Ameland Island

In May 2023 I visited Ameland island - here is how I did it!

I decided to stay in the city of Leeuwarden for the weekend, and make a daytrip to the island.

Getting to Leeuwarden is straightforward - with Dutch trains being frequent and not even requiring a ticket.  Pretty much all mainline train stations now accept Contactless cards - so you just tap in and tap out.

The only mistake I made was jumping on the first train to Zwolle, rather than the Groningen train that ran fast to Zwolle!  But there's so many trains that it wasn't much of a problem.

The city of Leeuwarden is great - canals, old houses, little shopping streets ...

And an excellent ceramics museum - Princessehof

Getting to Ameland from Leeuwarden starts off with a bus to the port of Holwerd.  This departs from the very well organised bus station adjacent to the train station.  Bus bay letters are so big you can't miss them!

It was a pleasant bus ride to Holwerd, where you purchase your ticket for one of the regular ferries over to Ameland.

There were lots of families with kids and dogs going for a few days - so they put their own luggage onto the cart ...

Which drives onto the ferry first ...

And then it's a self service collection system at the far end - all very straightforward and Dutch !

Whilst lots of the locals brought their own bicycles onto the ferry - there are also plenty of bicycle hire shops on the island, including some near the ferry harbour.

Ameland has numerous cycle tracks - most of which are fairly flat - so you hardly ever even see a vehicle.  Some of the high quality tracks are parallel to main road, with bicycles banned from the road.

Ameland is mostly a low key relaxed island - the highlight is probably the impressive lighthouse.

Amongst the other sights is an impressive propellor sculpture.

And of course the World War II cemetery containing Commonwealth Graves.

At the end of the day I dropped off my hire bike, caught the ferry back to the mainland, and the connecting bus back to Leeuwarden.  A very enjoyable day out.

EMA to London

East Midlands Airport sometimes has some excellent fares - but it's not always the easiest to get to ...

There used to be a regular shuttle bus to the "East Midlands Parkway" station - but it is now just an hourly service run by Elite Cars - departing the station on the hour, and departing the airport at 20 mins past the hour (operating between 9am and 5pm) for the 10 minute journey, costing 6 gbp

December 2019 update: the bus service between the Parkway station and the airport now appears to have been withdrawn. A taxi appears to be the only option.

If you miss the hourly Raillink, Uber estimate a fee of 10-13 gbp for the trip
Elite Cars (who operate the Raillink) charge 12 gbp for a taxi journey

Using Monday 12th November 2018 to look for a sample fare - from East Midlands Parkway station there are departures at 14:56 and 15:56 (taking about 1.5 hours stopping just twice on the way) which cost 26 gbp

Total cost either 32 gbp using Raillink or 38 using a taxi


Another option is using is to use Nottingham station - which has a half hourly service (formerly known as Skylink Express) called the Clifton Skylink which takes just over half an hour which costs 6.50 gbp.  There's also the Nottingham Skylink that departs every 20 minutes, but which takes almost an hour and costs 5.20 gbp

Again using Monday 12th November 2018 to look for a sample fare - from Nottingham station there are departures at 15:45 and 16:45 (taking 1:39 and 1:55 respectively) which cost 26 gbp

Total cost (using the faster bus) would be 32.50 - but the journey might take considerably longer than via the Parkway station


To get to Derby station there are three buses an hour on the Derby Skylink service which take about 40 minutes and cost 4.70 gbp

On Monday 12th November 2018 the fare from Derby station to London is 49 gbp for any of the afternoon half hourly services which take about 1:40 to complete the journey


The final option is to use Long Eaton station via the Nottingham Skylink with the three services an hour and a journey time of just 23 minutes, costing 3.30 gbp

Long Eaton has just one direct train an hour to London (e.g. 15:40 and 16:40) which takes just over 1.5 hours and prices for 12th November 2018 are 49 gbp.  Using a ticket splitting website you can get the price down to 24.50 gbp with an increased journey time of 2.5 hours

The total cost would be 27.80 using the slower train


If you are tempted to get the train to Loughborough and the Skylink bus to the airport - be warned that according to Google Maps, it's a 12 minute walk from the station to the bus stop - so you would need to add that into your journey time.



For me the quicker journey time from East Midlands Parkway appears to be worth the slightly higher price than the Long Eaton option.  Although having done the journey to Long Eaton recently - it's quite a pleasant bus ride through the countryside to the airport.

Dublin Port - Irish Ferries bus transfer

I've written before that when I'm arriving into Dublin port from Holyhead, even though the Irish Ferries ship departs 10 minutes after the Stena ship ... I prefer to take the Irish Ferries, as it offers the best chance of being able to walk straight off the ship - instead of having to wait until all the cars have gone, and a bus comes on board, and they finally offload the foot passengers ... as Stena often do !

Usually I'm lucky enough that somebody collects me from the ferry terminal - so I rush off the ship (hand luggage only), and we're often exiting the port as the first cars roll off the ship ...

Today I used the Mortons Coaches transfer bus for the first time in ages - Irish Ferries underwrite the service so their foot passengers are guaranteed an easy link from the Port into the city centre and train stations.

I was one of the first foot passengers off the ship so was through security, and with no bags to collect was outside the terminal building just after 5.30pm

The next Dublin Bus route 53 departure was at 6pm, so it was obvious that I should pay the 3.50 euro Adult Single fare and take the express transfer into the city.

What I hadn't reckoned on was just how slow my fellow foot passengers would be ... and obviously the shuttle bus needs to wait until the last of them have emerged from the terminal building.  By 5.50pm the Dublin Bus had arrived - but I was still hopeful that we would get away first ...

I don't know whether it was the hold luggage that was slow coming off, or whether it was just people taking their time ... but we didn't finally depart until 6.05pm - a full five minutes after the public bus had left !

Google Maps reckons I would have got to the train station at about 6.26pm using Dublin Bus ... whereas I ended up arriving at 6.21pm using Mortons ... so the express ended up being five minutes faster than the public bus.  Dublin Bus would have cost me 2.50 euro - so I ended up paying a euro to save me 5 minutes.  ymmv.

Liverpool airport by train and bus

Ryanair has a base at Liverpool airport, and the fares are often significantly cheaper than from London or other southeast airports - the saving can sometimes be in the hundreds of pounds for peak flights !

Getting to LPL is a lot easier than it used to be with the Airport Parkway station a few miles from the airport having a good range of rail connections.  Gone are the days when you had to get a taxi to Runcorn station !

The best fares to Liverpool South Parkway from London are using London Northwestern Railway (the renamed London Midland franchise) - I regularly get 15 gbp tickets, which admitted involve a train change / wait at Stafford station (which has a handy Tesco Extra nearby).  The easiest way to get these fares is to use LNWR's own website, and to tick the "show our trains only" box in the Advanced Search screen.  The LNWR website isn't very user friendly - but it's worth it for those 15 tickets.

To get those really cheap tickets, you need to buy them just to the Parkway station - and then buy a ticket at the station for the bus to the airport.  You can buy combined train and bus tickets to the airport - but they won't show up with the "show our trains only" box ticked.

Travelling towards Liverpool in a four carriage train, the platform stairs are at the back of the second carriage - if you're in a rush.

The station is new, spacious and well designed for train and bus connections.  There is a Costa cafe, a separate coffee vending machine, and a information desk which also sells chocolate, soft drinks and sandwiches!  There used to be a separate shop, but it was never busy (when I was there) and closed down a while ago.

The bus to the airport currently costs 2 gbp - you can pay cash to the driver, but if you want to use a credit card just go to the information desk, and the staff will take payment and issue you a ticket.  The ticket machines at the station just sell rail tickets, so don't waste your time trying to buy a bus ticket from them.

There are a few different bus routes to the airport - they all take roughly the same amount of time (around 10 minutes), so unless you are really tight for time, you can just take whichever is the first bus to arrive.  The door at the bus bay doesn't open until the bus has stopped - so don't be alarmed if it takes a while to open !

Another option is to walk from the Parkway station to the airport.  Google maps reckons that it takes about 55 minutes - but I did it (carrying a small rucksack) in about 45 minutes, including a stop to buy coffee.  Whilst the route may look like it's beside a nasty dual carriageway - there's actually a big gap between the wide footpath and the road, so when I did the walk the exhaust fumes weren't bad.  You can even route via the "Estuary Commerce Park" and their pleasant ponds (not shown below as Google won't let me embed a map with "restricted roads") !


Just before you turn into the Estuary complex, you walk past New Mersey Shopping Park - which includes a Marks and Spencer Foodhall.  Since I had plenty of time, and it's right beside the road, I had a quick look around - and grabbed a coffee for 1 gbp (from a machine).  A rather large saving on the price you pay at the airport - and a reasonable coffee for a machine.

Conclusion
Whilst it's always better to have a rail station inside the airport - the easy connection at Liverpool South Parkway station, as well as the incredibly good value train fares (the standard fare from London to Luton Airport is 17.40 gbp) means that I'm happy to make the trip from London - if the price is right and I have the time.

Preikestolen

as part of my trip to Svalbard ... i flew into StaVanGer ... and hiked up Pulpit Rock

last time i did it, we had a hire car - which ended up proving rather expensive, as the tolls for the road tunnels are rather high (and the car hire company added a service charge) !

this time we didn't want to hire a car, so we looked at public transport.

the ferry goes from the centre of Stavanger to a place called Tau - it's a very frequent service with ferries every 45 mins during weekdays

from Tau there is a public bus (number 100) to Jørpeland ... but there's no obvious public bus from Jørpeland to the base of the Pulpit Rock hike - although there is a special service four times a day during the summer

that left us with two different private companies:

Tide - will sell you a combined ticket for the ferry and their bus.  in advance it is 320 NOK per person, or 350 NOK if you buy it at the ferry terminal, on board the ferry or on the bus

Pulpit Rock company / Boreal - sell tickets for their bus for 190 NOK in advance or 200 NOK in person (more during high season), and then you buy your ferry ticket directly for 56 NOK each way - so a total of 312 NOK

whilst the ferries go every 45 mins - the two companies seem to alternate which one they connect with.  since the difference in price is so small, we just went with the company which matched our preferred departure time - which was Tide.

the tourist information office in Stavanger helpfully sold us the tickets - so we got the "advance" price.

in the evening the gap between departures from the Mountain Hut parking lot start to spread out - and we missed Tide's penultimate departure by about 5 mins (we saw the bus pull out).  whilst the tickets aren't officially interchangeable, we thought it was worth trying our luck on the Pulpit Rock company bus that departed next.  possibly because we had purchased our tickets in the tourist office, they didn't have any company branding (or maybe our driver wasn't too bothered), but we managed to get away with it - which was much better than hanging around 40 minutes for the final Tide bus !

if i do it again, i will definitely buy tickets in the tourist office, in the hope that it gives the chance of some flexibility.

for completeness - the Puplit Rock company also run a weekend morning departure which picks up from hotels and drives around the bay (avoiding the ferry) - but it doesn't give any flexibility, and i can't tell you the price, as it seems to have stopped running for the year !
unless you're staying out of town (and the "tour" bus collects from your hotel), i would suggest taking the ferry for the extra flexibility - especially as hiking times vary enormously from person to person, and you may want to time your departure based on the weather forecast.