Greencastle to Magilligan Ferry: Crossing an International Border in Twenty Minutes
Greencastle to Magilligan Ferry: Crossing an International Border in Twenty Minutes
Two piers, one lough, and a national frontier in between. The boat leaves the Republic at Greencastle and puts you ashore in the United Kingdom fifteen to twenty minutes later, saving roughly 73 km of driving round the head of Lough Foyle through Derry.
Departure times
| Period | Days | From Greencastle | From Magilligan Point |
|---|---|---|---|
| Easter: 1–12 April 2026 | Daily | Times not published | Times not published |
| Mid-April to the summer start | Weekends only | Times not published | Times not published |
| Summer season to mid-September | Seven days | First 09:00 Last 20:00 | First 09:20 Last 20:15 |
| Rest of the year | No service | – | – |
Read that table as opening hours, because that is all the operator publishes: “There is no set timetable for Lough Foyle Ferry. Simply turn up and catch the next ferry!” The summer start date has two official versions. The operator’s own timetable page says the daily service runs “From Friday 22nd May to mid September”; Donegal County Council’s announcement of 27 May 2026 says both its ferries “will commence full operations on Friday 29 May 2026”. A week apart, and nobody reconciles them. Nor does anyone publish a closing date beyond “mid-September”. Frequency is given only as a shuttle: the operator says it sails “constantly all day”, and its ticket shop banner reads “multiple trips per hour”. One source does put numbers on it. The ferry appears in Irish public transport open data as service FY20, and that dataset models it as a half-hourly boat leaving Greencastle on the hour and the half hour from 09:00 to 20:00, and Magilligan at quarter past and quarter to from 09:15 to 20:15, with a ten-minute crossing. Treat that as a planner’s approximation rather than a schedule you can hold anyone to. The crossing time itself is disputed by the operator’s own website: its Causeway Coast page calls it “a 20 minute trip”, while the Go Visit Inishowen tourist office and the maritime press both say approximately 15 minutes.
Times change with the season and the weather. Check the operator before you travel:
Ticket prices
| Ticket | Single | Return | Multi-trip |
|---|---|---|---|
| Car or small van to 5 m, passengers included | €22.00 | €32.00 | 4 trips €38.00 · 6 trips €50.00 |
| Foot passenger, adult | €4.00 | €7.00 | 5 trips €15.00 |
| Foot passenger, child | €3.00 | €5.00 | – |
| Family on foot, 2 adults and 2 children | €15.00 | €20.00 | – |
| Adult cyclist | €7.00 | €10.00 | – |
| Motorcycle and rider | €12.00 | €16.00 | 4 trips €25.00 |
| Campervan, passengers included | €25.00 | €35.00 | – |
| Motorhome, passengers included | €30.00 | €40.00 | – |
| Car towing a trailer, passengers included | €27.00 | €40.00 | – |
| Car towing a caravan, passengers included | €32.00 | €46.00 | – |
| Single-axle trailer alone | €7.00 | €10.00 | – |
| Towing caravan alone | €10.80 | €14.40 | – |
| Commercial van to 7 m, passengers included | €22.00 | €32.00 | 5 trips €50.00 |
| Mini-bus, maximum 16 passengers | €35.00 | €45.00 | – |
Every price in the table above was read off the operator’s own ticket shop, and every one of them is quoted in euro. That matters more here than on any other crossing in Ireland, because half of this route is in the United Kingdom. The shop does carry a currency menu offering Euro and British Pound, but each price we could read came back in euro, and the product markup tags them EUR. The terms of travel then add a sentence that raises the question rather than settling it: “The prices shown in Euro on our website or in our brochures are applicable only for bookings made in the Republic of Ireland.” No sterling price list is published anywhere. If you are boarding at Magilligan, ring one of the freephone numbers first and ask what they take. There is precedent for dual pricing: when Frazer Ferries reopened the route in 2016 with a 20% price cut, cars were advertised at €12 or £10 single, so sterling fares have existed before. Watch the vehicle lengths, which come in three different numbers. The car ticket covers vehicles to 5 m, the commercial van ticket to 7 m, and the timetable page says flatly “We cannot accept buses or lorries over 6 metres in length”. Clause 9 of the terms bans articulated lorries outright. Tickets are non-refundable once used, partly used or expired, and the operator reserves the right to charge extra on board if your ticket does not match your vehicle.
Prices move with the date and demand. Get a live quote and book direct:
Route map
Greencastle sits on the Inishowen shore at the point where Lough Foyle opens to the Atlantic. Magilligan Point is the sand spit facing it, in County Londonderry, and the two berths are 1.7 km apart in a straight line.
Can you do it in a day?
A day return works comfortably in either direction, and the arithmetic is generous because the boat runs a shuttle rather than a schedule. Leave Greencastle on the 09:00 and the last boat back from Magilligan is at 20:15, giving you eleven hours on the far shore. Coming the other way is much the same. What you can do with the day depends on which side you start. From Magilligan the ferry drops you into Inishowen, with Stroove beach a mile from the Greencastle slipway by the operator’s reckoning and Malin Head about 44 km up the road. From Greencastle you land at the western end of the Causeway Coastal Route, with Benone Strand immediately to hand, Coleraine at 25 km and the Giant’s Causeway at about 42 km by our own measurement. Two warnings. There is no boat outside the season, so a September day trip can turn into a 73 km drive home. And the last sailing is not guaranteed if the weather turns.Connections
- Trains from the Magilligan side: Bellarena is the nearest station on the Derry to Coleraine line, about 8.5 km from the pier by our own measurement. No bus links the two, so that leg is a taxi or a bicycle.
- Onward by road from Magilligan: Limavady 18 km, Coleraine 25 km, the Giant’s Causeway about 42 km, Belfast about 114 km, all measured by us with OpenStreetMap routing. For the far end of that road see buses in Belfast.
- Back on the Donegal shore: Moville is 5 km from the Greencastle slipway, Derry 36 km and Malin Head 44 km. The 957 bus covers the Derry leg without a car.
- Right beside the Greencastle slipway is the Inishowen Maritime Museum and Planetarium, roughly 160 m from the berth, with the ruins of Northburgh Castle about 600 m away. The operator names both.
- Do not confuse this with the other Greencastle ferry. There are two Greencastles with car ferries in Ireland, both run by the same group. This one is in Co. Donegal and crosses Lough Foyle. The other is in Co. Down and crosses Carlingford Lough to Greenore in Co. Louth: see the Carlingford ferry. They are about 200 km apart and share nothing but a name.
Do you need to book?
Nothing needs booking. The shop states it plainly: “No reservation required or taken”, with a request to arrive 5 to 10 minutes before a sailing. Buying online gets you a ticket by email with a 12-month expiry, or 18 months on most of the multi-trip books, the commercial-van five-trip being the exception at twelve, and it can be scanned from a phone. Then the two websites contradict each other on how you pay at the slipway, and the gap is wide enough to matter. The terms on loughfoyleferry.com say: “Payment may be made by cash on-board.” That is the whole clause. The conditions on the ticket shop say instead that payment “may be made by major credit or debit card on-board or on-line”, with a handling charge possible, plus cash or cheque. Both are the operator’s own words, published on the same day. Carry cash and you cannot be caught out. One more oddity worth knowing before you hand over money: the two sites name two different companies as the party you are contracting with, and give two different head office numbers for them.Accessibility
The operator publishes nothing at all on accessibility. We read every page on loughfoyleferry.com and on tickets.loughfoyleferry.com: there is no mention of wheelchairs, ramps, assistance, reduced mobility or assistance dogs, no accessible-travel contact, and nothing in the terms of travel either. That is a finding rather than an oversight on our part, and it leaves foot passengers with reduced mobility with no published information about boarding a roll-on roll-off boat off an open slipway. The buses are better documented. TFI Local Link’s printed timetables for the 953, 957 and 959 state that their vehicles are wheelchair accessible and invite you to ask the driver for assistance. If the crossing itself matters to your plans, ring 1800 938 004 or 0800 471 4665 and ask before you drive to the pier.On the other side
Magilligan Point is not an island, though it behaves like one. It is the tip of a triangular sand plain that ends in what is described as one of the largest dune systems in the British Isles, and the last few hundred metres are a National Nature Reserve. Standing behind the beach is a Martello tower that Discover Northern Ireland calls the only one in the North, put up early in the nineteenth century with American privateers in mind as much as the French, and reached by a kissing gate out of the car park. Two other things share the peninsula, and both are the kind of neighbour that shapes a place. One is a military firing range, and public access to it is restricted. The other is the prison on the Point Road, HMP Magilligan — which is why the traffic down this dead end is heavier than a beach alone would explain. Benone Strand runs east from the Point for about 7 km, and the operator reckons it less than five minutes’ drive from the Magilligan slipway. One correction, because the question comes up: the Ulster Transport Museum is nowhere near here. It sits at Cultra outside Belfast, which two routing engines put at between 122 and 128 km by road from the Magilligan pier.Cars and bikes
Everyone in the car travels on a single vehicle fare, driver included: €22.00 one way, €32.00 return, for anything up to 5 m in length. Cyclists pay €7.00 single, motorcyclists €12.00. The boat that has done most of the work here in recent years is the Frazer Strangford, built at Verolme Dockyard in Cork in 1969 for Down County Council and used for decades on the Strangford Lough crossing before Frazer Ferries bought her; she is 32.9 m long and rated at 20 cars and 263 passengers. In March 2022 the maritime press described her as the reserve vessel behind the Frazer Mariner, which first worked this route on 17 July 2017. By March 2024 the Frazer Strangford was reported as the boat on the run. Which of the two is sailing in 2026 we could not confirm, because the operator names no vessel anywhere on either of its websites. Dogs and any other animal have to remain inside the car from shore to shore, and the terms also require permission before you bring an animal at all. Children under 16 must be accompanied by an adult, and under-14s need one with them on the upper deck.Finding the harbour
Neither end has a terminal building in the airport sense. At Greencastle the road runs down past the fishing harbour to the slipway on The Pier; at Magilligan you drive to the very end of Point Road, past the Point Bar, and stop where the tarmac meets the sand. You queue, you board, you pay on deck or show a phone.
- Finding it from the Causeway side: the council tourism office tells drivers to follow signs from the A2 Seacoast Road “for Lough Foyle Ferry”. It is the last road on the peninsula. There is nowhere else to go.
- Parking at Magilligan is free and there are two of them. Causeway Coast and Glens Borough Council’s tourism site says to use the car park opposite the ferry terminal, or the one at the Martello Tower, and records the parking as free, though its own nature-reserve listing adds that charges may apply.
- Parking at Greencastle is not documented. The operator says nothing about it, and neither does Donegal County Council. We found no published car park, capacity or charge for the Greencastle side, which is worth knowing before you arrive on an August Sunday.
- Buses reach Greencastle, and they are good ones. Four TFI Local Link Donegal Sligo Leitrim routes call at the Greencastle stop (stop number 12266), roughly 260 m from the berth: the 957 to and from Derry, the 953 to Letterkenny, the 959 to Buncrana, and the 952. All four appear in the National Transport Authority’s own timetable data. See also our guides to buses in Donegal and buses in Derry.
- No bus reaches Magilligan Point. We could find no scheduled Translink service to the pier. The nearest thing is Ulsterbus route 134 between Coleraine and Limavady, which runs along the A2 inland, calls at Bellarena and Aghanloo and has a stop named Point Road at the turn-off itself, and runs Monday to Saturday, with nothing on a Sunday and nothing on a bank holiday. From the A2 turn-off down Point Road to the pier is another 5.7 km by our own measurement, and no bus covers it.
- Free Travel Passes and Leap cards work on the buses, not the boat. Local Link accepts cash, Leap and the Free Travel Pass. The ferry sells its own tickets and mentions neither scheme.
- Paying on board: the instruction in the terms is to park in the queue, load left-hand lane first, put the handbrake on, switch the engine off, keep the doors shut until loading is finished, and stay in the car until the fare has been collected.
Sailing conditions
Lough Foyle is an estuary with a narrow mouth, and the crossing runs straight across it. The operator’s own contract language is unambiguous about what that means for you: sailings “may be affected by weather conditions or port closures, or may be changed (at our discretion) by operational requirements”, and the “published schedule is subject to alteration without notice due to weather conditions and other circumstances”. If it cannot offer you a reasonable alternative crossing, it refunds the fare. Unlike most small Irish ferry operators, this one does maintain a live status page, and it is the first thing on the site: a banner across every page reading “CLICK HERE TO CHECK UP TO DATE SAILING STATUS BEFORE TRAVELING”, linking to loughfoyleferry.com/sailing-status. On 6 August 2026 it read “The ferry is currently sailing”. Whether it is updated fast enough to catch a squall is another matter, so the two freephone numbers are the safer bet on a bad morning: 1800 938 004 from the Republic, 0800 471 4665 from Northern Ireland. Note the second one. Two freephone numbers for two jurisdictions is the sort of detail that tells you what kind of route this is.Practical notes
You cross a national border
Reverse geocoding puts the Greencastle berth in County Donegal, Ireland, and the Magilligan berth on Point Road, County Londonderry, postcode BT49 0LP, United Kingdom. Fifteen to twenty minutes of water between two states.
No routine passport checks, but bring ID
Citizens Information, the Irish government’s public information service, states there are no routine passport controls for Irish and UK citizens travelling between the two countries, but adds that “you must show identification to board a ferry or an airplane”. The ferry itself publishes no document requirement whatsoever. Carry something with your photograph on it.
Euro on both shores
Every published fare is in euro, including the ones you pay at the UK end. A British Pound option sits in the ticket shop’s currency menu, but no sterling price list exists. The terms say euro prices apply “only for bookings made in the Republic of Ireland” and then stop.
Two freephone numbers, one boat
1800 938 004 from the Republic, 0800 471 4665 from Northern Ireland. Both reach the same operator. Use whichever is local to the SIM in your pocket.
Cash or card? The operator says both, separately
The terms on the main site say payment may be made by cash on board. The conditions on the ticket shop say card, cash or cheque. Bring notes.
Three different length limits
The car ticket covers vehicles to 5 m, the commercial van ticket to 7 m, and the timetable page refuses buses and lorries over 6 metres. Articulated lorries are banned outright. If your vehicle is near any of those numbers, ring first.
Nobody publishes a closing date
The season ends “mid-September” and that is all anyone says: not the operator, not Donegal County Council, not the tourist office. Late-season trips are a gamble on someone else’s definition of mid.
The lough itself is disputed
Ireland and the United Kingdom have never agreed a territorial boundary in Lough Foyle, and both governments have restated their claims in recent years. You are crossing water whose ownership is unsettled, on a boat that takes euro.