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Dover-Calais return ferry & 6 bottles of wine, £20! screamed the headline from my favourite weekly inbox treat, the MoneySavingExpert mailing list email.

Looking further into the offer, with ferry company P&O, you book two of the special £10 each way crossings to return on the same day, and they give you a case of six bottles of red or white wine, plus a voucher for a BOGOF meal on board. Sounds good - perfect for the so-called 'booze cruisers' who head off to Calais, stock up on all kinds of alcohol and tobacco, and then head back to the UK with a heavier car and a lighter wallet (but not as light as it would be in the UK!).

One problem: we weren't particularly interested in getting crates of lager and boxes of wine - and we don't smoke. But, what we did need was practice driving on the other side of the road before our summer trip around Croatia, Bosnia and Montenegro. As it will be our first time driving t'other way round, some practice would come in handy in order not to crash on the way out of the car hire shop.

A cursory glance at Google Maps showed us that places of interest around smelly Calais could be Lille, Boulogne or, just over the Belgian border, Brugge (or Bruges). Chocolate (and the fact we'd also get experience in border crossing protocol!) took precedence over frogs legs, and the decision was made.

The P&O website then decided it was an opportune moment to crash, at the last stage of the booking process. We thought we'd have a quick peek at the other ferry services out of Dover to see if the deal could be beaten (I know, we should have done this first...). Then we discovered that Norfolkline sail between Dover and Dunkerque, about a third of the way between Calais and Brugge, for £19. Despite missing out on the free wine and one free meal, what swayed it for us was the fact that you could return on a different day if you wanted. So, instead of having to leave Luton at 0500 and arriving back somewhere around 2300 on the same day, having driven for most of the day across three countries, we could stay a night, get up and arrive back at decent times, and make a weekend of it.

St Christopher's Budget Hotel was duly booked with the Norfolkline ferry tickets (whose website worked throughout), and for £44 plus petrol, I think it's the cheapest city break we'll ever have been on!