As anyone who lives in Ireland will tell you, unless you are travelling within a city, or from one city to another, then public transport isn't the best!
So our first suggestion on how to get to site would be to hire a care or get a lift with someone who has a car. If you are hiring a car, just use any navigation service you have access to (in-vehicle, or on your phone), enter the Eircode (postal code) of the site - F12X589 and that will be sufficient for you to get there.
If you will be relying on public transport to get to site, then the following are the various ways in which you can do so, and you can also use the transport for ireland webportal to help plan your journey.
If you are flying into Dublin Airport
Dublin Airport does not have it's own train service, but it has bus route 782 which will take you to Heuston Train Station via the city centre. You can search timetables here The bus typically leaves every 15 - 20mins and how long it takes to get to the station depends very much on the time of day/traffic etc. The website will give you an idea, but you will need to be aware that it can vary a lot.
From Heuston Train Station you will want to buy a ticket to Galway City - the final station is called Galway Ceannt Station (rhymes with "pant"). You can buy a ticket just before boarding, but it will be typically a bit more expensive than prebooking online a few weeks before. This is the link to book train tickets online. The journey will take on average 2.5 hours depending on whether you get the slightly faster service or slightly slower service which varies the time give or take by about 10 - 15mins.
From here it gets slightly more complicated. From Galway City, you need to get a bus to the town of Cong. There are direct services (Bus no. 456 towards Castlebar) or routes where you will need to change (various options) depending on what time you need to travel and what is more convenient for you. Bus Éireann operates these services, but their website is not the most intuitive so take some time to familiarise yourself with it before choosing a service. Doing an initial Google Maps search for how to get to Cong from Galway City will give you an idea of options and service numbers to look for, if you are struggling with the operator's website.
Once in Cong, there is a bus service (Bus No. 431) that will take you to Clonbur (the village just 5 mins drive from site), but this service only operates about 4 times a day (also operated by Bus Éireann), so you might want to consider getting a taxi ride instead. There appears to be one taxi company operating in Cong. We provide the link to this company without recommendation, for convenience only. We do however recommend grouping together if there are enough of you arriving at the same time. While we can do a limited number of pickups from Cong, this will be individual members volunteering their vehicles and time, so we sadly cannot offer a proper collection service. Then from Clonbur it is a 30min walk, or we can pick you up outside the village shop.
If you are flying in to Shannon Airport
Shannon Airport, while much closer to site than Dublin, does not have any train links to Galway City, but it does have a dedicated bus service (route 51 = 1 hour 50mins also operated by Bus Éireann) that you can find out more information about.
Once you get to Galway City, your travel options are the same as the Dublin Airport section above, from the 3rd paragraph onwards.
If you are flying in to Knock Airport (Ireland West)
Ireland West Airport, also known as Knock Airport is the closest Airport to site, but is quite small and is therefore limited in it the destinations that fly into it. If you find an option that suits you, which will fly you into Knock, It will then be the case of getting a series of buses to Cong. There is no direct bus service to Cong. You will be catching services where you will either have to change in Claremorris (No. 440 then No. 431) or in Castlebar (No. 440 then No. 422) or in Tuam and then Headford (No. Express 64 then No. 438 then No. 422). These services are again operated by Bus Éireann. The bus journey itself will take roughly between 2 to 4 hours depending on how quickly the change over in buses happens.
Once in Cong, you can follow the same steps as the journey from Dublin - final paragraph.
Either way - there will be a number communicated to you before the event, that you can use should you have any need arising during your journey and we will do our best to help you.
Looking forward to seeing you there!
12th night Event Team