Red Funnel Day Return for £50 in Summer 2025 (Car + Passengers)

Red Funnel is doing a day return with a car for £50

Book Red Funnel's
​£50 day return deal

I'm considering getting a bell or klaxon installed at home to announce a new ferry discount. It might wake the neighbours but I'm sure they'd understand when I told them that Red Funnel had a sale on.

Today's offer is a £50 day return for a standard sized car and passengers, and is valid until 30 September 2025. You can book it here.

This is about as cheap as it gets for taking a car to the Isle of Wight. For a family of four, it's about £6 per person, per crossing, which is hard to complain about. 

Red Funnel's Big Book of Savings has offered something similar but it requires midweek travel and it also requires you to know someone on the Isle of Wight who will share their unique discount code.

This offer is simpler and is open to everyone.

The main things to note are:

• You need to book via this page.
• There are only 50,000 tickets available. I've no idea if that's a lot or not very many but Red Funnel has capacity to take about 7600 cars across per day, according to my back-of-an-envelope calculation (200 cars per crossing x 38 crossings per day).
• You need to travel by 30 September
• It's only for day returns
• It's for vehicles up to 5.5m long (i.e. nearly all cars and some cars with a bike rack on the back)
• It's for vehicles up to 2m in height. That's a little more limiting as a roofbox or kayaks would probably take you over. However, you can upgrade and take taller vehicles for a very modest add-on of £2.50 per leg.
• The offer is only available "on sailings from Southampton between the hours of 0600 to 1000 and 1700 to 2359, and sailings from East Cowes between the hours of 0630 to 1030 and 1730 to 2359. I assume this has been done to ensure that people really are doing a day return and to keep people away from the peak lunchtime ferries.

What if I don't want a day return?

There's no need to use that tone.

There are other deals around at the moment for discounted overnight stays on the Isle of Wight. You can get 20% off via this ​exclusive page until 31 July and you can find other offers on this discount ferries page.

What should I do on a day trip to the ISle of Wight?

The Isle of Wight is small enough that you can pretty much get anywhere with a car. This ferry arrives in East Cowes, which is on the northern end of the Island and is a good starting point. 

Some options:

• Drive the Wighty 90, which is a 90km driving route that covers a lot of the most scenic parts of the Island. It takes a couple of hours, but you can stop off for an ice cream when you see something you like.
• Do a few free things, since you've already coughed up for the ferry. The Isle of Wight has an abundance of these, including 20+ beaches and some decent free attractions including the Isle of Wight Donkey Sanctuary and Quarr Abbey. There are also various things that are free if you have National Trust or English Heritage Membership including Carisbrooke Castle or Osborne House.
• Take a look at our day trip guide from Southampton for more ideas.
  

Pop across to Compton Bay with your day return deal