Ferry Portsmouth - Guernsey

Portsmouth – Guernsey with Condor Ferries

This route links Portsmouth with Guernsey, operated by Condor Ferries. The two ferry terminals are about 180 kilometres (100 nautical miles) apart in a straight line. Use the search engine above for current timetables and fares, or use the Direct Ferries button at the top of the page to compare the sailings.

Founded in 1964 by two Channel Islands businessmen, Condor Ferries is the main link between the UK, Jersey, Guernsey and Saint-Malo, carrying around a million passengers a year as well as the islands' freight. Since September 2024 it has been majority-owned by Brittany Ferries, which is bringing the services under its own name.

Portsmouth

Portsmouth is the only island city in the United Kingdom: the old town sits on Portsea Island, joined to the mainland by bridges. It produced two famous sons within six years of each other. Isambard Kingdom Brunel was born in Portsea in 1806 and Charles Dickens followed in 1812 at a modest house in Landport, now a museum furnished as it would have been in his day. Over in Southsea, a young doctor named Arthur Conan Doyle ran a practice in the 1880s and wrote the first Sherlock Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet, while waiting for patients. Ferries leave from the International Port on the harbour's eastern side for Normandy, Brittany, the Channel Islands and northern Spain, so many visitors arrive here with a long drive or an overnight sailing ahead of them.

Guernsey

Guernsey is an island of small, specific delights. The Little Chapel at Les Vauxbelets, begun by Brother Déodat in 1914, is a miniature cathedral covered in pebbles, seashells and fragments of broken china, and is said to be among the smallest chapels in the world. The island's name lives on in clothing, the guernsey jumper once knitted for its fishermen, and in the golden-milk Guernsey cow. More recently it became the setting for The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, the 2008 novel and 2018 film about life after the wartime Occupation. From St Peter Port, boats leave for neighbouring Herm and Sark, so the harbour makes a natural base for island-hopping.