When you purchase a ticket for the Bari - Durres ferry you are told you must print it. This would be a challenge for any participant who booked whilst on the road, but I was smug in my forward planning, and had carefully transported the small slip of paper through seven countries by now.


That smugness would have resulted in denied boarding, were it not for the advance warning of faster racers. For the ticket is just the start. First, it must be exchanged for a boarding pass. You might imagine you could do this at the ferry terminal, since the ferry companies all have desks there, and it’s where the ship leaves from.


You would be wrong. The exchange must be made at another facility, 2km across the port. Whilst local buses will (eventually) convey you from Bari Centrale to the terminal, from there you must await a shuttle to the check-in desks.


None of this is ever explained to you by, say, email, nor mentioned on the ferry company websites. I met an unsurprisingly confused older Italian man at the bus stop and explained this to him through the magic of google translate; when an unmarked van turned up some time later, he was kind enough to confirm it was the shuttle and usher me on board.


​After a 6 minute drive down a bumpy track too trafficked by lorries to be a viable walk we reached the counters. There a disinterested man on his phone issued my boarding pass in an impressive two minutes - but the shuttle only waits for one. So I waited half an hour for the same bus to complete another lap, and return me to the ferry terminal I’d first reached, ‘ticket’ in hand, almost an hour earlier.


Not that there was any urgency required - although the ship was scheduled to dock around 19:30, it was still offshore at 20:15 when I returned with yet another pizza from one of the few nearby food options. It was not possible to proceed through security to the departures area because, as I discovered much later, there is no departures area.






Fortunately I was able to secure a spot on one of the few grey steel benches pre-security, where I was joined by a couple more racers. We fell in to a conversation about all things travel, which became epic in length thanks to the complete lack of progress with the ferry. Around 21:30 the screens declared it ready for boarding, triggering the formation of a queue, but it wasn’t until almost 23:00 that the barriers were lifted.


Some - but not all - passengers were let through, but I and many others were not permitted, gestured away with only repeated shouts of “DOPO” by way of an explanation. Our best theory? Passengers who had booked with GNV (operators of the lunchtime service I originally booked) had to be processed separately, as this was an Adria service.


After another ten minutes, we were permitted to enter security - most people were waved through, but I was one of the lucky few picked for bag screening. Next was border control, where I presumably exited Schengen, although received no stamp to prove it.








Rejoining the others outside, I got my first look at the ship, a short distance away on another pier. Another queue had formed, for a bus to transport passengers across in far-too-small groups. Consulting a man dressed entirely in camouflage, he approved our request to just walk, which took all of 3 minutes. Dodging traffic on the vehicle ramp, I set foot aboard.


Two more steps to the check-in dance: surrendering half my boarding pass to be allowed out of the parking garage, and then trading my passport for a cabin key. At 23:30, supposedly 15 minutes shy of departure, I finally reached my cabin.