Ferries France to Portsmouth

The ferry ports at Le Havre, Caen, Cherbourg, and St. Malo are all similar. Working ports, not tourist attarctions, and the towns are typical non-tourist towns working towns, not rough. Your decision should be based on convenience of location and departures. A short taxi ride from hotel or car-hire drop-off to the ship should not break your budget.

Consider an overnight ferry, it saves you a night in a hotel, and gets you to Portsmouth at breakfast time (after having breakfast on the ferry). Sleeping on the ferry is less boring than wasting ½ day looking out at the sea. Be on deck at least ½ hour before arrival to watch the ship entering Portsmouth Harbour.

Don't forget to spend some time in Portsmouth, old town, historic dockyard (Mary Rose, HMS Victory)

Thanks, it's very helpful to know that none of the departure ports are particularly dodgy.
High speed ferries for foot passengers run out of Cherbourg (3 hrs) and Le Havre (3 hrs 45 min) so we are considering taking one of those. I realize the high speed boats are a bit more vulnerable to weather disruptions, but May doesn't tend to be a severe weather month.

Adding to Chris' comments Saint-Malo is probably the more touristy of the ports in France and can be a pleasant few hours in its historical areas. Cherbourg and Le Havre still show that they suffered massively in WWII and got rebuilt afterwards in a particularly brutal 1960s fashion some French cities suffered from. The port for Caen is a few km north of the city proper at Ouistreham, but has the advantage of being not far from Caen proper, again a major regional city but one that was rebuilt much better than a lot of cities in Europe. Rennes is about an hour before you get to Saint-Malo and could be added as stop. Again it is the Breton regional capital but is worth seeing.

Thanks so much, this is very helpful. I do remember St Malo figuring in art history courses.
As far as I can find out, the car hire in Portsmouth is only open until 1800 hrs or 1830, so if we departed out of St Malo we'd need to take the overnight. The daytime departure doesn't arrive in Portsmouth until 1820.
(My distaste for overnight ferries comes from an experience in North America some years ago on an antiquated car ferry where the ensuite cabin was much more expensive than a budget hotel room, dingy and malodorous, as well as being permeated with the ship's engine noise, resulting in a very poor night's sleep.)
Brittany Ferries may be a much more pleasant experience -- at least one can hope! Still, all else being equal we'd prefer to pay for a decent hotel on land, then spend the daytime ferry hours relaxing or doing "travel errands" like writing postcards. Which probably means departing from either Caen or Le Havre.

Brittany Ferries offers 2 sailings on the Normandie Express from Cherbourg to Portsmouth. The trip takes 3 hours.approx. Both sailings are in listed in the evening. Just check to make sure they are running on the days you want. It looks like there is one from Cherbourg that goes to Poole as well. We did the one from Cherbourg to Portsmouth. Our only issue was a difficulty in finding a taxi on Sunday from the train station to the ferry terminal. The area near the ferry terminal was fine and I know that because we walked from the train station to the terminal ( not recommended). We got a taxi when we arrived in Portsmouth and spent the night there.

Thanks for the confirmation that the ferry area in Cherbourg is reasonably safe. And the important reminder of how things close down on Sundays in France!

The plot thickens . . . when I went to book, I found there are certain dates when NO ferry runs from one port or another! We'll be traveling in May, and it looks like the ferry company must take some of their boats out of service for several days in May for pre-season maintenance or something.
I wouldn't be concerned about booking so far in advance except that our rental car reservation will depend on which French city we'll be using to drop off the car. I don't want to incur a fee for changing our rental car reservation. And of course we don't want to get stranded in France and thrown behind on the English leg of our trip.
I'm not necessarily looking for answers here, just noting the existence of "no service" dates in case anyone else is reading this and making plans for the spring "shoulder season."

Yes, your interpretation is correct. Every year, in the least busy time, they take the boats out of service for maintenance. You may also find they substitute boats from other routes, so instead of one boat sailing A to B, and another A to C, you have one boat doing A to B or A to C on alternate dates.

Thanks, Chris! I'm glad to know I'm not reading the schedule wrong regarding those nonexistent dates in May. The maintenance outages will narrow down our choices of departure port, but that's OK.

New quandary! Because of the pre-season taking boats out of service for maintenance, I find Caen is the only departure port that suits our itinerary in early May. Now we have to figure out where to drop off our rental car.
I found in Wikipedia that the actual ferry dock is in Ouistreham, "15 km (9.3 mi) from Caen with a daytime shuttle bus service for foot passengers."

Apparently there is no car rental in Ouistreham, is that right? I've looked it up and there doesn't seem to be one. If so, we have to drop off our car in Caen and ride the shuttle bus.
The choice appears to be either:
(A) Overnight ferry, which means dropping off the car 4 1/2 hrs before departure and having a leisurely dinner, hanging around waiting, then boarding the shuttle bus -- which will be OK if it isn't raining; OR
(B) Sleep in a hotel in Caen and take the morning ferry, arriving Portsmouth early afternoon.
Either way, we positively need to know the actual point of car dropoff and the existence of a shuttle bus. The ferry booking site has a "contact us" link, so I have asked them about this, but so far they have not answered.

At http://www.busverts.fr/, you can get bus schedules between Ouistreham Port and Caen Gare SNCF, where most car rental offices are located. See also this forum thread addressing taxis, which should be a back-up option.

Thanks, Laura. This is reassuring and very helpful.

So, apparently the ferry company doesn't actually provide a shuttle bus, passengers are simply on their own to get to the Ouistreham dock. Wow!

After much discussion, we decided to book the overnight ferry even though we are a bit apprehensive about sleep quality on a boat. We thought it would be smarter to have the booking to get to England sooner so that, in case of a weather disruption or other delay, we'd still be able to make our England itinerary.