Driving in Ireland

Renting a car and driving in Ireland was something that gave Erin quite a bit of anxiety before the trip, so we decided to share how we prepared and what our experience was once we arrived.

1. Manuals are MUCH cheaper than automatics so we went with a manual here since Erin has mad driving skills.
2. They drive on the left side of the road in Ireland. Luckily, coming from London, we had a bit of practice. Erin was quite anxious about driving a manual on the left side (the shifter is on the left, but the pedals are the same), but she got used to it in about an hour or so. The only time it took some mental effort was not turning into the left lane when turning right. This becomes fairly obvious when you are either following other cars into the far lane, or noticing the oncoming traffic. Most of our driving was highway driving anyway which doesn’t even give you the opportunity to drive on the wrong side of the road.
3. More challenging than driving on the left side of the road was navigating the country. We bought UK and Ireland GPS maps on a microSD card (about $27 through Garmin) and it was well-worth it. Even if we knew which street we needed to turn on, the streets were poorly marked and we would never have known where to turn without the GPS assisting us.
4. Most of the roads were really easy to drive on. The highways are amazing because people actually use the pass lane properly (unlike in most of the US). We did travel on many toll roads, which was fine with the rental car because you just drive up to where the assistant is (note: on the RIGHT side, as we saw many other tourists struggle with) and pay them the annoying fee of €1.90. If you drive on the M50, there is an electronic toll and you can download the app (M50 quick pay) to pay the fee within 24 hours or you can pay it when you return your rental car (not sure if extra fees apply).
5. The roads within towns can be quite narrow, so be mindful of your surroundings. Usually drivers on both sides of the road are very accommodating so this was never truly an issue for us.
6. That being said, we did get stuck behind quite a few tractors. On some roads, it takes a little while to find an area where you can safely pass tractors (or slow tourists). Some of the roads have lanes that you can move into to let faster cars pass you. Please take advantage of this if you are feeling uncomfortable driving up to the speed limit!
7. Driving to Northern Ireland will be an extra one-time fee depending on your rental company (for us it was about €30). We saw some other bloggers say that if you don’t mention where you are going, there is no way for the company to know. Well, nowadays they tell you upfront that they have a tracker on the car and you will automatically be charged if you do cross into Northern Ireland.
8. Read the information about insurance very carefully when renting a car in Ireland. They require you to buy the collision damage waiver and you can either get the basic coverage which is cheaper but also places a large hold on your credit card, or you can pay more for the excess coverage with no hold on your credit card. We went through Europcar and they just had us pay for the excess coverage.
9. We were warned that the gas stations would be few and far between out in the countryside. We made sure to keep our gas tank from dipping below the halfway point, but honestly there was never any issue finding gas stations. We were always able to pay for the gas with the attendant, although sometimes they were surprised that they needed to ask us for our signature (we did not have PINs for our credit cards). As always, make sure you fill your rental car with the correct type of gas (petrol). As a side note, the cars in Ireland got GREAT gas mileage so we didn’t have to fill up nearly as often as we expected.

Overall, despite all of the anxiety that renting a car caused prior to going on our trip, it was a great experience with almost no issues at all. Our only major problem was that our GPS had some trouble finding a few of our hostel addresses, so to avoid that in the future, we would try to get some good google maps screenshots of exactly how to get to the hostel from some major road or clear landmark. In the end though, we always found our destination and would not have been able to experience half as much in Ireland without our rental car!