Driving from Ireland to London

yaaaboy

Hi all,
Im looking for the cheapest and quickest way to get to london driving from ireland. The ferry websites seem to be a disaster zone for info so im looking for somebody that drives the route every now and then or has driven it recently for a bit of advice?

Apparently i should be aiming for fishguard or pembroke and then driving through cardiff but i really dont have a clue?

Also i presume parking is hard to come by and expensive in london so the plan is to stay in a hotel/hostel on the outskirts (i was thinking possibly reading???) so i wouldnt have to worry about the car.

any information at all would be appreciated.

mikedragon32

Ferry via Rosslare is definitely the better option ferry wise, then it's just the simple matter of getting onto the M4 and sticking to that all the way to London.

Use the London Megathread to get info on the best places to stay on the outskirts of London.

Davidth88

a) Where in Ireland are you driving from ?
b) Where in London are you trying to get to ?


Fishguard/Pembroke to London as Mikedragon says ... M4 all the way.

Reading is quite a way outside London ....

robinph

The drive from Pembroke will certainly be more straightforward than from Holyhead. I thought the boat to Holyhead was quicker though, but you would probably get lost in Wales going that way unless you knew the way well and avoided Birmingham.

Reading is not near London, would be equivalent of parking in Athlone* to get to Dublin.



* Slight exaggeration.

ballsymchugh

robinph, i wouldn't say that's a slight exaggeration at all!!

it all depends on where you want to go in london, but if you're going for a few days, you could always try one of the car parks at heathrow. if you prebook well in advance you'll get great rates. they'll transfer you to the terminal, where you'll have easy access to the tube etc to go anywhere around the city. and you won't have to pay any congestion charge, although with an irish reg, you'd prob have no problems anyway.

as for the trip, the m4 from pembroke/fishguard is by far the most straightforward, and heathrow is at the m4/m25 junction.

Davidth88

I beg to differ.

The drive from Holyhead is pretty straight forward ( maybe because I have done it countless times ). Yes Brum can be a pain , but you can pay to go on the toll road and avoid it to a great extent.

If you use the AA route planner it will give you the route more or less

The ferry crossing times are just about identical ( unless you use the fast ones , but at this time of year they are not as reliable ).

Can't remember on the M4 ( from Pembroke ) if you pay to get in to or out of Wales on the Severn Bridge , I know you only pay one way.

robinph

Davidth88 wrote: »

Can't remember on the M4 ( from Pembroke ) if you pay to get in to or out of Wales on the Severn Bridge , I know you only pay one way.

I think it's to get into Wales that they charge you.

ballsymchugh

yeah it's a fiver into wales as far as i remember.

david i think it's because you've done it a few times, but for someone who hasn't it's way easier just to get on one road and follow it all the way.
every time i've done the holyhead route, the bit between the a55 and the m6 for some reason screwed me!!

robinph

I wouldn't reccomend the Holyhead to London driving route unless you knew some basic geography of the areas where you'd be going through to be able to cope with figuring out which road to go on. Although it would be easier on the way to London than on the return journey, just follow signs for the biggest city and off you go, finding Holyhead on the way back would be trickier.

yaaaboy

thanks for all the advice, i will more than likely have a sat nav but wanted to make sure that one way wasnt a few hours longer than the other? so the general feeling is go via rosslare and not to holyhead as it will be my first time driving in england/wales and can be confusing, but stay on the m4 and i cant really go wrong.

I prob should have said this in the op but didnt want to draw it out but im actually emigrating to london, driving the car over from kerry with stuff il need and driving it back a week or two later and then i can fly back to london. The idea of staying in reading was to use somewhere outside the hustle and bustle of the city as a base to avoid getting the car stuck in the city, and i can travel in on the train to find a house to rent etc... Thought it was the equivalent of leixlip - dublin as opposed to athlone - dublin!

Also would anyone have any advice/tips on settling in over there, i hear the Irish centres are fairly helpful.

Davidth88

Hi,

If it's from Kerry then Rosslare is your port of choice , and the M4 is the way

If you are going from Dublin , then make sure you set your sat nav to chose main roads otherwise you could end up on the a5 telford road which is a windy pretty route through the welsh mountians

ballsymchugh, I get what you mean , it's not exactly intuative around Chester.

OP WHERE IN LONDON ? Might be able to offer advice ( if it's North of the river !! )

bigar

I do not understand the opposition to the Holyhead crossing. From there to London takes no more than 4 hours, 5 perhaps in heavy traffic and it’s dual carriage way/motorway all the way. Add a 3.5 hour ferry crossing (or 2 if you take the fast ferry) and you cannot get there any faster or smoother. I have done this 16 times in the last five years. Only recommendation is to not take the M1 at Birmingham but the M40, much smoother ride as not as busy.

robinph

But you've done it 16+ times, so in that case the Holyhead route is likely to be better than Pembroke, and less boring and have more options as far as avoiding any major incidents on one motorway or other.

For someone not familiar with the route though then getting on the M4 and staying there is the simplest method.

ballsymchugh

op if you play football or hurling i could hook you up with a team over there. i only started playing hurling there in the last year i lived in england and only wish i started before. i'd never played in ireland either, so even if you don't, i wouldn't worry. it all depends on where you're going too.
there's plenty of young irish living in and around clapham and brixton, if you go to the alex on clapham common on a friday or saturday you'll bump into plenty of people like yourself.

just remember the m4 doesn't start at the ferry in wales. if you go to pembroke you take what's really the only road out of town and stay on it til you get to st clears, then it's dual carriageway on the a40 to the m4. that's when you see a sign saying junction 47 or something and think 'ah jaysis another 46 of these to london'. just make sure to take loadsa breaks. as robinph said, it's pretty boring. the other route you've got new roads to look forward to (and for some reason, you actually do on those long journeys) but the m4 is long and straight. and in all the times i drove it over the last 7 years, there's only one speed camera in port talbot!

dave2pvd

robinph wrote: »

But you've done it 16+ times, so in that case the Holyhead route is likely to be better than Pembroke, and less boring and have more options as far as avoiding any major incidents on one motorway or other.

For someone not familiar with the route though then getting on the M4 and staying there is the simplest method.

You keep painting this option as difficult. Reading maps or programming the sat-nav ain't hard. For me, least time wasted = simplest. Holyhead is 60 miles from Dublin. That's a relatively quick crossing. Time your journey to miss rush-hour in B'ham and it's a pretty straightforward trip.

robinph

dave2pvd wrote: »

You keep painting this option as difficult. Reading maps or programming the sat-nav ain't hard. For me, least time wasted = simplest. Holyhead is 60 miles from Dublin. That's a relatively quick crossing. Time your journey to miss rush-hour in B'ham and it's a pretty straightforward trip.

Not difficult, merely not as simple as the other way.

Personally I'd drive from Holyhead. But I'm also quite happy to get lost when driving somewhere, that is part of the fun, and I'll also ignore the satnavs instructions when they send you some completely daft direction. The options for getting lost down the M4 and having the satnav send you the wrong way would make that route less appealing to me and very boring spending that long on the same road.

The M4 is still the simplest route though, and the OP starting from Kerry either ferry option is just as close from this end.

yaaaboy

Cheers to anyone that replied. For anyone else who wants the same info - i took the irish ferries ferry from dublin to holyhead because it only takes 2 hours and was the only ferry leaving during the day and then followed the sat nav advice to london, it took 5 and a bit hours but would have been much faster only for bad weather conditions (sleet, snow) but was straight forward enough on the whole..

Wigster

Hi all,

How long would it take to drive from Heathro to Holyhead on a saturday or sunday. Planning to leave heathrow around 11 to make ferry at 17:15? is it achievable?

dilallio

Wigster wrote: »

Hi all,

How long would it take to drive from Heathro to Holyhead on a saturday or sunday. Planning to leave heathrow around 11 to make ferry at 17:15? is it achievable?

According to this it takes 5hrs and 7 mins.

Is 17:15 the sailing time or the last arrival time?

Fratton Fred

Wigster wrote: »

Hi all,

How long would it take to drive from Heathro to Holyhead on a saturday or sunday. Planning to leave heathrow around 11 to make ferry at 17:15? is it achievable?

you should make it. head up the M40 and use the M6 toll and you should do it in 5 hours. I wouldnt hang around though. If you can leave at ten then that might be better.

questioner

Why wouldn't you hang around, is it dangerous? I'm planning to do this trip in a while as,well