Swansea - Cork Ferry

Fastnetline made its first sailing of the "Julia" from Swansea to Cork on Wednesday March 10th.

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I was personally delighted to hear of the re-opening of the Swansea Cork Ferry. I used to work at an office with a panoramic view of the ferry terminal, and really missed the ship when it was taken out of service in 2006. Since then, an inspirational effort has been made by the West Cork Tourism Co-operative to re-start the route, and who finally secured a ship, the MV Julia, in September 2009 at the rock bottom price of EURO 7m. Considering that there are neighbourhoods in central London where it is now impossible to buy for less than £5m, the value in a ship that carries up to 1500 people seems considerable.

As soon as it was announced I made sure that I was able to take a place on the inaugural sailing which finally took place on March 10^th 2010 after a weeks’ delay, blamed on the late certification of facilities. At a month before Easter, it was clear that Fastnetline (fully owned by the co-operative) wanted to get a good run-in before the busy period, so I was actually expecting some teething trouble, and I was right.

My first mistake was to book as a foot passenger. Assuming that I could walk off the train at Swansea and casually arrive at the ferry terminal, I was dismayed to see that a fence had been completely locked up to prevent any access via the short route through the newly developed SA1 port area. This meant a 3km walk via the dual carriageway round to where we started, only to be told at the security gate that we were not allowed to walk there. We decided to ignore this, mainly because of the hopelessness of the situation, and arrived at the ferry terminal, complete with 15kg of camera equipment and baggage, a sweating wreck. No shop at the terminal for cup of tea.

It was now three hours before sailing, luckily, because I wanted to get on board to photograph some of the cabins and to get some decent video in before it got dark. Instead I was kept at the terminal for another two hours. A male voice choir had turned up to make a short concert for the passengers before the ship disembarked on its first commercial sailing, who were great entertainment, and got on a full hour before the rest of us. This meant I nearly missed the concert altogether, because the gangway has yet to be installed, and we had to driven by coach the full 30 metres or so from the terminal onto the ferry. This only happened when we were held up by a Scandinavian backpacker who got pulled up by the police for carrying a Swiss Army knife! Car passengers were all on.

I have to say the MV Julia is a very comfortable, modern equipped ship, and the mostly Ukrainian and Polish staff are fabulous. The restaurant, cafeteria, and bars were in full swing, food good albeit somewhat expensive for what you get, but that is case in any ferry. I slept a full eight hours on the way to Cork which is what I needed after my marathon trek to get on it.

The weather on the approach to Cork was simply perfect, the service could not have hoped for better and views of Cobh as we were approaching Cork Harbour were simply stunning. I was left wondering why anyone would want to drive from Rosslare to Cork when you could just relax and watch the views.

The fun all started again when we arrived at Cork Harbour. As foot passengers we were literally the last to get off, and since my other half isn’t a UK passport holder we were held up by the Garda, causing us to miss the only free bus into the city, 12 miles away. We were offered a taxi which was great. Finding information about the return bus was another challenge – nobody knew! Each time we asked someone we received a different story, so in the end I booked a normal commuter coach back to Ringaskiddy where the driver then very kindly took us right back to the terminal. Again no cafe at the terminal, but we do know that there will be one as I watched the guys putting the place together as a I was waiting to get back on the ship.

After having spent all day in Cork city, hauling my camera gear around, I was very happy to get back on board without a hitch, and again, slept a full night. In fact, I slept so well that I didn’t even hear the announcement by the captain about the mechanical problem that occurred, forcing the ship to stop for three hours. I woke up at 06:30 thinking I’d just have another 30 minutes to have breakfast and film the arrival at Swansea. Wrong! We finally arrived at 13:00, a full 5 hours late. On the upside, it gave me hours to get some footage, but those people wanting to connect to trains were going to struggle. Most people I spoke to on board, like me, had expected a delay, so were reasonably relaxed, but these teething problems really need to get put aside before this route can become successful.

In summary, I would always choose this service to get to west of Ireland from my home in London, as I hate flying and I wouldn’t want to drive through the night to get there via Rosslare. From a price perspective, it’s competitive, but whatever you do – take the car!

2 week holiday in Southern Ireland from May 2nd to 16th May 2010