There is always a moment on the journey from Dublin to London – which I make every month or two, taking the land and sea route via Holyhead rather than flying – when I stop what I am doing – reading or writing or talking with the person next to me – and think: you can’t enjoy this from 12,000 meters.
Sometimes it is at the Britannia Bridge in North Wales. As the train crosses the Menai Strait from Anglesey, to my right I see a concrete statue of Lord Nelson standing lone watch from the shore, and further upstream the grounds of Plas Newydd country house reaching down to the water. To the left, on a small island with a curved jetty, are two beautiful whitewashed houses that will one day disappear beneath rising sea levels, but for now are holding out against the elements.
I’ll pause again as the train passes Conwy, with its colossal medieval castle and absurdly beautiful waterfront, home to Britain’s smallest house, and later still as we drive along the coast beyond Colwyn Bay, and legions of offshore wind turbines can be seen can be seen through the mist.
On the return journey, as the ferry sails into Dublin Bay, I glance at Howth Head as it rises to greet us, followed by the crimson lighthouse at the end of the Great South Wall and the looming red and white chimneys beyond – the unmistakable sign that we are about to dock in the Irish capital.
People often ask me why I choose to travel between Dublin and London by ferry and train instead of flying, which is considerably less time consuming. I’ll respond by talking about the price, or the breezy check-in process with minimal baggage restrictions, or the direct connection to central London, or the CO2 emissions, which by one estimate are around 95% lower than taking the plane goes. But the little details – the things you see, the people you meet and the musings you experience as the soothing rhythms of the journey continue – are almost more important to me.
When I moved to London in 2002, the idea of taking the slow route to Dublin never occurred to me. Going by plane was quick: you can fly from city to city in less than 90 minutes, but of course you have to take into account the time it takes to get to the airport, arrange security, get around the city tax-free wandering, waiting to board, waiting to take off, and going through the associated hassle on the other side. And it’s cheap.
Then, about fifteen years ago, a friend tipped me off to SailRail, a package that bundled Irish Sea train and ferry tickets into one fare, connecting not just to London, but to every city in Britain with a station. I was unsure about the duration, but the price was competitive – these days it’s £102.20 return, but back then it was about half that – so I decided to give it a try.
I’ll be honest: I didn’t immediately like SailRailing. Train travel is one of life’s great pleasures, but in Britain it can lead to frustration when there are delays, cancellations and canceled routes. It took me a while to figure out how to time my journey so that I didn’t have to change trains in Crewe and then again in Chester 20 minutes later. And Holyhead, for all the surrounding beauty of Anglesey, isn’t a town that makes your heart skip a beat – at least not the stretch between the terminal and the ferry port, which feels oppressively gray even on the sunniest afternoon.
The things you see, the people you meet and the musings you experience as the soothing rhythms of the journey take hold are important to me
The ships – Irish Ferries and Stena are the two options on the Holyhead-to-Dublin route – can feel dated and a little tacky, and if you leave from Dublin on a match day you have the choice of watching football supporters jammed into a cooked breakfast and pints at 8am or join in. The crossing can be tough, but it would take a good storm to rock one of the larger boats if the stabilizers are out. (In that kind of weather, I’d rather take my chances on a 50,000-ton ferry than on a small commuter plane.)
If you travel with Irish Ferries, which I usually do, this unfolds in a literary theme park of unparalleled incongruity. The flagship Ulysses is littered with allusions to James Joyce’s masterpiece: you can eat reheated pizza slices (but not pork kidneys) at Boylan’s Brasserie, drink tequila slammers at the Leopold Bloom bar or play a game at the Cyclops family entertainment centre. (The faster ferry, which is often canceled when the wind picks up, is ingeniously called the Jonathan Swift.)
Despite – or perhaps because of – these quirks, I kept coming back for more. For years I sailed to Dublin and flew back by train; the journey from London Euston tends to be smoother, especially if you take the direct train to Holyhead which leaves around 9am. But since returning to Dublin in 2020, I’ve ditched the flying option and now actively look forward to my day strolling across the Irish Sea and through Wales and England. The trip takes eight to nine hours, but without the internet to distract me, I usually get a solid day’s work done, or at least have time to read and think.
Some distraction is welcome. When the Icelandic volcanic eruption in 2010 grounded European air travel, I got chatting to two fellow SailRailers on the train from London. One of these, delightfully, was the actor who played Gestapo agent Herr Flick in the sitcom ‘Allo ‘Allo!. The other became a very good friend – and I often thank the ash clouds of Eyjafjallajökull for introducing me.
More recently, I’ve found myself talking to traveling graffiti artists, septuagenarian world travelers, and a woman who found God after getting lost in the middle of the Sahara (she prayed for help and a crow appeared to guide her back to safety). When my partner and I took our whippet Saluki on a morning sail last fall (pet-friendly cabins are available on Stena), he was showered with attention by an older Traveler couple who told us about similar dogs they had loved last fall. years.
The Traveler community makes extensive use of the ferries, following a route that Irish with British connections have followed for centuries. You will also meet many truck drivers, but also students, backpackers and people who hate flying. What you don’t get among the SailRail contingent are British tourists. When I tell friends and colleagues in London about the package, few have heard of it. And when I tell them the fare, which doesn’t skyrocket for last-minute bookings, they’re amazed: £51.10 from London to Holyhead and then by boat to Dublin? You’re kidding, right?
Still, I rarely recommend SailRail without a series of caveats. It’s not to everyone’s taste. And it could be so much better than it is now – rail links are unreliable and foot passengers on ferries are often regarded as an afterthought. But despite its weaknesses, I’ve come to enjoy the easy pace of the trip and the unusual crowd it brings together. I’ve even developed a fondness for those Joyce allusions.
And I love that long, slow train ride along the North Wales coast, past castles, wind turbines and island homes doomed to disappear beneath the waves. A journey is so much richer and stranger when you travel close to the ground.
SailRail tickets from London Euston to Dublin Ferryport from £102.20 return (+ booking fees) via trainline.com