Ireland Travel Forum

I found teh website for these tours while surfing yesterdya and was thinking about maybe booking one for while I'm of in September as Ireland is as yet uncharted territory for me.

Thing is I don't know anyone who has used this service and it would be nice to hear if they are any good and especially about the accomodation as its a bit vague about that on the website. Not sure how it all works from that. It SOUNDS like a great idea but they are obviously not going to say its crap!!

If anyone has been on one of these tours or has heard any stories about them I'd be interested to hear!

cheers :)
Heather

What kind of tour is it, Heather? I toured Ireland on an Aer Lingus fly/drive and had a great time (did Switzerland the same way with Swissair). They both had a hotel voucher system.

Its short tours aimed at backpackers. I think its a sister company of Busabout and the scottish Haggis Tours. I still can't make up my mind!

i had a look at their site, the Western route just takes you to the typical irish tourist spots. You'll be spending most of your time in the bus! And Killarney is such a horrible over-commercial town, it has been totally spoilt by tourism. It's about 4 hours from Dublin to Blarney, and from Killarney to Doolin is about 2-3. Doolin to Dublin is another 3-4 hours.

As for the Southern rocker, you're packing in a lot of scenery, but you'll be stuck on the bus for most of the time ifd you want to accomplish all that itinary.

I'm not trying to badmouth Shamrockers, but i'm just giving you a practical point of view as regards timing. You cant see ireland from a bus, you gotta get out there and explore for yourself, its much more fun :))

Orla

Hmmm, well, I don't have any experience with that. But I agree with Orlikins that you can't see Ireland properly from the bus! On the other hand, everyone is different and you may have other restraints that make the Shamrocker tour ideal for you. Hope you find someone who can help you make up your mind. Did you try asking the company for references? I'm sure they'll only give you people who loved them, but at least you can ask some specific questions of someone who has been on the tour.

Bus Eireann offer Rambler tickets which might offer you more freedom to go where you want.
I dont know from the original post whether you want to be guided around the country or if you just want to visit a couple of towns. The Rambler tickets do not include accomodation though there may be some deals available. check www.buseireann.ie

We took the Paddywagon backpacker tour and liked it. We did what they call JOJO - jump on jump off. They drive you with commentary and stopping for sites, lots of music, jokes, and songs along the way as well as really great tips about where to eat or go out to drink. They have 16 seat minibusses that are pretty comfortable and you stay in hostels, but can go stay elsewhere if you want to. We took the southern route, which, if you don't JOJO will only take 3 days. That's too much too fast for us, but some might like it. We stayed with the bus from Dublin to Galway, jumped off there and did our own thing for a few days, then jumped back on, but got off before it reached Killarney as we wanted to see Tralee and especially Dingle. We bought Bus Eireann tickets and made our own arrangements for lodging, etc. Then we hooked back up with the Paddywagon in Killarney and they took us to Cork (went through too quick), Blarney Castle, Rock of Cashel and then they were going to go on to Dublin, but dropped us off in Kilkenny. We bussed on our own back to Dublin when we were ready to, although I'm sure Paddywagon would have picked us up. This was actually cheaper than the package deal you can get through bus eireann to go anywhere. We liked the commentary and meeting people on the backpacker bus better than just riding the big eirann buses. I am glad we did the JOJO thing though, as we would have gotten burnt out racing around Ireland as quickly as the regular paddywagon bus goes.
There were some things that annoyed us. Some of the driver's sleep in late (after partying late) so the day was rushed then to make up time, some of the drivers flirt with the girls a bit much -- but that's all in the fun, I guess. We're a lot older than most of the regular crowd, so maybe we're just old fuddy duddies. Overall, we liked it!

One other thing -- the Paddywagon tours were NOT overrun with Americans. There were mostly people from Australia, and others from Italia, Latvia, UK, Spain, Malasia just to name a few. We were with 3 different groups and usually there weren't more than 3 or 4 Americans on the bus. Many were single women traveling alone.

Thanks to everyone for the comments and advice. In the end I decided just to go with the Shamrocker tour as I wasn't up for going it completely alone in a totally strange country. Anyway I don't regret it all as I had a great time and saw lots. Of course some day i'm sure I will go back to Ireland and explore on my own and see more but for a first trip, and travelling alone I found it ideal. It wasn't catered at all to Americans and in fact there was only one American on the tour, we were completely outnumbered by Aussies!

Thanks everyone :)
Heather

Glad to to hear Shamrocker worked out for you! We had a blast on the Paddywagon version and, as you said, the Aussies definitely outnumber everyone else. Not that that is bad thing -- every Aussie we have met in our travels has been terrific!

Maybe you should try a Vagabond 4X4 Adventure trip, I did one and it was fantastic. There was only 11 of us in the group and we were travelling arround in a massive big Land Rover. We went to some amazingly remote and beautiful areas (even took a cable car across to an Island) and there was nothing better than arriving at a massive beach, then driving down onto it and along to the other end for a bonfire and game of football. The whole trip was stunning and we really felt that we were off the tourist trail, if in Ireland gotta do Vagabond.