Train Travel - England, France, Ireland

Check out the seat61.com web site. It has tons of useful information about European trains.

Nicole...when you say best value are you only concerned with price or time as well?

As an example, you'll probably get the best price taking a series of buses from Birmingham to Paris. But this will take the longest--I'm guess somewhere in the neighborhood of 12 hours. Another option is a train to London and then Eurostar to Paris. If you book far enough in advance, you can get some decent deals. Lastly would be a discount flight from Birmingham to Paris.

For Paris to Dublin, look into a discount flight. Anything else would just take too long. Compare all airlines on this route including all costs as airline such as Ryanair may only charge a few Euros for the flight but add so much extra on the total fare may not be that competitive.

From Dublin to Birmingham, the easiest would be a discount flight. The other choice is a ferry across the Irish sea and then the train. (I'm not sure if bus service is available from the different ferry ports to Birmingham.)

For Birmingham-Paris CDG your airline choices are Flybe and British Airways. BA fares are competitive with Flybe on this route.

For Paris CDG-Dublin your airline choice is Aer lingus. For Paris Beauvais-Dublin your airline choice is Ryanair. (Note: Beauvais is a long shuttle bus ride from Paris.)

For Dublin-Birmingham your airline choices are Ryanair and Aer Lingus.

Thanks so much everyone! This was very helpful!