Day 16: Harwich (United Kingdom) –> Dublin (Ireland)

Last day of our trip to arctic Lapland.

We have a calm and uneventful overnight crossing from the Netherlands. With the clocks going back one hour due to timezone differences – the only negative of this route is that it has you disembarking off the boat at 06:30. Which is a very early start to the day.

Especially, as Irish Ferries has cancelled our connecting ferry from Holyhead to Dublin and we've had to re-book onto an 20:30 Stena Line crossing, which means we have a good bit of time to kill today.

We head down – bleary eyed to the car desk – which is probably why we didn't notice that this snap was out of focus!

We sail through passport control. Carrying Irish passports is probably the best you can have on this route – as we have full legal access to both the EU mainland and the United Kingdom due to the Ireland Act, 1949. There is similar legislation in Ireland for British Citizens.

To eat up some of our time, we stop off at the Imperial War Museum Duxford to look at all the various airplane exhibits on show here.

Including a very pretty RAF Tornado fighter jet in the cafe area. This one being one of the last to be retired and was used in the fight against ISIS only a few years ago.

It is always amusing to see planes in a museum you remember yourself flying on. The short trip between Dublin and London City Airport being my favorite way of getting to London (if not using a Porsche!) on one of these old BAe 146 "Whisper" Jets.

They were unusual in being a small passenger jet with four engines and despite the name – they never seemed to be particularly quiet when flying them.

The BAe 146 was specifically designed to operate from short and challenging airfields, and London City Airport (with its steep 5.5° approach and short runway) became one of its signature routes. This jet made the airport viable when it opened in 1987.

After a few hours at the museum, we head off across the United Kingdom, where traffic was mostly light on this Sunday.

We did hit a completely closed M6 Toll for about 45 minutes due to a "police incident" – with no further information available. It was annoying that the overhead signs were showing "TOLL CLEAR" when in fact it was unreachable at the time!

Which eventually showed up on our PCM as a "security alert", though too late to route around the issue.

Still, with plenty of time before we catch our ferry to Ireland, we stop in at one of the plentiful motorway stops on the route for a break and some food.

And finally, with steady rainfall as darkness descended we arrive at Holyhead in Wales for our final ferry of this trip.

Where we spot a nice Belfast registered classic 911 ahead of us in the queue.

We're here early enough so have an hour long wait before we can board.

Taking a snap of our "location" on the ferry to help find our car later – it can be surprisingly difficult to do so if you're not sure where you parked!

Our last crossing is fine as we grab some food in the Stena Plus lounge and get some sleep.

Due to this re-routed time, we arrive in at 03:00 in the morning into Dublin, much later than we had originally planned – especially as we have work in the morning.

Here is a silent dashcam video showing our early morning route from on-board the ferry, through customs and passport control, through the Dublin Port Tunnel and onto the quiet M50 motorway towards our home.

Stats

Today we did 448 km over 7:00 hours, with an average speed of 64 km/h, consuming 8.3 litres/100 km.