Taking bike to Ireland

Hiya. I have been told that it's easy and cheapish to get "rail and sail" combo tickets to Ireland, train to Holyhead and then ferry. Has anyone here done this with their bike?

I decided against it simply because of the time off required.
I'm flying up there for Tour of Ireland now. BMI? is about £100 rtn.

http://www.seat61.com/Ireland.htm all the info you need. You will have to book your bike onto the train (in person at the station). Best to do this a couple of weeks beforehand to be sure. Don't need to book your bike onto the ferry, just pay the surcharge (£5 each way) at the ferry terminal.

thanks bombadil, hippy. i'll prob go by train. flying such a short way seems a bit wrong (call yourself a hippy and you're flying to ireland!). also i have a very good friend in anglesey, so that fits in well with rail+sail option

hippy hates hippies. He's like Cartman.

£26 each way from manchester +£5 for bike. boooom!

Well you live in fucking Manchester.. no wonder.

I kill hippies for fun.. not even for eating..

I'm looking at doing this in october..... £66 return from any train station+ the bike surcharge which is £9 I think..... You have to book the bike on though.

I've done this quite a bit in both directions, being from Dublin.

Just make really, really sure your booked onto the train and get it in writing. Irish Rail have an atrocious record with bikes. They do not in any way seem to value their cycling customers and were in the past known to have a silly '6 bikes per train rule' in an enormous carriage with lots of space.

The bikes are very safe when properly booked and accepted though, but there sometimes is a lack of communication between booking offices and stations.

^and this differs from England, how??
I'm appalled at the fiasco of bringing a bike to/from London. Waterloo (south west) trains are simple enough, just get on, fair do's. But trains in and out of paddington (great eastern) are a royal pain in the arse. Because it brings in nil-revenue, they don't seem to give a shit. To me it should be part of their service, as they have a specific bike carriage (for 6 bikes, wtf?!) Surely it can't be hard to add a tick box to the online booking? even if it doesn't bring in money, it would save them customer service time, not to mention the actual customers time and satisfaction.

I have to go to the fucking station in order to get them to book me in with bicycle - always with fucking 'call us to book bicycle'.