¶ Exploring Belfast
Welcome to the UK Travel Planning Podcast . Your host is the founder of the UK Travel Planning website , Tracey Collins . In this podcast , Tracey shares destination guides , travel tips and itinerary ideas , as well as interviews with a variety of guests who share their knowledge and experience of UK travel to help you plan your perfect UK vacation .
Join us as we explore the UK from cosmopolitan cities to quaint villages , from historic castles to beautiful islands , and from the picturesque countryside to seaside towns .
Hello and welcome to episode 124 of the UK Travel Panel podcast . This week , myself and Doug are here to chat about our three-day Belfast itinerary .
Now this itinerary builds on or is part of actually our I think it was our 16 , 17 days that we travelled around the UK are I think it was about 16 , 17 days that we traveled around the UK and if you want to have an overview of that itinerary , listen in to episode 119 where we kind of talk about each of the different places that we went and we kind of
not in a lot of detail , but gives you a kind of overview of everything that we did Does that make sense .
It does make total sense , yeah .
So what we thought we'd do is because we've got a lot of interest in in some of those particular destinations that you actually might be thinking . You know what , I quite fancy going to belfast , so you're interested now .
You may want to go to chester , you might want to go to the isle of sky , so we decided what we would do is for destinations that we haven't already talked quite a lot about . So , for example , um edinburgh , which we have talked quite extensively about in the podcast in quite a few episodes .
We thought those places that we haven't we would do dedicated podcast episodes , and there will be far more of those style coming in 2025 because we have been asked for destination guides . So this week's episode is all about Belfast . It is so . It was my first time in Belfast . It was not Doug's first time , you've been before .
I have been before , a few years back , but I have been .
So I was really excited to go and we spent three full days there . We arrived on the Thursday evening and we left on the Monday morning , so we had all day Friday , Saturday and Sunday .
So I wanted it to be a pretty full itinerary to do as much as we could and experience as much as we could of the city itself , but also get out and about to explore a little bit more of Northern Ireland as well . Yeah , so do you want to talk a little bit about how we got there from Dublin ?
Because we actually yeah , that was the first part of us actually how we got from Dublin up to Belfast .
Yeah , so we took the train from Dublin Connolly Station . It should be a two hour train journey but currently there's some engineering works going on north of Newry , so the first hour was train and then we had to take a bus , which was part of the train ticket we purchased . So that arrived into Belfast Lanyon Station .
Now Lanyon Station is still taking trains at the moment because , I mentioned before on the last podcast , there's a new travel interchange for trains and buses called the grand central . It's open for buses but not yet open for trains . So the train , the bus , arrived at the lanyon station so when does it open though the grand central station ?
it's still work in progress . I think it's early next year . I might be the end of this year , but I think certainly for next year okay .
So then we had a slight problem , though , in that we arrived at Lanyon and then we were a bit stuck .
We were a little bit stuck and it was cold , yes , so what happened ? So we arrived and we had planned to take an Uber to the hotel that we were staying in , but there was no Ubers available .
No , there wasn't . And we stood there going oh dear . And yeah , there literally were no Ubers . I was on my app trying to get an Uber and we couldn't . So we were actually really lucky that there happened to be a taxi that happened to have pulled up at the station , so we hopped in there and we went over to our hotel .
So we were staying at the Hampton by Hilton Hotel , which was about 25 minutes by taxi , about 25 minutes , yeah . So it took us actually quite a while but it was a fantastic hotel .
I have to say , we really liked that hotel , didn't we ? Yeah , it was excellent situation as well .
Yeah , wherever was located is that ? I mean ? Yeah , it was absolutely located , perfectly , and it's located right next to the new grand central station . Yeah , literally five minutes , which was fantastic , and I'll tell you why , because of what we did on monday .
But and also subsequent days , which will go into more detail . It was perfectly located for those as well absolutely so .
By the time we got in honestly it was it was fairly late in the evening , wasn't it on that , on that of that thursday evening . So we didn't do anything else . We literally got in the station , got the taxi , got to the hotel , checked in and that was about it for that day . So that gave us of day one , which was the first day itinerary in Belfast .
So , I have to say as well , the hotel breakfast was outstanding . So it really set us up .
One thing we do like to do is , if we book a hotel and I must say we do love bed and breakfast and guest houses as well for this is that if you get a breakfast included , it does set you up for the rest of the day and it just can save you money as well anyway .
So what we did was we decided that that first day we were going to take the hop on , hop off bus around belfast to get orientated and familiarize ourselves with the city and also to go out to the titanic . So that was our main goal for that day . So do you want to talk a little bit about that ?
yeah , so the stop one on the city site scene tour buses was just about 10 minutes walk from our hotel . So we arrived there in good time before the first bus actually took off . So some photos had a look around , yeah , so we jumped on that and we planned pretty much what we're going to do the rest of the day , didn't we really ?
yeah , we did basically looked at the stops and , uh , the first stop they want we decided that we want to get off at was the titanic belfast yeah , and that's stop number five .
To be honest with you , the bus pretty much emptied there .
I think everybody was saying that to start with it did , and and I know I've heard that actually the best thing to do is to go to titanic belfast when it opens , because it can get really , really busy . It was even still busy .
We arrived really early on when it just opened , but it was still actually quite busy , um , so we did have a little bit of a queue . We just bought the tickets on the day when we arrived . Oh actually , no , I didn't . I bought them through get your guide . I had to exchange a voucher , that's right .
So I had actually booked the tickets , that's right yeah , that's right and so , but we're having a good time . We had a good look around outside , because there's a site to take photos with and there's lots outside to take photos of as well .
Absolutely , and then it took us about two hours to go through the whole Titanic experience . It is what it is . I mean I enjoyed it . It was definitely interesting , and we'd actually previously been at a Titanic exhibition in Brisbane .
We had the Titanic experience .
That's right . Yeah , so it was interesting . What else can you say about Titanic ? Honestly ? I know it's probably one of the number one tourist attractions in Belfast . One reason that people will go to Belfast because they want to go and see the Titanic .
So definitely include it into your itinerary and , honestly , using the Hop-on Hop-off bus is probably the best , easiest way to get there , because then you come out and you can jump on the Hop-on , hop-off bus to another destination to follow in the route round .
Yeah , and that's exactly what we did , isn't it ? We jumped back on and then we headed . Well , we stayed on the bus for the next pass , didn't we ?
We did , yeah , so we literally did basically a tour of Belfast to familiarise ourselves . So we went down the Shankill Road , saw some wall murals , the jail , Crumlin Road , yeah . Yeah , Falls Road .
We saw the Titanic Memorial Garden . That's back where we got off , near the Civic .
Hall , oh , and we got on , yeah , so we got off . While we got on , basically at kind of the end we did the whole circuit that we did . Yeah , so we didn't get off there , though , apart from we just got off at the end , didn't we ? We just kind of went with listening to the commentary and that's right yeah .
Yeah , just kind of saying familiarising ourselves a bit with Belfast , that's right a bit with the geography of the area . Yeah , so we did go .
It was actually we were , so we did get off and have a wander around the titanic memorial garden . Yeah , I looked for some photos around the cirical .
There's all shopping areas around there some shops and shops , yeah , definitely , yeah , so lots of shops and things to do that . So that was basically our first day and it sounds like doesn't sound like we did a lot , but actually we did , because you know , the hop on , hop off bus can take you quite a few hours to get around and then go into titanic .
I mean , we spent probably about two hours , but you could spend longer . Oh yeah easily . Oh , and when you go to Titanic Experience as well not to Titanic Experience , the Titanic Museum just say there's a couple of places that you can eat . Yeah , and there's a fantastic gift shop .
I'd say so if you needed to get a drink or a sandwich or something to eat afterwards or before . There is somewhere you can do that . But yeah , I mean , and you can actually walk out to where the titanic launched from as well .
So we did walk out there didn't we onto the uh , the waterfront there ?
yeah , yeah , so that was basically the friday . So then , and bearing in mind , I had booked this beforehand , so I'd booked the tickets for the titanic , where I hadn't actually booked for the Hop On , hop Off bus , we'd just purchased those when we arrived .
So then the next day , on the Saturday , I had booked a full day tour , and I will link in the show notes to all of the different tours and companies that we booked through . And I actually use Get your Guide because , again , I find it useful if the last minute sort of 24 hours before most you can cancel , so it's useful to have .
So we had a fabulous day out , didn't we ?
Oh , we really did . It was just , yeah , all the boxes to tick . We had a nice easy walk to the meeting point . It was from 8 o'clock in the morning .
Which is close to the hotel again . So again , this hotel is just so well situated it was the bus operator's macumbs um .
The driver was actually entertaining all day , oh patrick , our driver .
Honestly , patrick , if you listen to this , you were fantastic , you're absolutely fantastic . But not only was patrick fantastic . I have to say everybody we were on that bus with was brilliant yeah , that's , that's true .
It's one of those unusual days where every single stop , every single person was back on in good time and it was all smooth and yeah , easy , yeah , and he said that as well .
He said I've never had so many people manage to get back on a bus exactly at the time that I've requested you'd be back on , so it was really good . So , a lot of the places that we um well , we stopped off some places for a shorter period of time than others . So do you want to talk about some of the places that we ?
Well , we stopped off some places for a shorter period of time than others . So do you want to talk about some of the places we stopped ?
Yeah , well , one of the places we stopped off first off was Carrick Fergus the castle . There we didn't actually go in the castle , but we stopped off at the harbour area there to have a look and some photos .
Yeah .
And then we jumped back on , we did the Andron Coastline and we went to the carn low , uh , conlock harbour .
Yeah , um , that was more or less a comfort break and shops and yeah , and people had a lot of people had lunch , though you could , they could book lunch , because he did come through and ask if he wanted to have um book lunch , and then he would have told this the place that was stopped at what people's order was .
But we decided we weren't that bothered we were . So we didn't , we just had a cup of tea . That's right , yeah . So then obviously the highlight of the day is obviously the Giant's Causeway , so that's obviously where we were heading towards . But
¶ Northern Ireland Sightseeing and Historical Tour
we stopped off . I will actually talk about some of the shorter stops that you either stop at on the way or on the way back . So we stopped off at the Carrick-O-Reed Rope Bridge just to have a look at that . We did stop off at the Dark Hedges , so if you're familiar with Game of Thrones , you probably will be able to recognise Dark Hedges .
So we stopped there for enough time to walk up the whole lane and then back down again . We went to Bushmills Distillery .
That's right . Yeah , the famous Bushmills , yeah .
Yeah , I'm trying to think where else we stopped Dunluce Castle . These are all quick stops , so you managed to go and have some really some lovely pictures of that . But obviously the highlight of the day was the Giant's Causeway .
And that's where you spend most of the time as well .
Yeah .
So we're at the Giant's Causeway . You've got red or blue walking routes . I mean there's yellow ones as well , but further away Take longer . Yeah . Yeah , the Red Route is the one that takes you sort of out and then back in the other side of the causeway . There's lots of steps there .
There's something called the Shepherd Steps 162 steps down , but you get some great views . The Blue Route is the direct road back to the bus .
That's the one I took . So I'm not a hiking fan at all . So I kind of cheated and I took the Blue Route but I didn't even take the Blue Route because I took the blue route , but I didn't even take the blue route because I took the boss . So basically it's a I think it was a pound each way on the boss , yeah , and I played with contactless .
So I went down on the boss and went back on the boss . By this point it was a bit rainy as well . So I'm just going to say that on my defense , and it was windy and I know you said those steps were a bit slippery .
They were a bit slippery . They're a bit , yeah , slippery on the foot , yeah .
So make sure , if you got the giant's causeway seriously , you need to have a sensible footwear , really do need to have sensible footwear . So , basically , doug walked around the top of the cliffs and down these steps around to the giant's causeway and I went on the bus and I met him down at the bottom of the hill beside the .
I was actually got down there and thought how am I going to see doug because there are so many people . But actually it was easy to find it . You seemed to be walking towards me as I was walking down towards the giant's causeway itself .
So we kind of met up and we took lots of pictures pictures and videos of all the uh columns , the basalt columns , yeah yeah , and I will share all these in the show notes . So do do pop over and have a look at those , because it is fascinating . That was , and it was a big bucket list thing for me .
I'd always wanted to kind of go and see the giant schools right , and clearly for quite a lot of the other people , because there was a lot of people there that day um , it's obviously a popular place to go .
So , um , we decided that we'd get the bus back up , so doug just had to pay for a pound to get the bus back up and I'd bought a return ticket so you can walk it if you want to walk it .
Honestly , um , it's not that far , but saying that you were quite surprised when we took the bus up , just that it was further than you thought it was than I thought yeah and it is up a hill a bit of a waiting queue for the bus return yeah but it um went down pretty quickly yeah , yeah , that it was fine and , um , it's , it's pretty , um , in terms of
the bus for accessibility , the wheelchairs can get onto the onto the uh uh bus and and off the bus . So , um , you can get down there to see if you , if you have some any accessibility concerns . But I thought it was good , I thought it was worth it . We did have .
It's really funny because the entire trip we had beautiful weather , but about 10 minutes at the giant schools where it went crazy , it went a bit . It was . It was windy , really windy , and a lot of rain , and so I had the rain jackets on , but but the whole day was it was a lot of fun and I thought it was . It was . It wasn't expensive .
I can't remember the exact price , but I remember it wasn't expensive . I will put a link to this company because we thought they were outstanding and McCombs Coach Travel is what they're called , but do use our link please if you're going to book . We left at 8 am in the morning and we got back at 6 pm . 6 pm , yeah .
There was three coaches . During the entire journey we were coach number one . We stayed ahead of everybody the whole day .
We did , yeah , we did . So that was basically the saturday . So by the time we got back , that was , that was basically the day really we'd had a good day . So we just sat and had , um , had some drinks , uh , and I think we had a meal in the hotel , didn't we ?
So we had something to eat in the hotel and and some drinks and just kind of chilled out for the rest of the day and then . So that just left us with our third day , third day itinerary .
So on the third day we decided you can't go to Belfast and not learn about the troubles in Belfast and Northern Ireland , and so we'd heard that the best way to do this is to book a political black cab tour . So that's exactly what we did , didn't we ?
We did . It takes about 40 minutes . Again , the meeting point was near the hotel . What five minutes walk from our hotel as well .
Yes , it was . It was actually ideal yeah .
It was just us two , obviously a private tour , and it takes about 40 , 45 minutes and it was well worth doing .
It talked extensively from both sides of the history and particularly in detail about the Good Friday Peace Agreement and the modern-day yeah , kind of yeah , peace process and kind of just where , where things are in in belfast and I guess in terms of you know recent events , I mean in our lifetime , certainly 70s and 80s , and kind of living through that , and I I
think it was it's the first time that I felt that I kind of had had it explained to me . So I have to say a huge thank you to tony , who was our taxi driver who took us around . The tour is only , it's only an hour , but honestly it was . It was fabulous , wasn't it ?
yeah , I think the actual tour was 40 minutes , but we're chatting afterwards .
Yeah , yeah , yeah , but it was . It was excellent , though .
It is , and tony shared his own family's life experiences as well , which was yeah , no , it was really good .
So , honestly and I know I had a friend who was in belfast in august and had really wanted to do this trip and could not get on because it was fully booked so I highly recommend booking ahead if it's something that you want to do .
And honestly , I really think if you go to northern ireland and you , you need to really learn a little bit more about the troubles and um kind of recent events over the last kind of my lifetime is the last 50 years or so . Um , I mean , it goes back into history as well . So you do learn a lot about the background , don't you ?
You do .
To everything that happened , yeah , so that was , that was a really interesting experience . Um , and then we went back to the hotel and we booked a Sunday roast . We wanted to have a good Sunday roast .
It was a recommended location .
It was , and it was fabulous , wasn't it ?
It really was .
Yeah
¶ Belfast to Glasgow Travel Experience
, it was good . I remember the name of it , it was called the Bowery . Good job . Doug remembers these things . Yes , it was called the Bowery and it was absolutely . It was very good it was a sharing platter .
Good , so it's a sharing platter . Yes , there's something slightly different to what you usually have your own plate . This was a shared yeah .
So again , I'll put some pictures in the show notes so you can have a look at that . So if you're in belfast , we highly recommend that you book in . Again , you will need to book .
Make sure that you book in at the bowery and go hungry , because there was plenty for the two of us there was and actually we took the .
We took the bus . I'm going to say as well , we just hopped on the bus , which was really easy . A local bus . Local bus system .
We just found out the number of the bus that we needed , jumped on the local bus and , you know , just used Google Maps I think I did , knew where to get off and literally we're like two minutes walk from the Bowery , so that . So that was really easy .
And it wasn't expensive again , I can't remember , off the top of my head it was only a few pound and I played with contactless again . So really easy . So that was the sunday evening , so that was kind of three days up . And then we had a lovely experience on the sunday , didn't we , when we met that lovely american couple that's right .
Yeah , we just in passing . We exchanged a few words and then , long story short , we spent the next two hours chatting away while you were drinking cocktails yeah , enjoying cocktails .
So , hi , candy , if you're listening , it was lovely to meet you in Belfast . It was just , it was really lovely . And then , I guess so the next day , we knew we were going to be leaving very early .
But I'm going to let Doug talk a little bit more about the organisation , because he organised our transportation on the Monday morning because we were heading to Scotland .
Okay . So when we do our itinerary consults we get asked a lot how to the different means of transportation between Belfast and Glasgow , and one of the ones that's come up more than once is a company called Hannon Coaches and Hannon Coaches we call it . It was a 6.30 early start in the following morning .
I'm not the best coast traveller , so I contacted them and they arranged for me to have front seats , which was absolutely perfect , and it was so straightforward it was very easy .
I'd already walked the route just to see how long it would take from the hotel to the as I mentioned before the Grand Central station From the hotel , from the hotel to the as I mentioned before the Grand Central Station five minutes . So it was from the bus stop number 18 .
I'm not sure if that's permanently located for that , but it was on this occasion because the trains are not yet running into there . So we arrived in good time . The driver turned up and within a few minutes we were on the way . Yeah , what time was that in the morning ? That was early . 6.30 was the departure time . I think . There was two a day .
The next one was from late morning departed , but we wanted the early one because we wanted to be in Glasgow as early as we possibly could . So 6.30 , we did about 10 minutes drive to the Belfast port . There was another collection pickup for some more passengers . I don't think the bus was full . I think it was only probably about half full overall .
Yeah it was , and then we boarded the boat very easily .
Yeah on the coach . Oh yeah , the coach drives straight on , so you just find out exactly which side of the boat you get off the coach on , so you can actually find the coach at the end of it . Yeah , starboard , we were on Starboard . I was going to say we were on the starboard side .
Yeah , so it includes your ferry ticket as well . So we left there about half past seven the ferry , and we arrived at just ten o'clock , about two and a half hours .
Very smooth crossing .
It was a smooth crossing and we're on the way . Two hours drive to Glasgow .
Yeah , glasgow , new Canham .
Super Station . One little tip if you are taking this journey you're going from Belfast to Glasgow sit on the left-hand side , because you've got a great view of the Firth of Clyde and there's the Elsa Craig Little Island there as well , which is worth having a look at . But it was very straightforward , very , very easy .
It . Honestly , was it right really , from the morning just walking across to catch the coach , getting on the coach , going to the ferry , um , getting off at the ferry , they say we're on the ferry for a few hours .
You just sat and actually in the kind of lounge kind of restaurant a bit and we had , we had cups of tea , I think , we had bacon sandwiches , um , again , it was very smooth . So we both wandered off at different times having a little bit of a look around the ferry . It was quite busy . I'm not surprised because it's so cheap .
What a fantastic and easy , easy way to get from Belfast to Glasgow . I had no idea , literally , I had no idea . Honestly , it blew my mind just how easy it was to do this .
And also , also , when you get off and you're doing that coach trip to to glasgow from the ferry pool , the , the views were amazing , it was , it was stunning , absolutely stunning it was , and we were lucky with the weather as well .
We were again we did have lovely weather , and then we arrived in glasgow itself and then we had a again a short walk to to our hotel there yeah , we did so that was basically our three-day itinerary , from the from leaving dublin till arriving in glasgow . We had those three days the friday , saturday , sunday in belfast .
Um , I think we made the most of it . I was very keen to go back and explore more than northern ireland , as my first visitor said , but it was fantastic it was , and we kept it simple in a lot of ways , didn't we ?
we ? Did yes , we did a lot of things , but we weren't rushed off a fee , we weren't literally rushing here then everywhere were we ?
no , I think I think that worked really well .
So if you're listening and thinking , oh actually you know what I fancy doing , going to belfast , you know you could really would do two or three days because having the hop on , hop off course , the titanic the one day , the next day doing the full day truck , because those that if you're going to go to um giant's causeway and do that , it's a full day out ,
so that that's going to be one whole day taken , and then the third day having the opportunity to do the political black taxi tour and then just relaxing that afternoon and having a lovely sunday roast .
I mean , if you wanted to shorten it , I guess you , you could have the hop-on , hop-off course , do the Titanic or even just take a taxi to the Titanic and then do the black taxi political tour the same day . So you could do it in two if you really wanted to , but I highly recommend not doing it in less than that .
No , I think we have the right balance . I mean , the Sunday afternoon we took it easy and just had a little stroll and the sun was shining , yeah it was really good .
So that summarizes it . So , as usual , you can find all the information about what we did in Belfast the different tours up on our bus , the Titanic , the Belfast black taxi company , all that , all that information that we just talked about will be in the show notes , which are at uktravelplanningcom . Forward slash , episode 124 .
So I think that'll be it until next week . Is that right ? I think so . So until next week , as always , happy uk travel planning . Thank you for tuning in to this week's episode of the uk travel planning podcast . As always , show notes can be found at uktravelplanningcom .
If you've enjoyed the show , why not leave us feedback via text or a review on your favourite podcast app ? We love to hear from you and you never know . You may receive a shout out in a future episode . But , as always , that just leaves me to say until next week . Happy UK travel planning .