The meeting will be held on campus at UCC (with talks taking place in room G18 of the Kane building), a map of which can be found here, provided as part of the University's "how to find us" pages. There you will also find some information about the campus, along with information about how to get there from the city centre and further afield, and important information about the parking situation, should you be driving.
The campus itself is located to the west of the city centre just off Western Road, as shown in the two maps available here. The campus is served by two bus routes from the city centre, the 5 and the 8, the latter of which comes close to the train station and stops at the bus station. None of the distance involved are particularly great (about 1 mile from city centre to campus) and so, apart from when you are struggling with heavy suitcases, walking is always a very viable option.
| Ireland | Britain | Continental Europe | Elsewhere |
It's quite likely that you will be driving, in which case the most important bit of advice is there is something of a shortage of parking spaces in the immediate vicinity of the Mathematics department (located in Aras na Laoi/Lee House). Consequently, if you are staying overnight in a nearby B&B/guest house then you would be well advised to leave the car there.
For users of public transport, the bus station and train station are (relatively) centrally located in the city, with the most useful city bus service from both to the College being the number 8. (Train passengers should note that they will need to walk into town a little way until they intersect with this particular bus route.) Otherwise there is always the option of taking a taxi.
Slightly more extravagant (though not necessarily by too much) are the internal flights from Belfast and Dublin, both of which are operated by Aer Arann.
Cork is amazingly well served by direct(ish) flights from all corners of Britain. The following table summarises the current state of our knowledge in these matters. If you know of new services, or the withdrawal of any of the ones below, then please let me (SJW) know...
| Departing... | Flying with... | Departing... | Flying with... |
|---|---|---|---|
| Birmingham | Aer Arran, BMIbaby | Bristol | Aer Arran |
| Cardiff | BMIbaby | Coventry | ThomsonFly |
| Durham | BMIbaby | Edinburgh | Aer Arran, B Midland |
| Glasgow | Loganair (BA), B Midland | Leeds/Bradford | B Midland |
| Liverpool | Ryanair | London Gatwick | BMIbaby, Easyjet |
| London Heathrow | Aer Lingus/BA, B Midland | London Stansted | Ryanair |
| Manchester | BA, BMIbaby | Nottingham East Midlands | BMIbaby |
| Plymouth | Air Wales | Southampton | Aer Arran |
An important point to note is that not all of the above are totally direct flights - certain routes essentially bounce around Britain before crossing the Irish Sea. For example the flight from Southampton stops briefly in Bristol, and the British Midland ones seem to generally go via Leeds/Bradford.
Also, Aer Lingus and BA are code sharing partners, and so can sell each others flights via their own web site, and not always at the same price, so it can be worth checking both. Aer Lingus operate the Heathrow-Cork route, and BA (or a subsidiary) do most of the others, and a search on either company's web site will unearth a number of possibilities, some more comprehensible than others.
For the more hardy traveller there is the option of sea travel. There is a direct car ferry service into Cork that departs from Swansea (run by Swansea Cork Ferries, surprisingly enough). That is quite a long crossing, so an alternative is to sail into Rosslare or Dublin/Dun Laoghaire on boats run by Irish Ferries or Stena Line and then either drive across or make use of public transport. From Dublin you have a choice of train or bus; from Rosslare it's bus only.
The number of direct flights connecting Cork to the continent seems to grow daily at the moment. Aer Lingus operate routes from Alicante, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Faro, Malaga, Milan (Malpensa), Nice, Paris (CDG) and Rome (Fiumicino), although only the routes from Amsterdam (and Heathrow) are daily, with Paris almost daily and the others a little less frequent. Also, Czech Airlines operate a service from Prague.
For the non-direct route, it is possible to get flights with scheduled airlines (generally through Dublin, Heathrow or Amsterdam), which has the safety net that in the event of a delay you should be put on the following flight. Your local travel agent will be the best person to ask for advice.
On the other hand, for those who don't mind a little more risk, you could try stringing together two (or more!) budget airline flights, for example using Ryanair, or Air Berlin, or... to get to Stansted, and then using the Ryanair flight to get across to Cork. The risk involved is that these companies will not always guarantee to accommodate you on the next flight should something go wrong with an earlier connection and you end up being delayed. Stansted is not the only gateway that may be of use - see the list of UK airports above that do connect directly to Cork for an idea how complex your problem of choosing a route will be... A useful site that keeps track of the budget airlines is www.whichbudget.com.
For the more relaxed alternative from France, there is the option to travel by ferry direct to Cork from Roscoff on a service operated by Brittany Ferries. Also there are services to Rosslare from Roscoff and Cherbourg courtesy of Irish Ferries, and P&O Irish Sea link Cherbourg to both Rosslare and Dublin. The non-Cork options will then obviously require a longer drive this side.
There are no flights from outside Europe direct to Cork, and indeed not so many that come directly to Ireland. Those flights that do exist are from Canada (Air Canada) and the US (Aer Lingus, Continental, Delta and US Airways). If you choose to come this way then they will almost certainly be able to sort you out with a connecting flight from Dublin to Cork at practically no extra cost. On the other hand better prices might be found by a bit of shopping around and coming in via a third country. In this category would be flights into London Heathrow, Amsterdam, Paris or maybe Frankfurt via the carrier of your choice, and then onwards to Cork with Aer Lingus. Your local, friendly travel agent will be able to advise you.
Be aware that if you come in via London that Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted airports are a long way apart from each other and so transfers between them will be quite time consuming. Moreover, such a route might cause additional visa headaches for those who have to jump through the bureaucratic hoops.
| Home | Programme | Accommodation |
Last updated 5 April 2005. This page was created and is maintained by Stephen Wills (s.wills@ucc.ie).