Questions for those who have driven in Ireland...
 

We'll be traveling to Ireland in September on a honeymoon trip and need some advice from those that have done it. We're renting a Nissan Almera type automatic car at Dublin airport (Europcar through Autoeurope) and traveling southwest as far as Dingle and back.
I'm in the process of selecting routes to drive and plan to be primarily the navigator. When I asked the future hubby what sort of roads he would prefer to drive on his reply was , 'any road we won't be killed on'. Pretty vague...
My question is, do you think it's safer to stick to the larger roads marked in red on my michelin maps and labeled 'N' like N8 or N22 type roads- which I believe will be larger but more congested (and with truck traffic), or the smaller roads marked in yellow and labeled 'R' like R515 or R561?
How small are the smaller roads and are they as congested as the larger routes? We've driven in England on a few trips, and we'll have been driving left for a week in Scotland by the time we get to Ireland, but I'm reading so much about Irish drivers and Irish roads...
Also, what is the story with folding in side mirrors and removing hub caps on rental cars? Do you suggest not using the mirrors at all and keeping them folded in/ hub caps put away?

emjoy,

I am sure your question will get a wide range of answers from "Don't do it!" to "you'll be fine". Please list me under the "You'll be fine" category.

After a week of driving in Scotland I have no doubt you and hubby will be very comfortable driving in Ireland. You will, however, be a bit spoiled as I suspect the roads in Scotland are equal to the roads in Northern Ireland and therefore are in a better shape than the ones in the Republic. Sorry guys, that's just the way it is.

I would never, EVER tell anyone to stick to the main roads in Ireland (North or South) unless they were absolutely rotten drivers. Half the fun of being in Ireland is driving those lonely back roads - even the ones that aren't listed on your maps! Honestly I think that speed is what kills in Ireland so just drive as fast or as slow as you are comfortable with.

Also, tag team drive. My husband and I do that with every trip. One person will navagate while the other drives. Works very well. Both of you reminding each other to Keep Left!

A bit of advice for AutoEurope. Check ALL your fluids first thing. We rented from them once and were out in the middle of nowhere (where else would you be in Ireland?) and we, on a whim, decided to pull into a petrol station to fill up even though we didn't need to. My husband got out and was the washing windows and decided to check the oil. Good thing he did since we had none. Well, ok there was some sludge in the bottom of the oil pan but that was it. Now no matter who we rent from now the first thing we do it check the windshield wipers, the lights and the fluids even before we look for scratches on the car.

Most cars (I'm tempted to say ALL) in Ireland come with fold in morrors. Some roads you will need to lean out and pull those mirrors in to pass someone else. Now THAT's a small road! I suggest you also pull in your mirrors when you are parked anywhere in Ireland, in town or out. OK maybe not if you on some deserted road out in the bog somewhere and the only traffic you pass is a flock of sheep... but everywhere else; just get into the habit. Could save you replacing a mirror later. However, do NOT drive with your mirrors like that. You will need them while driving. (I've not heard of the hub cap removal theory. We've never had any problems...)

I can go on but will end for now. Please do not hesitate to email if you'd like a few more tips for driving around Ireland. I've gone on self drive trips once a year for the last 5 years. I wouldn't change a thing and suggest everyone tries it.

Congrats on your upcoming nuptials!

Cheers,
Wendy
[email protected]

The "N" roads are a piece of cake.... two lanes in each direction and pretty hard to mess up. Just like driving on a highway back home. But to me, the narrow little roads are Ireland. They aren't crowded, but they are narrow (with big hedges to keep you on your toes). Since you will be use to it, there won't be problems. It's the left to right orientation thing that is very hard initially. But you should be use to that. And each time I return, it takes much less time to re-adjust.
I'd use the N roads for the long hauls, and not worry about the small roads if they go somewhere you want to see. My least favorite part is driving in the crazy cities like Cork.

My wife, her father (going back to his roots!) and I drove all over Ireland a couple of summers ago. As I would in planning a trip in USA, I looked at a roadmap and planned where I wanted to go and how I would get there BEFORE I left on my trip. I had NO PROBLEMS at any time (except an occasional sheep on the road!). GET A GOOD ROAD MAP now start planning....

Some Irish roads can get very narrow (Slea Head Drive) but you won't be going very fast anyway so ... I don't know about mirrors but the talk about hub caps is real. For us non left side drivers either removing or wire tieing the left side hub caps is a very good idea. I have spoke to more than one person last spring that watched one of their left side caps bounding down the road in their rear view mirror. I checked our Dan Dooley rental when I picked it up and found that they had wire tied the caps onto the wheels. Must be common practice, when I replaced the left front tire the shop automatically wire tied the cap back on.

There were several times when facing an approaching car I just pointed the car and trusted that I would have enough room. I also found it funny when driving down the road at a comfortable rate of speed to come upon a speed sign that was for 10 mph over what I was already doing.

Have fun.

I actually found a number of the N roads that were basically 2 way traffic. The difference was that there was a bit of a shoulder on either side ( part of the route from Bunratty to the Cliffs is this way)

Usually the N roads are the better roads - when you get around larger cities, they will definitely be 2 lanes each way.

R roads can be great, or awful. There is an R from Galway north, towards Kylemore that is perfect. On the other hand , some of the R's from Kinsale up to the N24(5?) towards Killarney are really narrow.

Which type of road you choose depends on how much time you have to get to your destination, and how comfortable you are on sometimes deserted narrow roads. ( I am a main road person myself).

When driving , go with this thought - There are a LOT of sharp curves - or "acute bends" as the signs will tell you - there, and I swore that over both of my trips, there was ALWAYS a truck coming at me when I got to one. Slow down extra when coming to a sharper curve, and once you see it is clear you can speed up a bit. There is nothing as claustraphobic as being in a smaller car, with a 7 ft stone wall on one side , and an oncoming large truck speeding at you from the other.
Once I learned to expect the trucks, life was much calmer.

Oh - and remember - the beauty of the roundabout system is that if you miss your turn, just go around again - no problem !

Debbie

Wow thanks to all for the good advice, and encouragement. I really don't want to rush our trips, I'd love to take the back way. I feel a lot better about the idea of doing a little of both now. We're planing to not drive more than 100 miles or 3 1/2 hours in any one day- and want to be able to stop along the route to visit local places.
It's good to know that road between Kilkenny and Kinsale isn't tas big as a standard N road since I'm sure we'll be on it. : )- N76 heading south does indeed look smaller than the red labeled N24 to N8. Just a thought, does the road get smaller the higher the number?
Good advice about the fluids in the car too. I'm all set to check the scratches/dents, and would have completely forgotten that vital factor!

Does anyone know if the rental cars in Ireland have cd players or cassette decks in them usually?

Our Dan Dooley had a CD player.

What a great honeymoon trip! We rented an automatic (via hertz) last year and it had a CD (which we were unprepared for!) - I would bring some CDs and cassettes just in case; the radio gets very monotonous.

Are you staying in Dublin first? If not, I would plan your first day very carefully. We arrived in Shannon after a transatlantic flight (with no sleep) and our "expert" travel agent had us driving all the way up to Ashford Castle via Cliffs of Moher on some of the skinniest roads we encountered the entire trip. It was a bit much on no sleep!! I am sure it's not as far as it seemed the day we did it, but it was pretty torturous by the end and we both took turns driving.
Other than that - go for it! I was actually pleasantly surprised at the quality of most roads and expected them to be much worse than they were.

If you stay off the small roads, you'll miss too much culture and fabulous small villages which is the best part of Ireland.

If you do the Ring of Kerry, go in the opposite direction of the tour buses - the driving will be easier and faster and you'll see them coming at you and have time to pull as far to the side as need be.

Enjoy!

I moved to Northern Ireland a few months ago, and have spent a lot of time since then driving in the hopes of passing my stupid driving test soon.

Anyway, the best thing you can do while driving in Ireland is PAY ATTENTION! The driver can't look at the scenery a map. You must pay attention to the road, and anticipate that up over that hill or around that bend are a couple of walkers, some sheep, a big truck that takes up more than 1/2 of the road, so that you can react in time. And if you are paying attention to your driving, you will have plenty of time to react.

This is not meant to scare you. It's just so easy to drive places in the US without paying close attention, and you could do so safely. You can't do that here, and I'm in the north, where the roads, for the most part, are wider.

Regarding CD players, when I've rented from Hertz, Avis and National/Alamo, I've always had a CD player. The one (and only) time I rented from Dan Dooley, the roller skate we ended up with didn't even have a tape player.

In April when we rented from Dan Dooley, I asked ahead of time , whether the car would have a CD player, and the answer I got was "it depends on what year you end up with"
so - go ahead and email your car rental place, and see if they will tell you whether all their cars have them.

The newer cars have CD's in them, but older models sometimes only have cassettes.

We were lucky - we ended up with a brand new (200 miles!) ford wagon with a cd player.

I forgot to mention earlier that Ireland is not a big country and 100 miles per day may be too much in the off main road type of travel? I remember that we drove all the way across the country in half a day from where we landed to Dublin.

Thanks for all the advice. I'll be in Scotland for just over a week before we fly into Dublin so the jetlag won't be an issue for us since it's only an hour flight from Edinburgh ; )

We're planning on staying in Kilkenny the first night, then driving to Kinsale for two nights, then Dingle for two, then hopefully staying one night near Cashel, and back to Dublin for our last two nights before our flight home. We would like to stay put once we reach the towns we'll be overnighting in to avoid roads at night and after a pub dinner. No one has really mentioned driving at night, but it seems like a good thing to avoid.
What time does it get dark in the SW in mid September? Someone once told me, but I've been planning this trip for so long I've completely forgotten.
thanks again for all the encouragement.

Emjoy,
We too chose to avoid driving at night, instead enjoyed a pint or two with no worries in town. I think this is probably a good idea. We were there in early October and I can't remember it getting dark too early for it to be an issue - I think around 6 pm or so, but am not positive.

Honeymooned in Ireland in September 1991. Hugged the southern and western coasts, usually on off-roads. Due to the narrow roads and many small towns, expect to only average 30-40 miles per hour. My advice is too not overstretch yourselves in planning long trips every day. Keep your trips to 100 miles or so. Rural roads are often very narrow and lined with rock or stone walls or hedges so that the left hand passenger is often a foot from the structure. However, I found these roads all the more fun. There are some "modern" highways in Ireland that instruct your average American on how small a nation Ireland is. Took a main highway near Cong in the west on a Sunday morning and was eating Sunday brunch in Dublin three hours later. Have a pleasant honeymoon!

By the way, if you have a CD player or a cassette player in your vehicle, buy up all the Clancy Brothers with Tommy Makem music albums that you can so you can listen during the ride. The live, two cassette album is top-notch. Wrap the Green Flag is excellent. So is their Pub songs album.

if you want a taste of old fashioned Irish Humor - pick up a Hal Roach CD/Cassette. very funny in a simple kind of way.

oops - another one to get ( we heard them live in Killarney , they are there every thursday I believe- very very good) is "The Irish Weavers"

We spent two weeks this June in NW Ireland. We picked up a car in Galway and headed north. Like many others we combined the major roads with lots of smaller ones. No problems. My husband swears he's a better driver there than here as he has to pay attention; different side of the road, shifting with the left hand, etc. Lucky for us, in June it didn't get dark until around ten at night (or later) so we could drive to dinner in out-of the-way places. I imagine it still should be light in September.

Have a lovely honeymoon.