17 August 2008

west of ireland for a long weekend ...

at slightly short notice, i decided to take a trip to the west of ireland for what was a bank holiday in the UK ...

my preferred routing was LGW - NOC with XL ... but the price was exhorbitant, at well over a hundred quid - i guess lots of people are scrambling to use the route before it is withdrawn in a few weeks time. flights from LUT or STD to NOC with Ryanair were also very expensive ... so it was back to skyscanner.net to find the best priced flight to DUB ...

i did even consider taking the train to Holyhead, and the ferry over to Dublin, but the timings were dreadful ... the latest afternoon sailing with Irish Ferries departs Holyhead at 17:15 and with Stena an even poorer 15:00 ... and the train connections don't help - there is a 12:45 departure from London Euston that frustratingly arrives into Holyhead at 17:20 ... so to catch the last afternoon ferry, it would be the 11:46 train from Euston ... which would mean taking a full day off work rather than just the afternoon.

on the return journey, i again considered taking the ferry option, but with engingeering works on the direct train routes, it would have meant a 7 hour journey with 3 changes ... and a 7am departure from the west of ireland ...

so it was back to the airlines, and again both XL and Ryanair were charging over 100 quid for the monday flights from NOC to London ... but I was prompted to look at flights from NOC to BRiStol ... and unbelievably, they were selling for just 24 euro [plus the 3rd world style 10 euro departure fee charged at the airport] which is a huge saving over a direct flight to London ... and luckily there aren't any engineering works on the line from Bristol to London.

thetrainline.com have singles from Bristol Temple Meads to London Paddington for 21 gbp, charging 1 gbp for ticket delivery, or 0.50 gbp to collect the ticket from a machine at the station ... however First Great Western have the same priced tickets, but don't charge for collecting your ticket from the station ...