Rail sail to from Guildford to Dublin

Hi everyone,

I was looking to travel from Guildford to Dublin using RailSail from Monday 22nd June until Friday or Saturday (26th or 27th).

Are RailSail tickets quota-controlled? I can still get foot passenger tickets from Holyhead, but can't find any RailSail tickets for sale. The cost of the rail journeys on their own to reach Holyhead pushes the price up a lot.

At one point in May I could see outward tickets and I went to the Guildford ticket office to enquire. I can't remember if they looked up any returns.

I was thinking perhaps the issue was related to Avanti West Coast running out of seat reservations online. I am aware I don't have to have one for this journey.

After visiting the ticket office, I was away for work and, after that, I fell ill. Today, having mostly recovered, I went to the Haywards Heath ticket office and they could find no tickets for sale.

I tried later dates using Trainline, purely for research, and it just claims they are not on sale yet, which could equally mean they are sold out. I know the forum site sells them too, but I couldn't find any on there either. Perhaps I haven't selected the right dates. I tried both Stena and Irish Ferries.

Holyhead Port has been working off one berth since January due to a ferry making contact with and damaging Terminal 5 (the traditional Stena Line berth), which has meant that the ferries have had to operate under a revised sailing pattern.

Ferry sailings were due to revert to the traditional sailing times during June.

However, there was an announcement on Monday that the work has not been completed on Terminal 5, and that ferries will continue to operate at the revised times until the Autumn.

It would appear that all of the ferry sailings to/from Holyhead from today onwards have been removed from the railway timetable databases - I suspect that there is an update in progress to post the updated ferry schedules onto the systems but I've no idea of how long that might take.

Thank you for the information. It makes sense now, as I suspected there might be an issue.

I will continue to check daily for any changes. I hopefully will secure a reasonable accommodation price if tickets become available.

More broadly, it would be helpful if a note could be added somewhere in the bookings system to alert station staff to issues such as this. However, perhaps the system isn't flexible enough to permit such a thing.

The only note on the TfW site at present is that Fishguard - Rosslare is suspended.

Nothing to suggest any other route is affected.

As mentioned by @berneyarms, however, all the ferries from Holyhead have been removed from the timetable effective today, which prevents SailRail tickets from being sold as a reservation for the ferry leg is mandatory.

I can get a ticket for Fishguard to Rosslare on Trainsplit. Return total cost is £124.80. This is for 22 June to 27 June.

However, after the 10 hour journey to get to Rosslare, it is another 5-6 hour journey on top to reach Drogheda. Whilst I am sure it is a lovely journey, it is a lot of travelling and I would need to find somewhere to stay for 1 night both ways. It eats up into my time in Ireland more.

I don't wish to book this and then find the other tickets come back on sale.

I will contact TfW to find out more.

I had an update but my report to delete one post caused them all to be deleted I guess I confused someone.

Anyway, Transport for Wqles are aware of the issue.

As it stands some days are loaded but other days are not and it doesn't seem to be chronological.

I am fairly certain that Avanti West Coast reservation issue is a problem on some days in addition to this. So I will go to a ticket office in a few days.

Just having a quick look there and the revised sailing times are now loaded onto the rail database up until 31 October and it should be possible to book rail/sail again.

brfares.com now sells walk-up tickets without any need for an itinerary, it will offer sailrail standby via Holyhead and sailrail anytime via Cairnryan even when TfW are playing silly buggers with the allocations.

It's coming up with availability via the Trainline. (A link from Irish Ferries), and also RailUKForums ticketing.