How do you get from the south-east back to Britain, Scandinavia or the Low Countries?
Airports, ferries, car and rail: we show how well the region is connected and where journeys get longer than you are used to.
There is a short truth about getting around rural Ireland, and this page says it in the first paragraph: your family needs a car, realistically two. Rail and bus exist and are described soberly on the page on public transport, but they will not carry a family’s daily life between small towns. Knowing that, you plan correctly, and the rest of this page is about how well the region lives, and how well you leave it, by car.
The car is basic equipment
Daily life in the region is a car life: the big shop, the children’s training, the run to the station. The roads for it are better than their reputation: the east coast is tied to Dublin and Cork by motorways and dual carriageways, and between the region’s towns you drive in stages of under an hour; the drive times by town are on the region page.
For running costs, the current benchmarks: petrol last cost €1.97 a litre, diesel €2.14 (October 2026); the rise in excise of about 9 cent (petrol) and 10 cent (diesel) planned for 1 September 2026 was postponed by the government on 27 August 2026; from 1 November 2026 the duty rises instead in four steps to the end of February 2027.
Source: European Commission, Weekly Oil Bulletin (prices of 19 October 2026, Ireland); postponement of the excise rise: Department of the Taoiseach, “Government approves extension in reductions in excise on petrol and diesel”, 27 August 2026. As of: retrieved 23 October 2026.
How to bring your own car and what registering it costs is under Your car and VRT; the relief for a transfer of residence described there is one of the most useful official procedures of the whole move.
The airports, looked at honestly
If home is Britain, Cork Airport serves you well. Beyond Britain it thins out quickly, and we do not dress that up:
| Destination | Airline | Frequency |
|---|---|---|
| London Heathrow | Aer Lingus | daily |
| London Gatwick | Ryanair | daily |
| London Stansted | Ryanair | daily |
| Manchester | Ryanair | daily |
| Bristol | Aer Lingus Regional | daily |
| Birmingham | Ryanair | five days a week for most of the winter |
| Edinburgh | Ryanair | four to six days a week |
| Amsterdam Schiphol | KLM | daily |
| Brussels Charleroi | Ryanair | two or three days a week |
| Copenhagen, Stockholm, Oslo, Helsinki | none | no direct flight |
Cork Airport’s own winter schedule; summer schedules differ. Check the airline’s timetable before you book.
Source: Cork Airport, flight schedule winter 2026/27 (corkairport.com). As of: retrieved 6 November 2026.
Anyone who flies regularly to Scandinavia, or anywhere on the Continent beyond Amsterdam, therefore flies mostly via Dublin, and Dublin Airport lies 76 minutes (Gorey) to 149 minutes (Dungarvan) away depending on where you live, calculated as a model over the road network. That is the price of the edge of Europe, it also stands on the page on the location on the edge of Europe, and it belongs in every honest calculation; if you will fly often, build that drive into the sums when buying a house.
Drive times: OSRM, routing over the open road network. A model, not a timetable. As of: retrieved 22 and 23 August 2026.
The ferries: the way with your own car
And now the strength that more than makes up for the gaps in the flight map, and that only this region has: Rosslare Europort. From there your family drives onto a ship in its own car:
| Destination | Operator | Frequency |
|---|---|---|
| Dunkirk (France) | DFDS | see the DFDS timetable |
| Cherbourg (France) | Brittany Ferries | five sailings a week |
| Fishguard (Wales) | Stena Line | several times a day |
| Pembroke Dock (Wales) | Irish Ferries | several times a day |
| Bilbao (Spain) | Brittany Ferries | two round trips a week |
Each row checked with the operator itself, not taken from the port map; the Dunkirk route carries cars, caravans and motorhomes, no foot passengers.
Source: Each operator checked separately (Stena Line route list, DFDS, Brittany Ferries, Irish Ferries); destinations and crossing times Rosslare Europort. As of: retrieved 22 August 2026, Dunkirk checked again 17 September 2026.
For British readers the Welsh routes are the everyday bridge: Fishguard in just over three hours, Pembroke Dock in about four, several times a day. For the Low Countries and Scandinavia, the Dunkirk crossing is the most concrete reachability argument of the whole site: cross once, and you stand with your own car at the Belgian border, within a day’s drive of the Netherlands. For family visits with luggage, a dog and children, that is often the better way than any plane ticket, and it depends on exactly this region: on Rosslare, the eastern gate of the south-east.
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