Rail and Sail from Britain to Ireland with Kids: A Tale of Many Trains

Travel date: June 16, 2019

There were already five separate flights in our UK/Ireland trip, just to get us there and back home again. So when it came time to decide how to get from our last UK stop in Bakewell to Dublin, I lobbied hard for taking the ferry instead of yet another plane. It wasn’t hard to convince Dave because 1. he likes boats and 2. it was cheaper than flying (there are some very inexpensive flights from the UK to Ireland, but the ferry still comes out somewhat cheaper).

Once we’d decided on the ferry, we needed to decide how to get to the ferry. There’s a car ferry from Liverpool, but it doesn’t take foot passengers, which left us with leaving from Holyhead, Wales, as our only option. We could have driven the three hours or so from Bakewell to Holyhead and returned our rental car there, but the ferry companies partner with railroads to offer Rail and Sail combined tickets, and, at the time, that sounded super fun and probably more relaxing than navigating unfamiliar roads.

Well.

It was not relaxing. Our day involved a car, three trains, a ferry, two buses, and a good bit of walking. And the connections between some of the trains and between the last train the ferry were very tight, time-wise and consequently pretty stressful. Dave called to book and just took whatever they gave him (we went with Stena Line; Irish Ferries is the other option); if we had it to do over again, we’d have been more careful to leave plenty of time between connections instead of just assuming the Rail and Sail reservation people knew what they were doing. I think there are also ways to do the same route we did with only two trains instead of three.

Our day started very early with a walk from our AirBnb in Bakewell to our rental car, which was parked outside of town. Then we made the hour long drive to the Manchester airport to return the car. This was the only part of the trip where we were in control of the timing, so we had plenty of time at the airport before our first train. We picked up our tickets (you print them out at a machine), grabbed some food, and sat a lot.

The first train was a short ride on a very crowded train. We had reserved seats, but someone was in Milo and Gus’s seats, so they ended up standing. The biggest issue with taking trains was dealing with luggage. We each had a carry-on size suitcase and a backpack, and we also had a booster seat that we were lugging around with us (it was much cheaper to buy a booster seat for Abe than to rent one from the car rental places, but the downside was that we hauled it all over two countries with us….three if you count how we also brought it home with us at the end). The trains were not really meant for long distance travel, and finding places to stash the suitcases on every train was a big pain, as was trying to collect them all when it was time to get off. A lot of this difficulty can be blamed on the fact that there were just so many of us….one person or a couple can always move more nimbly than a giant family can.

We got onto train #2 without incident. We didn’t have reserved seats here, but it was the least crowded train and we all got seats together without a problem.

Then things got a little intense. There was something like seven minutes between when this train was supposed to arrive and the next train was supposed to leave. But then our train was several minutes late, leaving us with around 2 minutes to get off one train with all our bags, figure out where we were supposed to go next, and navigate up and down stairs to the right platform for the next train.

We made it onto the train (which ended up leaving a few minutes late), and found it nearly completely full. We were supposed to have reserved seats on this train, too, but there was a tired looking family sitting in our seats. When I showed the Dad our tickets he just looked at me with a blank face and shrugged. So reserved seats on Rail and Sail trains don’t mean much. We eventually managed to find places to stuff our bags and find seats scattered around the train (I managed to sit with Abe at least).

This was the train ride that went through Wales and through the north corner of Snowdonia National Park, so there was a lot of really lovely scenery out the windows. I didn’t get pictures of the prettiest parts, but here’s a taste:

And THEN we got to the port to catch the ferry. It seemed like we had plenty of time, but we didn’t realize that they needed to check our luggage (I’d assumed we’d be able to keep it with us, since there’s way more room for it on the ferry than on a train…but you have to check it unless you have a private room booked). So that took some time, and THEN it turns out the boat is not right there; you have to take a shuttle bus there. There were several people from our train getting on the ferry, too, but we were the most trouble (six of us! we can’t help it!) so they were getting a little impatient with us by the end, in a very polite way. But it wasn’t our fault! Those are the tickets they sold us when we called! We went as fast as we could! So, again, if you book Rail and Sail tickets, check and make sure you have plenty of time between the last train and the ferry departure. I think we had something like 30 minutes, and that was very much pushing it. But the cool part is that the shuttle bus pulls right onto the ferry and lets you off! Exciting!

Then you go up a million or so flights of stairs and find that the ferry is ALSO pretty crowded, because you are literally the last people on the boat. But we were, at least, no longer hauling six suitcases with us, and, after a few minutes of wandering, we were able to find some tables next to each other and settle in.

I was a little worried about the ferry ride; I am sometimes not a fan of boats (see: the worst whale watch ever), so giant boat in the middle of the Irish Sea for hours and hours (about 3. Not SO many hours, really) sounded scary….but it was totally fine. I really loved the ferry! It was a little rocky for the first few minutes, and Dave and Milo (the only ones among us prone to seasickness) had a rough time at the beginning but felt fine later. Dramamine would have been a good idea. I’m sure it’s often a much rougher crossing than we had, but we found it very smooth for the most part and not at all scary.

The ferry is HUGE, with multiple restaurants and lounges, a movie theater, and an arcade. But we were already pretty tired at this point, one car ride and three trains in, so we mostly stayed at the spot we had staked out and ate (pizzas that we bought on board, which were surprisingly….not bad), and read, and played cards. You can buy internet, and there’s supposed to be free internet to connect to as well, but, not so surprisingly, we couldn’t get it to work. We could text, though, and I texted my sister-in-law quite a bit….only to get a message from Verizon a couple of hours in that my texting plan didn’t cover the ocean and I was paying for every text. Oops.

Anyway, I loved the ferry! We went up to the top very briefly when we were getting close to Ireland, because we felt like we should…but it was kind of cold and windy and wet, and the only other people up there were people looking for somewhere to smoke.

But, look: Ireland!

But, yeah, most of the time we just sat there, near the bar, looking like this:

And THEN–last PITA thing about taking the ferry–it drops you off sort of in the middle of nowhere in Dublin. We had a really hard time figuring out how transportation is supposed to work post-ferry, and it turns out that this is because it just doesn’t work terribly well. The ferry docks in a really industrial, non-walkable area, so you have to either take a taxi or a shuttle bus to civilization. And the shuttle bus is an extra fee, but we didn’t have any Euros yet, so our only option was to get them at the port with a really ridiculous fee (in fact, it took us awhile to figure out how to get cash in Ireland without paying a lot of money. Every ATM in England seemed to boast about how they didn’t charge fees, but not so much in Ireland). In retrospect, a taxi would have been the better choice, but we were worried about finding something reasonably priced that could fit all of us plus bags (when we left Dublin we took a taxi to the airport to pick up our rental car, and the taxi company sent minivans that fit us all easily, so it likely would have been fine).

We finally got onto the shuttle, which took us to somewhere in downtown Dublin and left us at a bus/rail stop. In stark contrast to London, we found Dublin mass transit difficult to navigate. We had tried to figure it out online beforehand and hadn’t been able to. We eventually managed to get on a bus that took us somewhat close to our AirBnb and we walked from there. There wasn’t anywhere to buy tickets at the station we were at (again, London spoiled us with its easy to use machines everywhere), and we didn’t have anything resembling exact change…when the driver saw Dave fumbling with bills he gestured in a pretty annoyed looking way that we should just go ahead and get on without paying. So, again–taxi would have been better (though not cheaper, since we inadvertently scored a free bus ride from our grumpy bus driver).

So, all in all–would we do it again? To avoid flying? Yes, absolutely….but we’d be much more careful about the train times and trying to keep transfers to a minimum. And we’d take a taxi when we got to Dublin for sure. But I kind of want to go get back on the ferry right now!

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