Sailing times

Read the table as two rival versions of the same service, because that is what it is. The main site puts the first boat at 07:30 on Monday to Friday and the last at 19:55 outside high summer; the ticket shop, run by the same company, puts the first at 07:45 from Monday to Saturday and the last at 21:25. Ninety minutes separate the two last sailings. A third version sits on valentiaisland.ie, the island development company’s site, which says 07:45 to 21:30 with a 22:00 finish from Renard in July and August. Neither of the operator’s own timetables gives a departure time from the Renard side at all; that 22:00 is the only Renard figure published anywhere, and it comes from the development company rather than from the ferry. None of the three gives the date the season opens or closes. There is one piece of observational evidence on which version is real: reporting the 2024 closure, the maritime site Afloat recorded the actual hours worked that final weekend as 07:30 to 20:00 on the Saturday and 09:00 to 20:00 on the Sunday, which matches the main site rather than the shop. Both operator pages agree on the shape of the thing: a continuous shuttle, boat back and forth, crossing under five minutes, bank holidays worked as a normal day. In 2024 the season closed on Sunday 29 September. Kerry County Council’s draft local area plan for Knightstown, meanwhile, describes the ferry as running March to October. If your plan depends on the last boat, ring 1800 938 004 first.

Fares and tickets

Every figure above comes from the operator’s own shop at tickets.valentiaferry.com. One category is missing and the gap is odd: the shop heading reads “Car & Caravan, Trailers”, but the only products behind it are a boat trailer at €4.00 single and €6.00 return. There is no caravan ticket. Towing a caravan, you should assume a conversation on the slipway. The weight limit is stated twice and not in the same units. The shop sells the van ticket by total weight, up to 1.5 tonnes; clause 9 of the conditions caps commercial vehicles at 1.5 tonnes per axle. The number matches by coincidence, the measure does not. Online tickets are marked “Valid This Year Sailings Only” and are strictly non-refundable once used, partly used or expired, so a 10-trip car book bought in September is a poor bet. The terms reserve the right to charge different prices online and on board, though only one set of prices is published.

Route map

Renard Point is the end of a side road roughly 5 km west of Cahersiveen. The boat runs across the northern entrance of Valentia Harbour to the pier at Knightstown, on the north-east tip of the island, a trip the operator gives as 850 m.

Accessibility

The operator publishes nothing on accessibility. No page on either of its websites mentions wheelchairs, ramps, assistance or reduced mobility, and there is no accessible-travel contact. What exists is second-hand: the Valentia Island Development Company’s access guide says boarding “involves ramps or movable gangways”, describes the Knightstown village and pier area as level and paved, and asks visitors to request assistance in advance through the ferry website. That guide is worth reading with one eye open. Its site-by-site table is introduced as “draft accessibility guidance” and still contains the instruction to “Replace placeholders with verified local details”, left in the published page. It was last updated on 1 October 2025 and lists an accessibility contact for the island on +353 89 251 5708.

What you are sailing to

Valentia is about 11 km long and 3 km wide, and the whole island is one electoral division: 658 people at the 2022 census, up by one from 2016. Knightstown holds 244 of them. It is a planned village, laid out by the engineer Alexander Nimmo for the Knight of Kerry from 1830 and built through the 1840s as the slate quarry expanded, with over fifty protected structures and, by the 2016 census, 60% of its houses standing as holiday homes. The island’s claim on the rest of the world is a cable. In 1866 the first commercially durable transatlantic telegraph line was landed at Foilhommerum Bay and run to Heart’s Content in Newfoundland, cutting a message across the ocean from weeks to minutes; the cable station worked until 1966 and the Valentia cable sites now sit on Ireland’s UNESCO tentative list. Three other things are worth the drive. The slate quarry, working since 1816, holds a grotto in its old workings. Above Dohilla, on rock laid down in the Middle Devonian, a set of tetrapod footprints roughly 385 million years old records four-legged animals coming out of the water, found by an undergraduate geology student, Ivan Stössel, in 1992. And at Cromwell Point, inside a fort wall, the lighthouse first showed a light on 1 February 1841. One more thing did not stay. The weather station that reports as Valentia in the shipping forecast sat on the island from 1868, then moved across the water in March 1892 to Westwood House, a kilometre west of Cahersiveen, where it still is. The forecast says Valentia. The instruments are on the mainland.

When the sea decides

Cancellations are covered by one clause and no live feed. The conditions say sailings may be affected by weather or port closures, or changed at the company’s discretion for operational reasons, and that the published schedule is subject to alteration without notice. Where you would go to check is the problem. The banner across valentiaferry.com reads “Live Update: SAILING”, and the Internet Archive shows it reading exactly that on 12 February 2026, deep in a season when no boat runs at all. The site’s own sailing-updates page is password protected. That leaves the operator’s Facebook page, and even that has limits: when repairs at Renard Point pier stopped the boat at short notice in September 2024, the news that it would run again reached the public through a Kerry County Council statement to Radio Kerry.

Getting to the pier

There is no terminal at either end. No ticket office, no waiting room, no barrier. Renard Point is where the L4005 runs out at the water, past the fish plant and the seafood bar, about 5 km west of Cahersiveen; on the island side the slipway is at the bottom of Market Street, beneath the restored clock tower. You join a queue on the road and wait for the boat to come back.

• Getting to Renard Point: signposted off the N70 west of Cahersiveen. We measured the drive at 4.8 km and about seven minutes using OpenStreetMap routing; the operator publishes no figure of its own.
• Parking is the weak point, and the council says so. Neither operator page mentions parking at either pier. Kerry County Council’s draft Kenmare Municipal District local area plan states that Knightstown “will necessitate the provision of additional parking in the area” and carries a formal objective to support new parking at an appropriate location. Read that as a warning about August afternoons.
• Paying: buy online and show the ticket on a phone or on paper, or pay the ticket collector who comes round the deck. The operator’s instruction is blunt: do not leave your vehicle until the fare has been collected.
• Loading: park behind the vehicle in front, left-hand lane first, then right-hand lane, handbrake on and engine off. Doors stay shut until loading finishes.
• Buses reach Cahersiveen, not the pier. TFI Local Link Kerry route 280 (Waterville – Cahersiveen – Killorglin – Killarney) calls at the Fair Green seven days a week and needs no booking. Bus Éireann route 279A links Cahersiveen with Killorglin and Tralee.
• No scheduled bus stops at Renard Point, though Local Link’s 287a lists Renard among the townlands it will serve door to door on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, with pre-booking required where the route deviates. The same 287a reaches Knightstown by road through Portmagee, the long way round. A second Local Link route, the S231, reaches Knightstown on Thursday evenings only. No bus crosses on the ferry.
• Works to expect: Knightstown breakwater was allocated €187,500 for a mooring upgrade under the 2026 Local Authority Marine Infrastructure Scheme, with local authorities given until 31 October 2026 to finish. Renard Point pier was closed for repairs for part of September 2024 and sailings stopped with almost no notice.

Day trips

A day trip works in both directions, and the constraint is the last boat rather than the first. Come off the island for a morning in Cahersiveen and you have from 07:30 or 07:45 onwards; go over for the day and the ferry will still be there in the evening, though how late depends on which of the operator’s two timetables turns out to be right. The safe reading is the earlier one, 19:55 from Knightstown outside June to August. Sunday shifts everything: no boat before 09:00, in any month. If you miss the last sailing you are not stranded, which is the useful thing about this crossing. You drive out over the bridge at Portmagee instead: 23.5 km back to Cahersiveen, about 26 minutes by OpenStreetMap routing, against roughly twelve for the drive to Renard plus the crossing. The penalty is a quarter of an hour, not a night.

Cars and bikes

One car fare covers the driver and everyone in the car, €12.00 single and €16.00 return. Bicycles travel at €3.00 single, a euro more than walking on, and a child cyclist pays €2.00. Motorbikes are €5.00. The vessel that has worked this route since 1996 is the God Met Ons III, built in Holland in 1963 for a crossing of the Maas and displaced there by a bridge; it is double-ended, 43 m long, 95 gross tons, and was described in September 2024 as an 18-car, 95-passenger boat. Whether that same hull is on the run in 2026 we could not confirm from the operator, which names no vessel anywhere on either of its websites. Animals get two clauses in the conditions of carriage and they pull in different directions. Clause 7.3 says you must not bring animals “without our prior permission”; clause 7.5 says all animals including dogs must remain within the vehicle at all times. In a car, on a crossing this short, the second is easy enough. On foot with a dog, read the pair as: ring first.

Booking

Nothing needs booking and nothing can be booked. The operator’s ticket terms say plainly that no reservation is required or taken, and ask only that you arrive 5 to 10 minutes before a departure. Buying online is a convenience, not a discount, and no second price list for on-board sales is published. Then the same document trips over itself. Clause 3.2 of the conditions of carriage says payment may be made by credit or debit card on board or online, and two sentences later says “We do not accept card payments on board the ferry”, while the front page of valentiaferry.com advertises cash and card accepted on board. Carry cash. Clause 8 also tells you to have the exact fare ready, which suggests the crew would rather not be making change on a slipway.

Connections

• Off the island by the bridge: the Maurice O’Neill Memorial Bridge at Portmagee is open all year. Knightstown to the bridge is about 7.7 km, and Portmagee on to Cahersiveen another 15.7 km, both measured by OpenStreetMap routing.
• The loop this ferry makes possible: in by boat at Knightstown, across the island past Geokaun and the tetrapod site, out over the bridge, then west and south on the Skellig Ring through Ballinskelligs to Waterville. No road repeated.
• Skellig boats do sail from Valentia. The Office of Public Works lists the departure points for the 11.5 km boat trip as Portmagee, Glen Pier, Valentia, Ballinskelligs or Derrynane, and two of the fifteen permit holders named for 2026 are Valentia-based. Kerry AquaTerra runs its landing tour from Knightstown Village Marina at €140 a head, a 35 to 40 minute crossing, mid-May to the end of September. The bulk of the fleet still works out of Portmagee: see our Portmagee to Skellig Michael guide.
• Landing on Skellig Michael in 2026 runs 12 May to September, subject to change, and children under 12 are not allowed on the island at all. The climb is 618 steps.
• Mainland buses: Local Link Kerry 280 links Cahersiveen with Killorglin, Beaufort and Killarney bus station every day, and with Waterville in the other direction.

Things people get wrong

Good to know before you sail