Ferries from Boulogne-sur-Mer

Two ferry services run from Boulogne-sur-Mer, and they leave from places two kilometres and one entire universe apart: an overnight ship to Ireland from a freight terminal in the next commune, and a twelve-seat sailing catamaran to England from the marina in the middle of town. Both are recent. Neither appears on most booking sites, which still tell visitors this port has no ferries at all.

Cork, six nights a week

Hibernia Line opened the first direct Ireland–France link through Boulogne on 12 June 2026, running Boulogne-sur-Mer to Ringaskiddy in Cork, Monday to Saturday, all year. Two ships share the roster and they keep different clocks:

Departs Boulogne	Ship	Arrives Cork	Time at sea
Monday 13:30	Akka	Tuesday 12:30	24h
Tuesday 22:00	St Patrick	Wednesday 18:30	21h30
Wednesday 17:30	Akka	Thursday 16:00	23h30
Thursday 22:00	St Patrick	Friday 18:30	21h30
Friday 20:30	Akka	Saturday 19:00	23h30
Saturday 22:00	St Patrick	Sunday 21:00	24h

France is an hour ahead of Ireland, which is why the clock times understate the crossing. Note the spread: booking a Tuesday instead of a Monday saves two and a half hours at sea.

The terminal is in Le Portel, not Boulogne

Sat-nav for Voie supérieure B, 62480 Le Portel, on the southern side of the harbour. The A16 runs past the gate, which is the practical argument for this port over the Channel ones: Paris is roughly two and a half hours, Lille and the Belgian border less, and there is no urban approach to fight through. Immigration and customs are handled on arrival, and Hibernia has exclusive use of the terminal, so nothing queues behind another operator's sailing. The town centre is about 2 km away — walkable in theory, a short taxi in practice with bags.

Arrive two hours before departure. Check-in closes at 45 minutes and stays closed.

The other crossing: twelve seats, under sail

SailLink works from the opposite end of the scale. Echoes, a 17-metre catamaran, carries twelve passengers and their bicycles from Dover's Granville Dock to the Quai de l'Europe in central Boulogne — marina to marina, no terminal building, four to five hours depending on wind. An adult single is £85, a bike £10, and the season runs from mid-April to about mid-September. There is no car deck and there never will be. You meet the crew at the pontoon gate; the French border police and UK Border Force do passport checks dockside.

The full route detail is on the Dover–Boulogne-sur-Mer page.

What you cannot do here: take a car to England

People still search for it, and two of the larger booking sites still quote a 1 hour 45 minute Dover–Boulogne crossing. That service is long gone. SpeedFerries ran Speed One — 200 cars, 800 passengers — from 2004 until its vessel was arrested at Boulogne in November 2008. LD Lines picked the route up and dropped it in 2010, its managing director saying a second ship had not produced the traffic they had hoped for. Nothing has replaced it.

If you need to drive to England, the crossing is at Calais, about 33 km north on the A16 — half an hour — or at Dunkirk beyond it.

Which Boulogne do you want?

	Hibernia Line	SailLink
Where	Hub Port, Le Portel	Marina, Quai de l'Europe
To	Cork, Ireland	Dover, England
Vehicles	Cars, vans, caravans, bikes	Bicycles only
Capacity	Ro-pax ship	12 passengers
Season	All year, Mon–Sat	Mid-April to mid-September
Crossing	21h30–24h	4–5 hours

The working port around you

Boulogne is France's leading fishing port and the ferry berths are a small part of what goes on here. More than 30,000 tonnes of fish cross the quayside auction each year, landed by a fleet of roughly 120 boats, most of them small coastal vessels. Behind the harbour, the Capécure zone processes and trades over 300,000 tonnes of seafood annually and employs more than 5,000 people, which makes it Europe's largest centre of its kind. Arriving at four in the morning on a lorry deck, you are in the middle of it.