Edinburgh to Plymouth by train and with bicycle

grangeburn

Hi!

We are planning to travel on the Edinburgh - Plymouth route in June along with our bicycles. To get ourselves familiar with the booking process, we have been experimenting with the Cross Country website to find the cheapest fares. (We are looking for two single fares) As we will be travelling on a Sunday, we have tried Sundays up to the end of April in an effort to find sample advance fares. Can't seem to find any! How do you find advance fares on this site? Also, it seems we can't reserve a place for our bicycles online. We have to 'phone. Can we still get any advance fares and reserve places for our bicycles by 'phone?

Cheers Michael!

dzug1

You can get advance fares by phone (and at the station) as well as online

The end of April advance fares won't be there yet - look a lot nearer to now for examples.

Having said that, Cross Country do appear to be playing silly games with advance fares at the moment. You might be better going via London.

grangeburn

Thanks dzug1

Only reason I am looking just now is to get an idea of the prices to expect later and how the website works. The fact we are travelling with bicycles is an added complication. The website is not straight forward when it comes to looking for the cheaper advanced fares. Have since found out that the National Rail website is a better bet in this respect.

Michael

buxtonrabbitgreen

I was looking for advance fares for June, but it said it only gives them 3 months in advance.

dzug1

buxtonrabbitgreen wrote: »

I was looking for advance fares for June, but it said it only gives them 3 months in advance.

Not even that - reservations for full fare tickets open 3 months in advance and cheap advance tickets follow at vaying intervals

grangeburn

So that means if we have to wait for a cheap advance ticket then there might not be space for our bikes!!!!

Tally-Ho_2

grangeburn wrote: »

So that means if we have to wait for a cheap advance ticket then there might not be space for our bikes!!!!

Hi,

Myself and a friend wanted to do the same thing in reverse last year (Plymouth to Edinburgh) with cycles. The only way they could guarantee cycle space was to book early enough, before others did the same thing. This meant we had to book the more expensive fares as the cheap ones has not then been released. If we waited until the cheap ones had been released and bought then, they could not guarantee we could be able to book cycle space.

Fortunately my friend being deaf had a disabled rail card which permitted us 33% off both tickets but even so it was pretty expensive in comparison to the very cheap advance singles later put on sale. We did check when eventually the ultra cheap tickets went on sale but as we guessed there was no cycle space available to be booked!.

We vowed if we ever had to do it again we would book the cheapest seats possible and hire cycles at our destination!!

Tal

grangeburn

Thanks Tal

I have noticed that national express east coast website www.nationalexpresseastcoast.co.uk
offer the facility to reserve places for your bikes when booking your seats online - no matter which train company. Has anyone out there used this service? Do you have to confirm the bicycle reservations with CrossCountry? Do you get separate tickets for the bicycles? I wouldn't want to turn up at Edinburgh Waverley and find that there was no space for the bikes!

I am also thinking of changing my day of travel from a Sunday to a Monday. There seems to be more likelihood of engineering works at the weekend disrupting things. Has any one had problems with Sunday travelling with bicycles?

Michael

Michael