Knowing that Irish Rail charge for bikes but Northern Ireland Railways don't, we enquired at Dublin Connolly if bike tickets were required on the cross border Enterprise service to Belfast. The booking clerk told us that as our train (the 15:20) was operated by NIR, there'd be no charge. If we'd caught the next one we'd have had to pay!

We returned from Portadown, the first stop after Belfast. The platform staff told us that they load the bikes into the DVT (which is at the Dublin end of the train) so we just had to board. There was no mention of a charge, we simply unloaded the bikes when we arrived at Connolly station. At Dublin Port we checked in for the "Jonathan Swift", no mention was made about payment for the bikes.

There's a maximum of two bikes per train on Arriva (four on the less frequent Virgin services). There were three of us, the conductor wasn't happy but reluctantly allowed us to remain on board.

One further point: the new diesel units in the Republic apparently have very limited cycle carrying capacity, I've not personally used them. Cyclists using anything other than the Belfast and Cork lines need to be aware of this.

From Holyhead the train was crowded up to Chester and tourists had placed their suitcases in the 2-bike storage area. I creatively placed my bike on top of the suitcases, attaching the front wheel with a bungee cord to the bike pole. More suitcases came in at other stops, just kept smiling and being careful not to hurt anyone taking the bike out!