h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

So, I went up to the station yesterday to buy my tickets. Tullamore station has a booking office, which sells tickets, and a parcel office, which sells tickets when the booking office is closed. The booking office was closed. And neither the parcel office nor the machines sell Sail & Rail tickets. The booking office shouldn't have been closed, but someone wasn't in that day, so it had closed early.

Today I took a slightly late lunch and tried again. The office was open. Good start. First, the lady there asked me exactly which sailings I would be on. She told me that Sail & Rail tickets are no longer open. The crossings have to be booked, and the reference number written onto the ticket. Lovely. Then she told me that the sailings I wanted, which I'd carefully checked on the National Rail website, were not operating.

I like the National Rail website, because I can plan my whole journey on it. It has both the Irish and the British trains, and the ferries. But the Jonathan Swift is off at the moment. The Irish Ferries website tells us "Dublin Swift Fast Ferry - will operate a single round trip daily from 16 to 22 Feb inclusive with the revised time of 14.00hrs ex Dublin & 17.15hr ex Holyhead." (Irish Ferries seem to be a bit uncertain what that boat is called. Sometimes it's the Dublin Swift and sometimes the Jonathan Swift. I prefer Jonathan, so that's what I call it.)

So the 08.45 sailing I'd planned on taking is not operating. Does the National Rail website tell you this? No it does not.

So I booked myself onto the 08.05 Ulysses sailing instead. Or, rather, I asked the lady in the booking office to book me onto that sailing. This took time. In fact, it took almost half an hour. As she sits at the ticket window, her computer is behind her, so when she was booking the ferry crossings I could watch her using the Irish Ferries website. It was a painful experience.

But I do now have my ticket. I think I'll buy them online in future. I have a credit card these days, so such things are now possible. Buying them at the station has never before been this much hassle. (Buying them in UK stations is often a bit of an adventure, because half the time your first job is to convince the person behind the counter that such a ticket actually exists.)

My train leaves Tullamore at 05.40 and reaches Heuston at 07.00. There's a bus at 07.15 from Heuston Station to North Wall Terminal 1. It usually gets you there in time for the 08.05 sailing, but they don't guarantee it. It's designed to meet the 08.45. And besides, although it's a standard Dublin Bus, it's run by special arrangement with Irish Ferries, so it might not even be running at all. So I'll have to take a taxi across Dublin instead, to be on the safe side.

The 08.05 sailing is the Ulysses, the largest passenger ferry in the world. It's a comfortable ship, but considerably slower than the Swift. In fact, it gets to Holyhead three minutes after my train leaves. So I've done some more checking on the National Rail website, and picked out another train. This one gets me to Manchester Piccadilly at 15.57. Let's hope that this is accurate. Perhaps National Rail know more about trains than they do about ferries.

In other news, the lady at the booking office mentioned that Irish Rail are no longer processing Sail & Rail tickets for Stena. The Stena times rarely suit me anyway.

So, 05.40 train. I may pack, and get an early night.

TRiG.

That sounds awful! And what a long journey that is.

Will be good to see you, all going well with planes and ferries and trains.

Hmm. bahn.de gives me different times, but is also wrong. It doesn't suggest the 08.45 sailing. Instead, it tells me to take the 14.30 sailing. That's not running either.

TRiG.

I hope you get there without too much stress