Telegraph Travel Awards 2013: Best ferry operator French-run Brittany Ferries has been an enduring favourite with Telegraph readers, who consistently set it a notch above its rivals in previous surveys. Its long Channel crossings to Caen, Cherbourg, St Malo and Roscoff offer a very different experience from the express ferries between Dover and Calais, more of a short cruise than a ferry crossing, with a particular emphasis on good food. On some routes too, there are slower overnight crossings, which allow you to break the journey with a decent night's sleep after your meal. In short, readers know that when they cross over to Brittany or Nomandy, they can break the drive with the most pleasant of sea-crossings. I say "drive," but recently more and more of Brittany Ferries" passengers are cyclists. So far in 2013, it has carried 50,236 of them - up 17 per cent on last year, helped no doubt by the recent success of the sport in Britain, but also by a developing infrastructure of cycling routes in northern France. Its 24-hour-long services across the Bay of Biscay to Santander and Bilbao, meanwhile, are as much a "mini" cruise as a convenient way of getting from Portsmouth and Plymouth to the north of Spain. P&O offers a more eclectic range of services, with quick crossings between Dover and Calais, much longer ones over the North Sea (Hull to Rotterdam and Zeebrugge), and its Liverpool to Dublin and Cairnryan to Larne services across the Irish Sea. Most significantly, however, readers prefer it over rival operators DFDS and Myferrylink on the key Dover-Calais route, where a fast turnround and efficient embarkation and disembarkation are key. Stena no longer sails across the Channel, so its third-place finish reflects a good performance for its crossings on the Irish Sea (routes to Rosslare, Dublin and Belfast) and over the North Sea between Harwich and the Hook of Holland.