Cork Extreme Day Trip
July was a very busy Month for me, travel wise with as many as 4 Extreme Day Trips, starting with Cork on Saturday 4th July.
I’ve visited Dublin years ago and Belfast was a frequent destination as a child due to family living there, but I’d never ventured further South. The flights weren’t ideal for an EDT, departing from Manchester at 10:00 and returning at 18:00, leaving only 7 hours in Cork but for the price of £14.99 each way, it was a bargain.
This was the second group trip, with Zara, who I had met before on the Menorca trip and we were joined by Tina, who was the lady that came up with the idea of organising group EDTs. Tina herself blogs about her travel adventures and travel consultancy business, you can follow her on instagram www.instagram.com/iamtinawhite/ .
I did my usual walk to the airport, so we met up in Sporting Chance bar, on the second floor in T3. T3 is not great in terms of places to eat and drink but many people don’t notice the Sports bar on the second floor so I find it’s often slightly quieter than the rest of the terminal, plus it’s a great place for views of the runway. It’s expensive but no more so than the rest of the airport. You can use the QR codes on the table to order food and drinks directly rather than queuing at the bar.
One trick I have with flights is using FlightRadar24 to look up which aircraft is operating the flight, from there you can view the schedule for that aircraft before your flight.
Doing so means that I often know if the flight is running on time way before any announcements in the airport. One of the things ryanair do very well that enables to keep the costs down is how fast their turnarounds are.
There is a reason they don’t have a seat back pocket, menus, magazines and removable safety cards on their flights, it’s so that they can turn around quickly without having to check all those things. It can be as little as 30 minutes between disembarking one flight and boarding the next. Aircraft are not making money when they’re not in the air and ryanair can fly as many as 7 different sectors for a single aircraft in a day with their shorter routes.
Our aircraft had already flown from Cork to Manchester than morning before the return flight at 10:00. The flight to Cork is very short, taking about 45 minutes. There wasn’t even time to do the full duty free service.
When we landed at Cork, the aircraft did a turn on the runway itself, which was quite novel for me, but I observed other flights doing the same thing so it must be standard procedure for Cork.
Although the aircraft was branded Ryanair, the flight was actually operated by it’s subsidiary, Malta Air. Ryanair bought Malta Air from the Maltese government in 2019.
We were soon through security at Cork and caught a bus to Cork. The same bus runs in both directions from the airport so you need to be careful not to get the one heading to Kildare. The bus is very frequent, running every 30 minutes and the journey to Cork took us about 25 minutes. We downloaded the TFI Go app to purchase the ticket before boarding. You need to remember to activate it too. It only cost €1.70 for a single so it was good value.
Once in Cork, we had a walk around the English markets, which was an indoor market area selling lots of meats, fish, cakes and pastries, arts and crafts. It was nice looking around and trying free samples.
Then we had a walk around the centre, I took some footage from the sky with my drone before we went and sat down for a drink in a traditional Irish pub. Well, I say in, we sat outside. I found a souvenir shop to pick up a fridge magnet, we watched some dancing leprechaun street entertainers then we headed for the Marina market.
The marina market was in a bit of an industrial area in an old factory warehouse that had been converted. There were lots of different types of food and drink to choose from. It was expensive. Everything seemed to cost €14 or more but the atmosphere and vibe was really good so we really enjoyed our time there. It was more of a food court than anything else and the service was slow for the place I tried. I wanted something traditional, so I opted for an Irish stew. The portion was quite large but I did have to wait with a pager for about 20 minutes before I got the food. I would have thought something like that would have been made in a big batch and just needed dishing up, but maybe not. It was busy, so maybe it would be different at other times.
By the time we had been to the marina market, it was already time to start thinking about making the trip back to the airport. We managed to find a shop to pick up some Cadbury’s Dairy Milk. You see, I had been to Dublin around 2005 and I noticed that CDM bought in Ireland tasted considerably more creamy than that bought in England, so I wanted to see if that was still the case.
The quality of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk has took a nose dive since it was subject to a hostile takeover from Kraft foods, who have, over time, replaced cocoa butter with cheaper palm oil. There was still a difference in taste but it’s not the same creamy chocolate I remember, so it seems the Kraft cheapscaping has impacted Ireland too.
It took us a little while to find where to get the bus from as it wasn’t at the main bus station but round the corner. We only got back to the airport 90 minutes before the flight home but security was a breeze and there was no EES to content with.
The one good thing about not having a lot of time in Cork was that it wasn’t late by the time I got home, I didn’t feel exhausted. I would have spent more on a night out in Manchester so it was a nice way to spend the day. Due to the lack of time, we couldn’t really do a lot but a change of scene is as good as a rest and it was nice to see a different part of Ireland, that I wouldn’t have visited had it not been for the extremely cheap air fares.
To put it into context, when I get a taxi home from Manchester Airport, a distance of 2.8 miles and journey time of about 15 minutes, it usually costs about £20.00 yet for £15 I could fly all the way to the south coast of Ireland, courtesy of Ryanair’s ruthlessly efficient operating model.
I would recommend Cork, if you can get an earlier flight out and later flight back, even better, but 7 hours was enough for us to have a taste of Ireland and make new friendships and memories.
