Menu

Ireland's sailing, boating & maritime magazine

Displaying items by tag: Avoid Holyhead

Numerous new ferry routes avoiding Welsh ports have been established between Ireland and mainland Europe over the past year because of Brexit, Ireland's foreign affairs minister has said.

Simon Coveney said there were 44 direct routes between Ireland and the EU.

"That figure would have been less than a dozen this time last year," he said.

The UK government said the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic meant it was too early to judge the new trading relationship with the EU.

The use of a so-called land-bridge from Holyhead to Dover had been a vital part of supply chains in and out of Ireland, Mr Coveney told BBC Radio Wales' Sunday Supplement programme .

Land-bridge movements refer to lorries from Ireland crossing Wales and England en route to other EU countries.

BBC News has more including direct sea routes linking Ireland and France. 

Published in Ferry

About Commander Bill King, Solo Circumnavigator

William Donald Aelian King was the last surviving submarine commander in the Second World War - in charge of the British Navy's T-class Telemachus that sank a Japanese sub in the Strait of Malacca, between Malaysia and Sumatra, in 1944.

Decorated many times for his service by the end of the war, King became a trailblazing solo sailor.

At the age of 58, he was the oldest participant in The Sunday Times Golden Globe Race sailing Galway Blazer II, a junk-rigged schooner he designed himself.

After a number of abortive attempts, including an incident with "a large sea creature", he finally completed his solo circumnavigation of the globe in 1973.

Beyond his aquatic escapades, King settled with his wife Anita (who died in 1984, aged 70) at Oranmore Castle outside Galway after the war, where he later developed a pioneering organic farm and garden to help tackle his wife's asthma.

The round-the-world sailor and Galway native Bill King died on Friday, 21 September, 2012, aged 102.