What is the best/fastest way to take my car from Northern Ireland to Twickenham?

Question

By best I mean a balance between the fastest, least tiring, least traffic, easiest and preferably cheapest.

Answer 1

You should find that the Dublin ferry is a cheaper ferry to England via Hollyhead and could be worth driving down there instead.If you take the 9pm sailing,I know you said least tiring but you can get 3 hours sleep on the boat.The drive from Hollyhead to Twickers will take around 5 hours.Liverpool down is around 3 hours but the ferry takes longer and costs more.The A75 from Stranraer is an horrible road especially if they let the lorries off first and will take 7-8 hours to get to Twickers.

Answer 2

As far as ferries go there are only really two options - to Stranraer in Scotland or Liverpool on Merseyside. The Heysham-Belfast service is Summer only I think, the same as Larne-Fleetwood.

Either way means a trip down the M6 which is busy at the best of times, especially in the midlands between Cheshire and Birmingham. I'd suggest taking the M40 from Birmingham to London via Oxford rather than the M1 as this is a quieter motorway, though once you get to the M25/M4 corridor you're pretty much screwed traffic-wise as this area gets really nasty.

Cheapest method in all honesty would probably be a flight across to one of London'a airports and hire a car locally from there rather than drive five or six hours as that is about what it would take. If you can get as far as Heathrow by air, I'd probably go so far as to say don't hire a car at all and stick to public transport and the underground. By the time you've paid the ferry fare and petrol costs for the trip you wouldn't be saving anything on the air fare and underground rail pass, and it would definately be least tiring!

Answer 3

Ferry from Belfast to Liverpool, then drive.