Good evening, we have a wedding to attend outside Donegal town in December and we are deciding which route to take from deepest Wilts and will take the Spyder.
The usual route is via Cairnryan with an overnight stop in Dumfries both ways - Belfast, Stroke City and onwards.
Would like to try the A5- Holyhead-Dublin route as the crossing, though longer may be a little calmer than the North Channel. No experience of the Dublin roads Westwards.
Advice welcome.
I did Donegal to Dublin in about 3 hours last summer (cutting short the
Maserati Club Ireland Tour as I caught Covid (!). Quite a nice run on the N3/M3 through Cavan and Enniskillen (or via Athlone and Sligo is more scenic). Also, the road from Chester to Holyhead is very good these days. The Holyhead ferries are modern and comfortable - one slightly faster than the other. We all stayed at the Trearddur Bay Hotel in Holyhead before going over - it's OK, but not particularly recommended.
Fishguard to Rosslare is also not a bad ferry route (although potentially rough in December), but the ferry itself is a bit old (but I think it is cheaper). Then it is 5 hours via Dublin or 7 hours if you take a straighter more scenic route, so you might want to overnight in Waterford or Carlow or somewhere, especially if you have an afternoon arrival (or early departure) in Rosslare.
(A few years ago I was given a hard time by some Irish people for calling their country
Eire. I thought I was being culturally appreciative by using the Gaelic name, but apparently for an English person to call it
Eire, not
Ireland, can be seen as deliberately making the point that it is just
part of the island (and so, by implication, to be supporting partition). I suppose we don't go round saying
Deutschland or
Sverige, so it is not totally unreasonable that to say
Eire might be thought to have an ulterior motive. Even if it doesn't.)