#Stena Line

[i-think-pictures]

Stena Line The Netherlands - Great Britain

[ironmanrecords]

Tour Management: Going to Ireland and crossing the UK/EU Border using a Carnet

Tour Management: Going to Ireland and crossing the UK/EU Border using a Carnet

If you have Tour Dates in Ireland and you’re travelling with a Carnet for your Musical Equipment, Mark at Iron Man Records explains how to keep it simple when crossing the UK/EU Border in a Splitter Van. I took Sinead O’Brien to Ireland in October 2022 working as Tour Manager via Holyhead to Dublin Port. Here’s what I would recommend if you have Tour Dates to play, the UK/EU Border to cross, and…

[wolfephoto]

Mersey traffic by John Wolfe Via Flickr: Liverpool Waterfront, January 2024

[lamboland]

Nexus Ball Run in Karlskrona, Sweden 20230709. Hear the exotic cars roar on their way to board the Stena Line ferry to Poland

[kreuzfahrttester]

Mutter und Sohn in Ostsee tot: Behörden starten Mordermittlungen

Stena Line Sprung von Fähre … “Mutmaßlicher Mord und Selbstmord in der Ostsee: Mutter und Sohn sterben nach Sprung von Fähre?” Der tragische Vorfall ereignete sich auf der Ostseefähre “Stena Spirit”, auf halbem Weg zwischen dem polnischen Hafen Gdynia und dem südschwedischen Karlskrona. Die Mutter und ihr Kind, beides polnische Staatsbürger, wurden etwa eine Stunde nach dem Überbordgehen…

[rockythebullterrier]

New rules mean pets can travel freely between Great Britain and Northern Ireland

A new agreement between the EU and the UK will allow pet movements between Great Britain (England, Wales and Scotland) and Northern Ireland to continue easily and recognises the UK’s rabies- and tapeworm-free status. The agreement aims to make crossing the Irish Sea easier for pet owners as well as travellers with assistance dogs. Since 2021, Northern Ireland has stopped pet border checks with…

[inkfeatherz]

i think i might be having a problem

(slight gore warning)

chat am i cooked or what

also woahhhh pixel art

like hrng being a teenager fuckin sucks. like your feelings are all over the place, you dont have a clue what youre doing and the whole time your school expects you to be able to do exams. im going to get a cc train from my city to birmingham and from there another cc to bristol and from there a gwr to swansea and then a t4w to fishguard. then im going to walk up to the ferry port and get the stena line to rosslare. then im going to walk up to rosslare euro port station and get the ir to waterford. then ill get a cab or something to whatever hotel i book. i will be there for this fucking party

[kruemel8]

Hab gerade ne Mail von Stena Line bekommen ob ich nicht nach Göteborg fahren will. Sie haben schon gute Argumente 😅😍

Die besten Argumente. 🥰 Hammer, dass ne Fähre Werbung für Omar macht. Liebs.

[megtudommagyarazni]

Navigare necesse est

Szerettem hajózni. Rengeteget hajóztam, néha többet is, mint szerettem volna. 8 évet Skandináviában húztam le (ez már a kétezres évek eleje),

ugrálok itt összevissza az időben, majd szorulok ezért

ott pedig sokat kell tengeren menni. Az összes északi hajót, kompot megismertem, akkor olyan cégnél voltam, amely fő csapásiránya Franciao. volt, Bretagne, Normandia, néha Párizs, Lyon, Nantes.

Jókat lehetett kajálni, a nagy részüknél a cargo-jegyben benne volt az ingyenes kabin+étkezés. Volt, ahol külön kamionos étkezde volt, máshol a turistákkal együtt, csak 8-10 asztalra kitették a táblát: Reserved/Cargo. Többnyire svédasztalos rendszer, egy-két társaságnál a cargo-jegyre is fizetni kellett, de csak jelképes összeget, mittudomén 2 €, vagy a Stena Line-on Calais-Dover közt 2 £, ott például délelőtt full english breakfast volt, déltől steak, meg cottage pie.

A leghoszabb Kielből (D) Bergenbe (N) volt, majdnem 2 nap. Dögunalom, ettem, a kabinban tévéztem, ettem, tévéztem, aztán ettem. Még szauna sem volt, azt hiszem ColorLine volt. A legtöbbet Scandlines-al mentem, Travemünde-Malmö, este indult, reggel érkezett, vacsora-reggeli, meg a Superspeed ferry-vel, Hirtshals-Larvik közt. Náluk volt olyan svédasztal, mint egy ötcsillagos hotel éttermében, cargo-jeggyel ingyen. A legrövidebb Villa San Giovanni-Messina Szicíliába (tudod, Scylla és Charybdis közt), ott látni lehetett a túloldalt.

Na de ne maradjunk sztori, kaland nélkül ma sem.

A Fehmarn-félsziget (D) csücskéről, Puttgardenből ment a kis komp Rødbyhavnba (DK), a legdélibb dán szigetre. Scandlines, Schleswig-Holstein a hajó neve. Most látom, hogy azóta alagút lett. Rohadt viharos téli idő volt, a kikötő felé vezető úton volt még egy magas híd (Fehmarnsundbrücke), azt a polizei le is zárta a 10 t alatti rakományú kamionok előtt, nekik kiépített parkolók voltak. Nekem volt 23 tonnám, engedtek. Azért meleg volt, 15-tel sunnyogtam át, egyszer még így is megemelte a hármas tengely baloldalát egy szélroham tíz centire. A kb 40 nm-es oldalponyva fogta a szelet becsülettel. A kikötőben becsekkoltam, ahogy beálltam a megadott sávba, már jött is a hajó. Félóra múlva fent voltam az alsó cargo decken. Az egész út 40-50 perc volt, az időjárás, szél, tenger függvényében. Mozgott, dülöngélt a komp, ilyenkor a büfé is néptelen, minek együnk, ha mindjárt kijön?

Kikötés előtt pár perccel indultunk le az alsó deckre. Beülök, indítok. Az önindító azt mondta, hogy: krrrr, krrrr, nyehehe, nyehehe. Közben mindenki kiállt, jöttek a beszállók, a zsilip csukódik. Hé, még itt vagyok!

A komp indult vissza Puttgardenba. Nem húzom, mindent megpróbáltam, bekúsztam hanyatt a kocsi alá a fülkeemelő vassal, próbáltam szépen, majd csúnyán hatni a starterre, mindhiába. Közben még egyet fordultunk. A harmadik kanyarnál felhívott a kapitány a hídra, telefonáljak valakinek. Kinek, baszod?

A traktor ZH rendszámú volt, Ziar nad Hronom, leánykori nevén Garamszentkereszt, észak-Szlovákiában, ahová dedikálva voltam, az meg a svéd Jönköping, és már este volt. A kapitän a tettek hímes mezejére lépett, és felhívta egy ismerősét, aki a Lellandon volt földművelő, csupa végtelen szántóföldek, farmok, gazdaságok.

A következő kikötésnél ott is állt egy akkora Fendt traktor, mint két dieselmozdony. Rámtolatott, drótkötél, én már tudtam, hogy ebből semmi jó nem sül ki. A levegőm mind elment, hat tengelyen, 12 keréken tövig volt a légfék, 23 tonna motyó meg nyomta le. Ha meg is bír mozdítani a hajó acélpadlóján, mi lesz, ha kiérünk a betonra? Azért az első drótkötél elpattanásáig próbálkozott. Mikor a hetedik kikötésnél megláttam a Falck 600-as kamionmentő Scaniáját, már nem lehetett túl egészséges színem. A kétméteres, 140 kilós békés viking rámtolt, csatlakoztatta a levegőtöltőt, vonórudat vett elő, addig a hajó állt, se ki, se be senki. Mikor bekapcsolta a kék! lámpákat, és megmozdult a szerelvény, üdvrivalgásba törtek ki a nézők, matrózok, sofőrök.

Hét menet, bazmeg, hét, azon a viharos, háborgó északi-balti tengeren!!4

A Falck, miután a pótot letalpaltam a vám előtt, elhúzott 30-40 km-re egy műhelyhez. Ott aludtam, reggel nekiálltak, délután mehettem vissza a póthoz. Gyönyörű, enyhe, csendes napsütéses idő volt.

[steffengiselasson]

Donnerstag, 15.08.2024

Eins zwei Politsei

Liebes Logbuch,

heute schliefen wir uns nochmal vernünftig aus und genossen den ersten Tee in der Sonne vor den Dünen. Das Wetter belohnte uns auch heute (kein Schimmer wofür). Annika konnte sich an 26 Grad im Schatten und strahlendem Sonnenschein erfreuen. Der Urlaub neigte sich dem Ende, und mit ihm meine Kaffeefilter und die ungelesenen Seiten unserer Urlaubsliteratur. Alles fügte sich ganz wunderbar und so passte es dann auch, dass die lettische Policija gegen Nachmittag auftauchte und den ganzen Stellplatz räumte. In Estland heißen die Ordnungshüter übrigens Politsei, was mir außerordentlich gut gefällt.

Wie auch immer, die beiden Beamten gingen mit einem mehrsprachigen Zettel von Fahrzeug zu Fahrzeug. Der Zettel erklärte, dass es eine violation of something wäre so nah an den Dünen zu parken. Das konnte keiner wissen, weil der Parkplatz Abstand zu den Dünen hatte und auch durch eine Schranke davon getrennt war. Hinweisschilder gab es keine und auch die Einheimischen parkten dort. Sei‘s drum, wir hatten dort ja bereits schöne Sommernächte verbracht und hatten dabei nicht den Eindruck, Tiere gestört zu haben. Ein Bußgeld gab es nicht, aber irgendwie kamen wir uns trotzdem doof vor, weil wir wie Ruhestörer des Platzes verwiesen wurden.

Zwei kriminelle Schlümos mussten nun mit dem bereits angerichteten Mittagessen zwischen den Beifahrerfüßen einen anderen Parkplatz ansteuern. Wir fuhren also nach Liepaja, was glücklicherweise nur 15 Minuten in Anspruch nahm. Am Stadtstrand waren viele Leute unterwegs, die Stimmung war aber super entspannt. Auf dem Strand steht eine alte Straßenbahn, die ihr zweites Leben als Café fristet. Wir schnappten uns Eis und Eiskaffee und schlenderten entlang der Küste.

Beim Bezahlen unserer Genussmittel fiel uns wieder auf wie vertrauensselig die Letten sind. Die Kellnerin nahm meinen 20er entgegen und kramte vor unseren Augen seelenruhig im Wechselgeld, das schlicht in einem Pappbecher herumstand. Dieser war räumlich nicht vom Kundenbereich getrennt, sie stopfte den Schein dazu und verschwand in die Küche. Gäste vor uns, die keine Lust hatten auf die Bedienung zu warten, bedienten sich einfach selbst an der Eistruhe und legten das Geld passend auf den Gefrierschrank. Es hing zwar eine deutlich sichtbare Überwachungskamera über dem Verkaufsbungalow, aber Kameras halten in Deutschland ja auch niemanden davon ab zu klauen. Ähnliche Vertrauensvorschüsse erhielten wir an diversen Selbstbedienungsstationen, sogar beim Parkeintritt.

Jetzt muss ich noch von einer Besonderheit berichten, die uns an Lettland aufgefallen ist. An vielen öffentlichen Orten stehen Kaffeeautomaten von Lavazza oder Löfbergs Lila. Die Automaten stehen nicht nur in öffentlichen Innenräumen, sondern auch einfach auf der Straße. Beispielsweise an einem häufig frequentierten Fußweg an der Daugawa in Riga, oder aber mitten auf dem Land im Ortskern vor dem Supermarkt. Einen Kaffee gibt es hier für 1,20€ in diversen Ausführungen. Als Kaffeeliebhaber wollte ich einen solchen Automaten natürlich unbedingt testen, aber irgendwie ergab es sich nie - und dann waren wir auch schon in Estland. Also trauerte ich eine Woche dieser verpassten Chance hinterher. Am letzten Tag unseres Urlaubs, als wir vor dem Stena Line Terminal in der Warteschlange standen, schälten sich plötzlich gleich zwei Automaten aus dem Zwielicht der Neonröhren gegenüber der Checkinschalter. Ich war wir euphorisiert und hörte dem Stena Line Mitarbeiter gar nicht mehr richtig zu (ich glaube wir sollten die Gasflaschen im Wohnmobil während der Überfahrt beide voll aufdrehen, die Zugangstür absperren oder irgendwie so) - es war in dem Moment einfach nebensächlich! Ungeduldig entriss ich dem Uniformierten die Papiere und wankte kaffeelüstern auf die Fata Morgana zu.

Im Test erhält der Lavazza Caffee Latte geschmacklich 3 von 5 Sternen, in „Preis-Leistung“ volle Punktzahl.

Jetzt wollten wir uns in die Warteschlange vor der Autofähre stellen und bei entsprechender Anweisung einfahren, machten aber die Rechnung ohne den viel zu kleinen Terminal von Liepaja. Zunächst sollten alle Camper und Wohnmobile nebeneinander in bestimmt zwölf Reihen rückwärts in die hinterste Ecke des Piers parken, sodass am Ende viele Reihen a drei Fahrzeugen entstanden. Wir waren nicht als einzige verwundert darüber und die tapfere Dame der Stena Line, welche die Fahrzeuge einweisen sollte, reagierte zunehmend gereizt.

Irgendwann durften wir dann aber wieder Vorwärtsfahren und steuerten die Barbara de Braganza in den Bauch der Stena Livia. Die Fähre legte pünktlich um 22:30 Uhr ab, wir tranken einen Abschieds Drink an Deck und verkrochen uns in die Koje.

[madaminamorganheadsforthearctic]

Kiel to Gotenburg

Kiel is a nice place. A former Olympic sailing centre, it still has a big sailing week which a friend of mine went to a few times. It is also where the German fleet mutinied towards the end of the 1st World War and refused to come out to fight the Royal Navy. Arguably the Kiel Mutiny was responsible for the abdication of the Kaiser Wilhelm II (Kaiser Bill, Queen Victoria’s grandson), the German civil war and the formation of the Weimar Republic and so changed Europe forever. (No doubt any historian reading this will have a different view!).

It was not always part of Germany either, as like so much of continental Europe, borders have moved around. It was administered by Denmark for a long time, the annexed by Prussia in the mid eighteen hundreds and passed to Germany a few years later. It also has the Kiel Canal which is the quickest way of getting from the Baltic to the North Sea. I had intended to look around but was a bit short of time due to the traffic snarl up round Hamburg and so went to find my ferry.

Finding my Stena Line ferry to Gothenburg was hampered by no signs other than a picture of a ferry and four docks with four large ships and four separate entrances to choose from. German efficiency was not on display, but I was a bit brainless too and it took me a couple attempts to find the right queue. Mostly freight were lined up and no other English cars in the queue- and if that was a surprise, most surprising was no Harley Davidsons either. I have spent so many ferry trips in Europe being parked with the Harleys - strange old fashioned bikes and the strange old fashioned car gets put together. I have found Harley owners as being both of the same age as me and with a similar viewpoint on travel!

My turn for loading. I started the Morgan and the loud growl it made told me I had blown a hole in the exhaust. I have got time overnight to work out ‘I have a hole in the exhaust of my Morgan car. Can you help?” in Swedish.

It was a big ferry and we reversed out of the dock and when alongside the German navel dockyards with a massive sounding of sirens it executed a perfect 180° turn with the centre of the ship never moving.

A balmy night, a flat calm and a rather nice Scandinavian buffet, but sadly not possible to escape an entertainer enthusiastically trying to persuade people to join her in a sing-along-with-Abba. I go to my cabin!

And the answer is “Jag har ett hål I mitt Morgan avgasrör”

[i-think-pictures]

Stena Line The Netherlands - Great Britain

[holundra]

Auf der Ostsee - an Bord der Stena Line von Kiel nach Göteborg

(Archivbild 2014)

[livewalksite]

Staff ideas keep Stena Line innovative - Scottish Enterprise - https://live-walk.site/2024/11/staff-ideas-keep-stena-line-innovative-scottish-enterprise/

[scots-gallivanter]

THIRTEEN

[The sandbank at the Scar in Loch Ryan] abounds with oysters of a most excellent flavour. They are found indeed all around the shores and might be got in great quantities would people drag for them.

REV. JOHN COULTER, Statistical Account of Scotland, Parish of Stranraer (1791)

STRANRAER STATION IS an ugly low-slung affair with a blend of concrete, sheet metal and girders straight out of the Cold War almanac of industrial architecture, where Harry Lime might hide from the Stasi. The last time I saw an eyesore this sore I was watching a film noir set in an abandoned steel town in backwoods Belarus, or somewhere similar, where they’d steal the passengers’ shelter if it wasn’t bolted down.

A bus driver had warned me as I blethered with him during a pit stop on the way from Dumfries: ‘Stranraer has been a ghost town for too long. I was born and bred there and have lived there all my life. You look at the weeds that grow along the harbour and it breaks your heart.’

The station is a woeful sight in a town that, for generations, was the gateway to Northern Ireland, and its sprawling, weed-happy concourse is on Dumfries and Galloway Council’s vacant and derelict land register.

Although the station is overdue a flattening, trains stop at Stranraer for Ayr, Glasgow and Kilmarnock. From here you can travel indirectly to Dumfries, Carlisle. London Euston and other destinations such as Manchester Piccadilly, Crewe and Birmingham New Street.

Limmy, the Glasgow comedian, was so shocked by the state of the station that he was lost for words. So he used a lot of adjectives beginning with F on his 2022 YouTube stream instead. The equally astonished Elaine C Smith, actress and comic, asked the audience during a show at the Millennium Centre: ‘Why do you put up with this?’

In fairness, Stranraer’s development trust has worked hard to reinvent the town, and to attract several million pounds of funding for an overhaul, and it published its ten-year plan in 2023. The author of the document admitted: ‘The East Pier with the railway station at its tip is a bleak arrival point for visitors, with a ten-minute walk to the station. The Pier’s ghostly presence is experienced locally as a symbol of the town’s declining fortunes and lack of vision for an investment in the town’s future.’

Stranraer has suffered emotionally, physically and environmentally since the ferries moved to Cairnryan in 2011. Since the first paddle steamer in 1863, ferries had been Stranraer’s raison d’ etre; in his contribution to the New Statistical Account in the 1840s, the Rev. David Wilson wrote of Loch Ryan having once had 300 sail boats in the bay at the same time.

Notwithstanding this monstrosity of a station, which is owned by the Crown Estates and leased by Stena Line, the area has so much potential. It always has had, not least because of its strategic location on a sea that has witnessed a fair bit of history and mystery and is 20-odd miles from Northern Ireland.

Coulter wrote in the Statistical Account for Scotland at the tail end of the 18th century something that could have been written today: ‘Strangers, struck with the beauty of this situation, and the many advantages that forcibly obtrude themselves on their eye, are surprised to hear that no manufacture is established here; but the scarcity and high price of fuel must be an eternal barrier to the establishment of any extensive manufacture in the town or neighbouring country, yet there are very good artificers of every kind, who supply the demands of the inhabitants and neighbours.’

In 2003, Stena Line ferried 1.4 million passengers on the Stranraer route. But the port of Stranraer died on the 11th of the 11th, 2011 with a big-money move up Loch Ryan to Cairnryan. Every year now Stena transport almost the equivalent of the population of Northern Ireland from Belfast to Cairnryan. There’s also P & O, which has operated from Cairnryan since 1973.

The sinking of the Princess Victoria roll-on, roll-off ferry in gale-swept seas on January 31st, 1953, is remembered by a memorial in Agnew Park, Stranraer. One hundred and thirty-three people perished when the ship went down off the Copeland Isles near Belfast Lough, having first sent out a distress signal off the Galloway coast north of Loch Ryan. There were only 44 survivors, all male.

In the 19th century Cairnryan, once called Macherie, had been an important staging post on the coach route to Ayr, with half a dozen inns along a short stretch of coast, and the hamlet had also gained the unwanted reputation as a hotspot for highwaymen.

Innermessan was a burgh of barony, a thriving medieval settlement near Cairnryan, of which there is now little evidence. Andrew Symson, a minister and historian, described it in 1684 in his Large Description of Galloway as ‘of old the most considerable place in the rinds [sic] of Galloway and the greatest town thereabout, till Stranraer was build'. It may well also have been the site of the Roman town, Rerigonium. Nowadays, there’s nothing to highlight its erstwhile importance: it is a farm and a caravan park with a motte and tower nearby.

Loch Ryan, the Abrauannus of the cartographer Ptolemy, once teemed with herring, oysters, skate, cod, lobster, crab and turbot to the extent that boats came down from the Highlands to get a slice of the action. Even ministers wanted a cut. On November 16th, 1762, George Blair, minister of Clayhole, a village that has since been swallowed up by Stranraer, won a case at the Court of Session against the inhabitants. In a throwback to the days when herring were used as currency, Blair claimed five per cent of all the fish caught, as part of his stipend. This system of ‘Christ’s dole’ was so controversial it caused riots in Eyemouth.

Loch Ryan is renowned as the domain of one of the world’s most precious native oyster beds, which is celebrated in an annual oyster festival in Stranraer.

Today I have a ramble around the Stena ferry-point to Northern Ireland (there are two, one for P & O and one for Stena); a pigeon coos from the lea of a fir tree off the main drag, next to an abandoned pier from which (I had read) someone had to be rescued while out fishing beyond the No Entry signs. I try hard to visualize a thousand warriors clamouring up the loch in 18 boats, thirsty for the blood of ‘traitors’, as happened in 1307 during the wars of independence. The patriots were captured in Stranraer, and executed, and the heads of two brothers of Robert the Bruce, Alexander and Thomas, were sent to Edward 1st as trophies.

It is conceivable the Vikings had sailed the loch too: the ninth-or tenth-century Kilmorie cross, found on the west bank, has carvings inspired by both Christian and Viking ideologies.

At the time of the Battle of the Boyne in 1690 William of Orange’s fleet sheltered in Loch Ryan, and Winston Churchill used it when he departed from Stranraer in a Boeing flying boat in 1942 en route to America; and at the end of the war, as part of Operation Daylight, dozens of U-boats were taken there to be scuttled in the North Channel.

Cairnryan was the nerve centre at which over a million tons of surplus munitions were loaded onto boats for disposal at sea. The railway wagons that brought them there were labelled ‘Davie Jones’s Locker’. The cocktail of armaments was dumped over many years in Beaufort’s Dyke, a subterranean sea trench several miles west of the peninsula. Crewmen who had worked on board the ships that disposed of shells, bombs, landmines, grenades, and rockets later claimed that hundreds of thousands of tons were dropped short of the deep water to save time. Munitions regularly wash up on Scottish beaches. In 1995, when British Gas was laying the Scotland-Northern Ireland gas pipeline, phosphorus bombs washed up in Kintyre. Anti-tank grenades have made their way to the shores of Northern Ireland and the Isle of Man. (This didn’t stop Boris Johnson backing a plan for a bridge to Northern Ireland, which died a death.) The operation was handled by 13th Company, Royal Pioneer Corps, based at an army camp which is now a holiday campsite behind the Loch Ryan Hotel.

In 1957 and 1958, Cairnryan was used for Operation Hardrock to build components for a rocket-tracking station on St Kilda, to serve the South Uist Missile Range, but military activity came to an end in the early 1960s, when infrastructure, such as cranes and railway tracks were abandoned, then dismantled, leaving a post-industrial landscape that didn’t quite square with my thoughts about Bruce’s beheaded brothers.

Latterly, Cairnryan was a base for breaking ships, even Russian submarines. HMS Centaur, HMS Bulwark, HMS Eagle, and HMS Ark Royal were all sent there for decommissioning. The Ross Revenge was saved from the scrapyard when Radio Caroline bought it and took it to Santander to be converted to a radio broadcasting ship, which stayed permanently at sea from 1983 until 1991.

For collectors of useless information:

(1) the comedian Tony Hancock had a lowly position with the RAF at Wig Bay on the opposite bank of Loch Ryan. He told people he was fuel controller when all he did was kindle the braziers.

(2) In 2018 the thighbone of a woolly mammoth was found on the shore of Loch Ryan, 45,000 years after it died: proof that the species had found its way to Scotland.

[rockythebullterrier]

EU presses ahead with plan to ease pet travel between Northern Ireland and Great Britain

The European Union is pressing on with its plans to put the Windsor Framework in place, which was politically agreed between the Commission and the UK government on 27 February 2023 to address, in a definitive manner, the challenges concerning Northern Ireland following the UK’s withdrawal from the EU. The agreement aims to make crossing the Irish Sea easier for pet owners as well as travellers…