How to get around - Ireland, England, France

For the Ireland to England/Wales leg there are numerous flights from Cork or Dublin to Cardiff, Bristol or Birmingham.

Have you bought your overseas tickets yet? If not, you might want to reconsider your itinerary. You could probably do this in 2 weeks, but you will spend quite a bit of your time transitioning from one location to the next. I think your trip will be more satisfying if you picked two destinations, maybe Ireland and Wales or Ireland and Normandy. To be honest, if it were my trip, I would pick just one destination, for example, just Ireland (you still will be short of time), or Normandy and Paris, or southern England and southern Wales. I know that was not your question.

If you want to keep your itinerary, I think you will need to fly. You might want to reorder your destinations. Fly to Paris, go to Normandy, rent car, fly RyanAir to Dublin, then fly to England/Wales, as suggested above.

Travel within destinations depends on what you are doing. You don’t need a car in Dublin, but we did enjoy our car for more rural areas. No car needed in Bath, but it would probably be helpful in Wales.

I’m not sure the train from England to Normandy makes sense. The train makes sense from London to Paris. Where will you start from England? Where in Normandy? What will you do in Normandy? Will you get a car in Normandy?

Lets set aside for the moment how you're going to "get around".

Time for a Reality Check: you list at least six locations (including some pretty fuzzy ones, eg "a few days in the south area of Ireland"). You say you have "a two-week trip". Do the math. First you need to determine exactly how many usable, full days you will have to spend on the ground in Europe, not including the day you arrive in Europe nor the day you depart. For most people (first time travelers especially), they fail to account for some critically important facts..

A "two-week trip" for many people means they plan to be away from home for two weeks. When you subtract your travel time, that means you end up with 11 (or at best 12) actual usable days in Europe (you can not and should not count your arrival or departure days no matter what time the flights are scheduled). The first day after arrival is often still pretty jetlagged and foggy, but lets set that aside and assume the best possible scenario, you have 12 days to use.

Now lets assume that your "locations" are all singularities - that is, one specific, compact place, that doesn't require much moving around within that location (for example: Disneyland, or Stonehenge). This is NOT a realistic assumption, but just to illustrate how unrealistic your plan is, lets go with it...

12 days, 6 locations. That sounds like 2 days per location. But that is a self-deception, because you do not magically trapsoirt yourself instantly from one place to another. Your locations are scattered across 3 countries and (at least) 6 different regions. And most of all, you need to come to grips with the fact that every time you pick yourself up and move to another location, you burn at best 1/2 a day, but in many cases a whole day. If you're just taking one train from well-connected one city center to another in the same region, that consumes 1/2 to 3/4 of a day. But you are (hoping to) jump around Europe, across long distances, and many (most) of your proposed locations are NOT easy to connect efficiently - even if you know what you're doing. Even for an experienced, efficient traveler, what you're suggesting is impossible in the time you have.

You need to toss out your plan, and come up with a new plan.

You either need a LOT more time (3-4 weeks) or, you simply need to scale back your plans. With the time you have, I'd suggest you pick ONE of the following (not all):

• Ireland (including Dublin and "south area of Ireland")
• Wales and England (including "Brecon Wales and Bath")
• France (including Normandy and Paris)

If you really want to do all the above, you need 3-4 weeks (3 weeks would be very, very rushed).

About "how to get around" (since that's what you asked): To get around on a trip as you are proposing, you need a mix of trains and rental cars, and lots of walking, depending on where you are: Dublin is best on foot (you do not want a car in Dublin or any large city in Europe). Depending on what you mean by "the south area of Ireland") a car works best, but you might include a train or bus in the mix to cover long distances. This is a part of the world that takes some time to get around in. Getting from Ireland to England you can go by ferry or fly. Getting around Wales and England, again, on foot/public trans in the big city, maybe trains to cover distance, and a car in rural areas. Take the train to Paris, and walk/use transit there. For Normandy, you need a car. All of this switching and moving around will consume most of the time you have allocated for your trip...

Sorry, I know this is not what you want to hear. But it's the truth.

I agree with the other comments that you need to reduce the number of destinations.

Why Brecon? The town is very unremarkable and not the most attractive in the region. If you want to see the Brecon Beacons, then you really need a car to get around. Fly from Dublin to Cardiff or Bristol.

Normandy isn’t that easy to get to from England if you don’t have your own car and will take ages. Flying to Paris will probably be quicker than a train to London, travel across London then the Eurostar to France then the onward journey to Normandy.

To clarify:

Total days of travel is 17-18 days. So that leaves 15-16 in Europe.

The main destinations are 1) Brecon 2) Normandy.

Staying in Brecon about one week because of family.

Staying in Normandy about one week as well. No family there - would be purely because we're interested.

Bath and Paris were just ideas for side trips (recommended by family who actually live there).

We were planning to fly to Dublin also because of family there, but we have been there before, so we really only need a couple days to visit and maybe go somewhere together. We can cut that to one day if necessary, or might cut Dublin out completely if necessary. But I really wanted info on how much of a pain it is to get from there to Brecon -- flying is the best/only option?

Yes, we could start in Normandy, then end up in Wales if that's a better idea. (Why is it better?)

No, tickets not booked! Will take another look at the itinerary. Just thought ya'll might have experience getting from one of those places to another.

First, let's look at Wales-to-France, since that seems to be a mandatory shift in one direction or the other. With the caveat that its information about travel times and costs has proved to be wildly off-base on many occasions, take a look at the many options presented by Rome2Rio--none of them attractive. You should eliminate any that require you to take a car on a ferry to France. Firstly, your car-rental agreement may not allow that. Secondly, picking up a car in the UK and dropping it in France will generate a monstrous extra charge.

Here's what Rome2Rio says about the Dublin-to-Brecon transfer. Again, I don't think it will work to take a rental car on the ferry.

I don't see how you're going to have any time for sightseeing in Dublin or Paris (or Bath) if you need a full week in Brecon and a full week in Normandy, because your two complex international transfers are going to be terribly time-consuming.

Your trip makes more sense, now that I see the details. If you want to spend a week in Brecon and a week in Normandy, and have 15-16 days on the ground, you could fly to Dublin and see relatives for a couple of days. I would save southern Ireland for another trip.

Getting to Brecon. I have not been there, but I think flying will work better than taking the ferry. The ferry is slow. We used to take the ferry on Eurail passes, before cheap flights. Check your options for airports. Since you will have recovered from jet lag in Dublin, you could rent a car to get to Brecon. Your relatives may have better suggestions. You could do a day trip to Bath, or an overnight. It’s further than I would ordinarily go for a day trip.

The transfer from Brecon to Normandy is awkward. I don’t think you have great options. It will probably take much of a day. You could fly, then rent another car. Normandy is large. I’m not sure about your options for airports. CDG is east of Paris. Orly is south. You want to go northwest. Maybe Beauvais? I have not flown to Normandy so I’m not sure about airports. You could take the train to London, then to France. If you change in Paris, you’ll have to change stations. You may be able to go cross country, but France’s train lines tend to be Paris-centric. Going by train will be a slog. You could break the trip up in Paris, but then you still will spend a half day getting to Normandy. I think flying will be better.

Don't try to do all three. Recommend cutting your itinerary down to Ireland, and Britain. Save France for another time.

I once spent an entire day getting from London to Bayeux, Normandy: in a taxi at 6 am to catch the Eurostar train to Paris, taxi from one train station to another (no sights seen, only traffic), lunch at the second train staton, long slow train to Bayeux. Once there we found it easy to fill five or six days. I assume you could do it in reverse if you want to do Bath as a day trip from London. But if they were my three weeks I'd find it more relaxing to spend a week each in Breton, Normandy, and Paris, and invite the relatives in Dublin to come visit you there.