Under- and over-water bookings

Well well, preparations are well underway. Paul and I spent some quality online time prepping some of the details of our trip. When we did our road trip from New York to Los Angeles (see http://2010roadtripnyla.blogspot.com) we were not too fussed about getting a good plan up front. We basically rented a car, booked flights, and winged it. Now, England, as we understand, is less frivolous and wingable. So we’ll write shit down, and make preparations in advance. Here’s a first round of said preparations. To get the hell out of France as fast as humanly possible, we take the Chunnel:

• Route: Calais to Folkestone
• Departing: Sun 09 June 2013 at 1550
• Arriving: Sun 09 June 2013 at 1525
• Vehicle Height: Less than 1.85 metres
• Vehicle Length: Less than 6.00 metres

Wait what - 1.85m? Paul made me look. My car is, according to the manual, 1815mm high, so hey yeah that may be able to fit just fine. But then, I am pimping it up before we leave, with some rather “he is just compensating”-type rims and tires: 295/30R22 – and when we measured them in the shop it would raise the car by about 10-15mm. We’ll see then :)

To get from England to Ireland, we take the Stenaline Ferry (which does not have the 1.85m limit):

• Route: Cairnryan - Belfast
• Date: Thursday, 13 June 2013
• Departs: 07:30 Arrives: 09:45
• Ship: Stena Superfast VII

And back from Ireland to England:

• Route: Dublin Port (T2) - Holyhead (T5)
• Date: Tuesday, 18 June 2013
• Departs: 21:15 Arrives: 00:45
• Ship: Stena Adventurer

Then, when our roadtrip is over (and if we still have a vehicle …), we take the Chunnel back to France:

• Route: Folkestone to Calais
• Departing: Sat 22 June 2013 at 0936
• Arriving: Sat 22 June 2013 at 1111

The total costs for water-transit: 168.30 (chunnel) + 112 (to belfast) + 112 GBP (to holyhead) == 463 EUR == 576 CHF. We decided to chop up the trip from Folkestone to Edinburgh on the way up - we have about 450 miles to drive, it looks a bit like this:

Finding marker-B was some puzzling. On the one hand we land at 4pm or so on Sunday and we’ll probably have reasonable driving up North, but on the other hand if we want a B&B we don’t want to drive that far up north lest we are too late to check in. And we do want to check in, don’t we? Yes, we do! So, I stumbled-across a well known PoS hotel in Doncaster UK: A Campanile! And the best thing is, a room with two single beds will put us back GBP 29.75. That’s going to be fun, and split our trip nicely in half, so we can get to Edinburgh at around noon on Monday.

Posted by Pim van Pelt at 2:23 PM