Sussex university student shares comical Apple Maps route via France from Portsmouth

The student, known as Ash on X (formerly Twitter), was told to take a ferry from Portsmouth Ferry Harbour to Le Havre, then drive 90 minutes to the fishing port town of Dieppe. He would then board a ferry to Newhaven in East Sussex before driving to Brighton.

This 11-hour and seven minute journey – crossing the English Channel – was offered as a better alternative to the standard one-hour car journey, as it ‘avoids the severe rain warning’.

Sharing the comical iPhone app map on X on Monday evening (September 23), Ash wrote: “Can’t wait to take this route to uni tomorrow!”

The post has seen been viewed 4.8M times and has been liked by 177,000 people. It has also made national news headlines.

One of the hundreds of comments from amused X users read: “This is clearly the better route. I mean how else are you gonna avoid the severe rain?”

Another quipped: “At least you wont get wet.”

Referencing notorious rush-hour traffic, a third person wrote: “Hope you're not stuck at Chichester too long.”

This sentiment was shared in another reply, which read: “Having done that awful crawl along the A27 hundreds of times, it's probably easier!”

This comes during a month when the UK has been hit by heavy rain – with another yellow weather warning now in place.

The Met Office said there is a ‘small chance’ that homes and businesses ‘could be flooded’. The latest yellow warning comes into force at 5pm on Thursday (September 26) – lasting until 10am on Friday.

Included in the warning area is the entirety of Sussex and Surrey – and stretches as far north as Nottingham.