Ferries cross the Irish Sea from Great Britain to Larne or Belfast in Northern Ireland. All the operators listed below offer special promotions throughout the year, and some also offer through ticketing with rail and bus services at each end.
offer two types of service from the Port of Belfast to Stranraer in Scotland, with up to six sailings a day. The HSS Stena Voyager is a high speed catamaran (it used to be the fastest ferry between Northern Ireland and Britain but is now subject to speed restrictions) and the Stena Caledonia is a more traditional and slower ferry. Stena offer 'rail and sail' tickets with train connections to destinations in Scotland from Stranraer: the railway station is directly adjacent to the ferry terminal in Stranraer. You should note, however, that (for reasons that are unclear) Stena only offer 2 HSS sailings per day, and have not coordinated their sailing times with ScotRail, so whatever sailing you get you are likely to face a long wait at Stranraer for a train onwards.
also offer up to three sailings a day from Larne (accessible from Belfast by train or bus) to Fleetwood, near Liverpool.
offer daytime and nightime crossings to Birkenhead, near Liverpool. Cabins and meals are available.
sails ferries into Larne, from Troon and Cairnryan in Scotland. P&O have the fastest crossings to mainland UK from Larne to Cairnryan in just 1 hour on the P&O Express and 1hr 45mins on the traditional ferry. The Larne - Troon route takes 2 hours.
offers informed and independent advice on how to book combined train and ferry tickets from any railway station in Great Britain to Northern Ireland.
It is also possible to get ferries to Dublin and drive to Northern Ireland.
The Most Frequently Asked Travel Questions about Northern Ireland
Where To Stay & Best Hotels in Northern Ireland - updated Apr 2024
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Northern Ireland Travel Guide from Wikitravel. Many thanks to all Wikitravel contributors. Text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0, images are available under various licenses, see each image for details.
