5 planned and 3 bonus reasons to take the long ferry crossing from UK to Ireland
One snag when leaving the UK was our cars. Not fancy but we had no need to sell them and they’re worth more to us than what we’d get for them. So parking them on the farm in Ireland was the obvious option and that meant driving them over.
Leaving the North East we have 3 different car ferry options to Ireland:
- Holyhead
- Cairnryan
- Liverpool
They all have varying degrees of driving time, ferry time, cost and comfort. We have always travelled Holyhead to Dublin – a set 4/4.5 hours drive followed by a 4 hour ferry on a relatively modern ship. And apart from a few dodgy crossings (December 2015 with a 2 year old, a 3 month old and 3 of us being horribly ill while the captain announced he “never would have sailed if he knew the weather was this bad”) we generally know and are used to the route. So why did we choose to leave from Liverpool?
- Nostalgia: When I move to the UK in Summer of 2007 I took the Liverpool ferry. I was 24 and finishing up my PhD so the fact it was cheap (and closer to Teesside than Holyhead) was a definite winner. We’ve not taken it since so if felt like leaving the UK for at least a year was the right choice.
- Driving distance: We were driving both cars to Ireland and with my partial sight I have shied away from long distance driving for the past 7 years. Knowing I was going to drive my car to the ferry was a good reason to go to the port nearest us.
- Chill time: We were absolutely shattered leaving our house. I mean completely exhausted. We’d normally spend 2/3 days packing the car to leave but we packed the car in the last 2 hours before we left (I’ll do another post on packing up your house with nowhere to go). We needed to arrive in Ireland relaxed and not carrying the crazyness of the previous 2 weeks so spending 8 hours lying in a cabin (with the kids in their own cabin next door) was bliss.
- Cost: Sailing on a non-tourist ferry is much cheaper. We got both cars and 2 cabins for the price of 1 car on the tourist ferries. This wouldn’t always work if time was tight but for once we weren’t time bound so cheap and slow worked perfectly.
- Adventure: The whole point of this year is to challenge ourselves and try new things. Starting off doing the same thing we always do didn’t seem fitting.
- Free Food: All the food on the ferry was free. A decent Irish breakfast on arrival, soup at lunch time and dinner before disembarking. While not Michelin Star it was fresh, tasty and free.
- Nature: The ferry was moving slowly and on a different sail path and the boys spotted 100’s of jellyfish, made friends with a ladybird and more types of birds than I know.
- Sunshine: The weather was glorious and with the ship moving slower there was no sea breeze so we got to sit on deck and read in the sun.
We all arrived in Dublin relaxed, full and happy. C