Holidaymakers travelling by coach have turned back from Dover and parents say children on school trips have been treated "worse than cattle" amid travel chaos at the start of the Easter getaway.

The first weekend of the holidays saw a huge backlog in the south coast town with the Port of Dover declaring a “critical incident”.

Extra sailings were run - including through the night -  to try to clear the backlog. A port spokesman said the delays, which began on Friday, were "due to lengthy French border processes and sheer volume".

The spokesman said staff at the port had been "working round the clock" with ferry operators and border agencies to try and get coach passengers on their way and more than 300 coaches had left the port on Saturday.

The freight backlog was cleared and tourist cars had been successfully processed, the spokesman said.

However on Sunday, numerous coaches carrying groups of schoolchildren were still stuck waiting to board.

Other holidaymakers travelling by coach experienced gruelling delays, with one woman telling the BBC her coach turned around and travelled back to London having been told there was "no chance of a ferry today".

Meanwhile, Abbie Warner, said her 14-year-old daughter was stuck in a queue for more than 24 hours.

She said the coach had left on a trip to Italy at 1pm on Saturday and arrived in Dover at 5pm to catch a 9pm sailing - only to be turned around and sent to wait in a service station car park.

The coach waited overnight before returning to the port at 5am to wait in a queue for customs, she said.

Ms Warner said the group was left without food and water, or access to a toilet on board for more than 12 hours before finally boarding a ferry.

She added: “These are children and [they] are being treated worse than cattle… Clearly there needs to be a thorough investigation into how this has happened and if border control can only cope with a certain number of buses the ferry companies should be capped on how many they can sell.”

A spokesman for DFDS, the ferry operator Ms Warner’s daughter was travelling with, said: “The company is very sorry that passengers travelling by coach this weekend have experienced such long delays at passport controls.”

Impromptu game of cricket

One group of cricket players caught up in the chaos decided to make the best of the situation and passed the time by playing an impromptu match while they waited.

Facing a 10-hour delay, 20-year-old Conor White and fellow students from Southampton University Cricket Club began a game at Folkestone services in Kent after their planned college trip to Italy was delayed.

There were estimated waits of between six and eight hours for coach passengers on Sunday, depending on the ferry operator, according to Dover. But other outlets reported waits of up to 14 hours.

The port said 111 coaches were waiting to cross the English Channel on Sunday afternoon. More than 300 coaches departed from the port on Saturday.

On Sunday a "buffer zone" was in place as staff tried to ease waiting times, with the BBC reporting ferry companies had seen an unexpected 15 per cent uptick in coach bookings for the Easter period.

Suella Braverman, the Home Secretary,  told Sophy Ridge On Sunday on Sky News that it would not be fair to view the delays as "an adverse effect of Brexit".

She also downplayed any fears that delays at Dover could become a regular occurrence that risks ruining school holiday plans. She suggested that in general "things have been operating very smoothly at the border".

Port of Dover chief executive Doug Bannister said that although plans for the holiday period were in place months ago it had 15 per cent more coaches than anticipated and bad weather on Friday caused further delays.

The travel chaos looks set to worsen over the Easter holidays with Passport Office workers set to launch a five-week strike on Monday in their increasingly bitter civil service dispute over jobs, pay, pensions and conditions.

Meanwhile, Heathrow insisted the airport was continuing to operate as normal and security lanes are free-flowing despite an ongoing strike by security guards.

Contingency plans are "working well" an airport spokesman said, adding: "There have been no last-minute cancellations at Heathrow due to these strikes.

"Any cancellations were agreed and actioned at the start of the week, giving passengers advance notice. Any additional cancellations today are an airline decision and not connected to these strikes.

"This could include a number of factors such as aircraft issues, crew shortages, weather at outstations or air traffic control issues like the ongoing strikes in France."