Chaos saw at the port of Dover saw some Welsh schoolchildren queue for more than 18 hours at border control at the start of the Easter getaway. A group of pupils from Pontypool arrived at the English port of Dover in the early hours of Sunday morning and didn't get on to a ferry until 8pm last night.
When they did eventually get on a ferry it was quiet, but their teacher said the problem was a lack of staff on the border control.
Speaking to BBC Radio Wales from a service station in Frankfurt on Monday morning, Ysgol Gymraeg Gwynllyw teacher Gwyn Rosser said: "We have a lot of tired faces this morning but we made it across the Channel.. It has been a very stressful trip so far. The buses that were meant to take us on Saturday morning cancelled on us so we had to find two other buses. We left Pontypool at 9pm and arrived in Dover about 2am.
"We had delays from then and managed to catch the 8pm ferry on Sunday. There was not much communication. We had one ferry operator representative come to see us throughout the day who said they were trying to do their best, but apart from that there was no communication at all. We were left in limbo. We could see five lanes going into one lane for passport check in.
"The ferry last night was empty. The problem is at the border check in. There were only three staff there. When you have 50 children on a bus that is going to take time. There were just not enough staff there to get us through."
The group was allowed out of the coach, but there was a 90-minute queue for the ladies toilets and a lack of water.
"The main concern was the food and water. We were worried about how to get them enough. The children were great but we were in limbo and didn't know what was going on.
"Spirits are still high even though our skiing has been delayed by a day. We are just glad to finally be on the road and getting to our destination."
Other schools caught up in the chaos included Cardiff's Radyr Comprehensive where a group had to make an unscheduled overnight stay at Reims, France, and it took them 52 hours to get to their final destination in the Alps.
Another group from Ysgol Gyfun Rhydywaun, in Hirwaun, Rhondda Cynon Taf, were put up in a hotel in Aachen, Germany because they had been delayed so long.
Teacher Bethan Cambourne said: "The most frustrating thing was that when we were on the boat, it wasn't busy at all. We travel to Austria and have made the trip several times in 24 hours from Aberdare to Saalbach in Austria. But it has taken 24 hours to reach Calais this time."
A group from Ysgol Glan Clwyd in St Asaph, Denbighshire, arrived at Dover at about 8.30pm on Saturday and had to wait at the Cruise Terminal until 2am on Sunday. They were then warned of a further five or six hours queuing before reaching the port, which has turned out to be much longer.
Mared Vaughan, a teacher at the school, told BBC Wales: "We've been there for 13 and a half hours without food. All we got were bottles of water. The children haven't eaten since last night and it's now 3:30pm. We hope to arrive at the hotel by tomorrow morning but we have a long journey ahead of us to reach the south of France."
Disruption at the Port of Dover was first reported on Friday when the port declared a critical incident and said the delays were "due to lengthy French border processes and sheer volume".
Some had to cancel their holidays altogether due to the mayhem, with a coach carrying a football team having to abandon the trip after the driver reached the maximum time limit at the wheel.
The queues at the entrance were finally cleared in the early hours of Monday morning after a weekend of disruption. P&O Ferries tweeted: "There are no longer any queues at the entrance to the Port of Dover. We apologise for the wait times experienced this weekend."
Extra sailings have been run overnight with port officials saying they had been "working round the clock" with ferry operators and border agencies to try to get coach passengers on their way.
On Sunday night, the Port of Dover said around 40 coaches were awaiting immigration processing with a wait of around four hours expected.
Home Secretary Suella Braverman rejected suggestions that Brexit could be the cause of delays at the port as passengers endured long queues and cancelled trips.
Ms Braverman said it would not be fair to view the delays as "an adverse effect of Brexit".
She told Sophy Ridge On Sunday on Sky News: "What I would say is at acute times when there is a lot of pressure crossing the Channel, whether that's on the tunnel or ferries, then I think that there's always going to be a back-up and I just urge everybody to be a bit patient while the ferry companies work their way through the backlog."
She suggested that in general "things have been operating very smoothly at the border".
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