A mother has been stuck for more than 12 hours at the port of Dover with her children as authorities declared a “critical incident” in the first evening of the Easter break. At 9pm on Friday night, queues to board ferries across the English Channel had already reached seven hours, according to DFDS Seaways, and the situation has grown more drastic overnight, with more than 70 coaches full of holidaymakers waiting to be processed in the early hours of Saturday morning.
A geography teacher posted on Twitter at 6.23am on Saturday morning to say that she was “still at the port of Dover”.
She said she had “left school at 4pm” with her children but had struggled to get past the hordes of traffic, which appear to have continued building up overnight.
The delays are believed to have been caused by an overwhelming of the system as thousands flocked to Dover on the first evening of the two-week school Easter holidays.
Bad weather and “extended processing at border controls” on the French side of the Channel have also significantly exacerbated the waiting times.
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