My husband and I have 4-5 weeks in May/June to travel in the UK and Ireland.
From June 2-15 we will be on RS's 14 Day Best of England tour; the rest of the time is unplanned. (Six years ago we did spend a week in London and a week on a narrow boat around Oxford so we'll be duplicating some of our past experiences on this particular tour but this is ok.) How would you spend the rest of the time? We want to use only public transportation, which has served us well with other itineraries in Europe. We welcome your suggestions!
Posted by
Spring, Texas
635 posts
I hate to say it this way but I think you have your tours backwards. Ireland using public transportation is very difficult and much slower than driving. In Britain you can get around pretty well with public transportation except is some of the more remote areas where it starts to resemble Ireland. If you can't/won't switch tours, I would suggest you fly or take a train to Edinburgh for a few days. You can then use trains or short tours to see some of the highlinghts of Scotland. That's worth about a week. After that, you could fly to Dublin. See Dublin and do the day trips to Glendalough and Boyne Valley. A train would provide good service to Galway where you could do day trips to the Aran Islands and the Connemarra. That is worth a short week.
Posted by
Bloomington, IL, USA
9363 posts
There is nothing particularly difficult about Ireland's public transportation system, unless you are trying to use trains instead of buses. The national bus system is extensive, even in more remote areas. Trains are scarce in the western part of Ireland. You could base in Dublin and do a couple of day trips from there to Glendalough and to Newgrange, then take the train to Galway and base there for tours of Connemara or the Cliffs of Moher and the Burren.