Yet Another Cycling Forum
General Category => The Knowledge => OT Knowledge => Topic started by: LittleWheelsandBig on 12 June, 2019, 09:31:21 pm
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I'm looking at possibly meeting folk near Limerick on a Saturday evening in July and the only sensible train option to get there means there is 45 minutes between the ferry arriving and the train leaving Dublin Heuston 7km away.
Is there any possibility that this is a reliable connection with a Brompton? General opinion here is that foot/ bike passengers are delayed in getting off ferries, let alone delays in the ferry berthing or mooring. I'm inclined to agree, which means Aer Lingus.
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Ferry can arrive late. For WAWA 16 we got off an hour later than advertised and had to get a later train to Cork. If it arrives on time then it's quite doable to reach the station on your brommie. Nav is pretty easy.
Sail rail ticket combo is your cheapest option and direct from Euston.
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That was what I figured. Sailrail was what I'd been looking at but leaning towards flying with hand luggage because of that connection.
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If they don’t let you take your bike on as hand luggage then you’ll be waiting forever for it from the carousel.
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If I'm flying for a long weekend, I won't be taking a bike anyway.
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I meant the luggage carousel at the ferry terminal.
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I'd be taking a Brompton in a cover + front bag on a ferry. How is that not hand luggage?
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OK, we're settling on flying into Dublin and train south but still looking at ferry/ train for the return trip. HK wants to take a non-demountable bike, so an airline baggage charge heading over and a problem booking the bike on the Railsail ticket coming back. I need to book a bike space on at least one of the many trains it will take to get between Holyhead and London.
Has anybody booked a bike reservation on a Railsail ticket? That ticket doesn't seem to give seat reservations on any of the trains, which is a problem for booking a bike on e.g. Virgin trains.
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Yes, but I got my local station ticket office to do it for me.
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I'm kind of figuring that I might have to do the same. There seems to be just one direct service a day between Holyhead and London. Otherwise you have to swap trains every half hour in all sorts of weird places, taking many hours extra. What a pain in the arse!
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It was but our guy was pretty good. I'd gone down with what I wanted written down. The office was pretty busy, so he said leave it with him and he'd ring me when it was all done. Sure enough got a call later in day that was all done, and collected all the tickets etc. the next day.
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Our return ferry was late meaning we missed direct. In Europe the train would have waited. Think we ended up Holyhead -> Bangor -> Shrewsbury -> Crewe -> Milton Keynes then got off early and car pickup. So yes a pain if you don't get the direct.
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It should be only one change (at Chester or Crewe) if the trains are running normally. Sometimes the booking engines do silly things to try to save you a minute or two by adding changes.
When I did this trip earlier in the year, I bought my outbound ticket in person at Euston to ensure I got a bike reservation.
Coming back, I booked my bike reservation at the ticket office at Holyhead after the ferry docked (for Crewe-London on Virgin). I didn't even have to show my ticket.
(and my train ticket was some weird handwritten voucher from the ferry terminal, because I'd booked the return leg while already over there)
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We have ended up flying to Dublin and train or bike beyond. Coming back is train/ hotel/ ferry/ train direct to London but HK had to book the tickets in person and it took 40 minutes. The combination of railsail tickets and a bike booking is not easy.
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It should be only one change (at Chester or Crewe) if the trains are running normally. Sometimes the booking engines do silly things to try to save you a minute or two by adding changes.
Is this some weird quirk of the rail sail deal? There's 4 or 5 direct trains from Holyhead to Euston per day.
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Sorry, I should have said “at most” one change. Although due to the quirks of the timetable, I think there’s only one or maybe two sensible through journeys per day that coincide with a direct train and don’t involve a multi-hour overnight wait at Holyhead.
Timetables at the bottom here:
https://www.seat61.com/Ireland.htm
The SailRail tickets let you use any train you like as far as I’m aware. Which is bizarre if you know Virgin’s normal prices for flexible tickets.
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Well, Aer Lingus decided to not deliver HK's MTB until 5 hours after we landed (and several hours after I had to go the polite but implacable approach to finding out where it was). The return via train, ferry, train was much more relaxing.
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For completeness, getting off the ferry in Holyhead meant waiting with our bikes and foot passengers for a bus to drive onto the ferry, which then shuttled us to a building where our passports were checked. Basically last off the vessel before walking through to the train. If the same sort of thing happened at Dublin Ferryport, there would be no chance to make a 45 minute connection to Dublin Heuston, even at Tour de France pace.
That said, Dublin let us ride up to the ship's ramp (walking the steel ramp and deck), no messing about with bus transfers from a building. Perhaps they'd let us just ride away from the ferry in Dublin, which would save some time.