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Ireland to Scotland - best travel method

Posted by (Knoxville, Tennessee, USA) on

We are attempting to plan a trip to Scotland next year, in our preliminary planning the most cost effective route from the USA seems to be a flight into Dublin. And then getting ourselves into Scotland from there. We do have a wedding that we need to work around however everything else is flexible so my thought was flying into Dublin, and then driving/train into Scotland, and then around Scotland as we can. I’m having some difficulty figuring out which would be the best overall method to get from Dublin/Ireland/Northern Ireland into Scotland. Driving/Ferry or Train, or combo of both. We would like to drive once in Scotland to allow us freedom and flexibility to see/do as much as possible around the wedding.

Thanks in advance for the help!

Posted by
189 posts

After staying in Ireland for three weeks we took the ferry out of Belfast to Scotland where we rented a car to tour Scotland then took the train to London where we finished the trip. At the time I looked a flying from Ireland to Scotland but we had a lot of luggage and it just didn't work for us at the time. The ferry ride was an interesting and pleasant trip.

Posted by
1117 posts

The cost of this might depend on how many of you there are in the group. Foot passenger on a ferry + rail tickets may work out cheaper than flying. You may run into problems if you try to take a rental car from The Republic of Ireland (i.e. Dublin) into Scotland and leave it there. Most rental companies would not allow this. Even bringing a rental car from Northern Ireland could be expensive on a one way rental. And bringing a car on a ferry is much more expensive than doing it as a foot passenger.

For speed and convenience I would look at flying from either Dublin or Belfast into either Glasgow or Edinburgh and renting a car there. You are also likely to have more competition on the car rental and so prices (I would think) would be cheaper than picking up a car at the ferry port. Airlines to look at would be Aer Lingus, Easy Jet and Flybe.

If the main focus of your trip to Scotland will be the Highlands you could look at flying into Inverness.

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