiciously. Only the lady official seemed to belive my explaination of my Hubby just being a dozy git most of the time.
Don't forget to leave a review of the French and other European campsites you have visited!
10 years ago we were stopped boarding the ferry to go to France, at Portsmouth with a trailer tent. He searched our car boot and then looked at the trailer tent and said 'right we will have that opened', we said 'Are you sure'?. An older customs officer then quickly came over and very politely and forcibly said to our eager and younger customs official and said 'we don't open them, once you open those up you'll never get everything back in'. We then left for our holiday.
Since then we have not been searched only had the passports checked. We found walking through customs one year far more time consuming and intimidating. Everyone with any colour to their skin was given a truely hard time getting into this country.