A month in Ireland

[oblio]

I am starting to think about a trip to the island of Ireland in Sept this year as a back up in case we can't, or don't feel safe, going to Italy or the South of France. Whilst I have visited both the Republic and NI on business (and a couple of great trips to watch Ireland v Wales rugby in Dublin) we have never toured there.

It's early days yet but I thought I'd ask a few questions first as I know we have members who live there plus I'm guessing it has been a 'must do' trip for a number of folk.

First things first..

Duration

Is a month long enough to tour the whole island? My initial thoughts are to loosely travel the perimeter with incursions into the centre of the island as required

Ferries

- Is there a recommended comparison site to look at for all the routes or do I have to look at all the providers separately to get the best idea/deals?

- Is it possible to enter though one port and exit through another? Is this a costly exercise to be avoided?

Border

- Are there now any checks when passing through the border? The reason I ask is that if possible we would like to bring some of our own food and whilst travel to NI would be OK I think, I wouldn't want any issue when moving into the Republic.

Must see's

We will take in Dublin and also want to see the Titanic Exhibition in Belfast as well as the Giants Causeway up the coast. I have read that the Kerry Loop is well worth some time as well. We also fancy Waterford Crystal.

Our trip will be a mixture of travelling one and 2 night drops as well as 'drop anchor' places for slightly longer as we don't want to do a route march.

Any other 'must sees'? I haven't done much/any research yet so I'm all ears. We have pretty wide tastes so nothing off the cards as of now. We have ebikes and can walk but as Mrs GMJ has MS, these get used for shorted distances rather than full day/30 mile yomps.

Thanks in advance folks

[oblio]

surveyor said:

At the rate of vaccination in Ireland I would not count on being allowed in by September...

Good shout - I'll keep an eye on that.

We will both be double jabbed by then and it looks as though they seem to be on top of infection/death rates at the mo...

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/...



Btw thanks all for the response so far

[oblio]

I think my very outline plan is to travel all along the coast (or as much as we can do in a month without it turning into too much of a route march) making incursions further in land where required, to visit 'stuff'.

[oblio]

There may be an element of that included, yes.

[oblio]

We are going to wait until the end of the month before making a final decision. I think if we don't head over to Italy we won't be going to Ireland ether this year now either.

If so, we'll probably nip up to London and then tour Essex. Suffolk and Norfolk.

[oblio]

Sadly, we have decided against booking to travel to Ireland this September. I don't want to be stuck with an unused ferry ticket if the covid situation worsens and we can't travel.

Instead we have decided to do a month in northern England instead: York; the east coast seaside towns (we fancy visiting all those places that used to enter teams on Its a Knockout in the '70's ); then a week in Northumberland; a week in the Lakes; and then Blackpool and Liverpool.