Rail Travel: Tips on Cheap Tickets

philce

Thanks!

Edited, we leave from Leicester!

KeithP

Looking at Saturday dates in August as a guide, it looks as though you should be able to buy Advance Single tickets for £12.00 each (£6.00 for child), each way, when the Sept ones become available. So your whole party should probably be able to do the return journey, Leicester to London StP) for a total of £132.00.
No guarantees of course.
Keep checking the NXEC site, where i got the above info, for the tickets to come available.

philce

Thanks.

Ive found that the tickets are only onsale till Sept 5th. So I need to wait another couple of weeks.

But do I buy the Eurostar now or wait?

dzug1

Also worth checking the East Midlands Trains site - they seem to have a policy of offering cheaper 'internet specials' than they release to the general booking sites. An £11 single is sometimes available

bestpud

I'm hoping someone with more experience of travelling by rail can help me out:

We (2 x adults and 1 x 7yr old) want to travel from Hereford to London on Saturday July 18th. We need to be at Earl's Court by 11am at the latest. We will be leaving London after 6pm.

So far the cheapest I can find are £42 each for the adults and £21 for the child. That is buying single tickets from London to Paddington, and back.

There is no benefit in buying a split ticket from Newport (where we change) as it is the same cost from there.

I checked out whether we could go up to Birmingham and get the saver tickets (on offer) from there to London, but the cost of getting to Birmingham and the extra time involved ruled that out.

Can anyone think of anything else?

I am happy to drive some of the way if it will reduce the cost...

Thanks in advance for any ideas

miller

bestpud wrote: »

We (2 x adults and 1 x 7yr old) want to travel from Hereford to London on Saturday July 18th. We need to be at Earl's Court by 11am at the latest. We will be leaving London after 6pm.

Try with a Family and Friends railcard (£26 - though check MSE for any offers). You can use the railcard in the future so it might work out cheaper.

(There was a fare of £66.45 total for a One Day Travelcard via the slower Evesham route with a Friends and Family railcard, but it looks like there is engineering work which means you could not arrive in time via that route)

KeithP

bestpud wrote: »

I'm hoping someone with more experience of travelling by rail can help me out:

We (2 x adults and 1 x 7yr old) want to travel from Hereford to London on Saturday July 18th. We need to be at Earl's Court by 11am at the latest. We will be leaving London after 6pm.

So far the cheapest I can find are £42 each for the adults and £21 for the child. That is buying single tickets from London to Paddington, and back.

There is no benefit in buying a split ticket from Newport (where we change) as it is the same cost from there.

I checked out whether we could go up to Birmingham and get the saver tickets (on offer) from there to London, but the cost of getting to Birmingham and the extra time involved ruled that out.

Can anyone think of anything else?

I am happy to drive some of the way if it will reduce the cost...

Thanks in advance for any ideas

Bestpud, definitely consider the Family and Friends railcard, as mentioned above. Without it, as you have found, the best that can be done appears to be £105.00 for all three of you return to Paddington. With a railcard, that reduces to £77.10 (plus of course £26.00 for the railcard). So a small saving even if you cannot get a discount on a railcard.

KeithP

bestpud wrote: »

I am happy to drive some of the way if it will reduce the cost...

Just noticed this bit.
If you were to drive to Gloucester, you can get a direct train to Paddington, dep 07:45, arr 09:37, £30.20 for all three of you, with F&F railcard.
Return dep Paddington 18:15, arr Gloucester 20:06, £24.95 for all three of you, with F&F railcard. Again a direct train.
So total cost = £55.15 + railcard + Paddington to EarlsCourt.

Just another option... depends on your value/cost of the drive to Gloucester.

miller

KeithP wrote: »

Paddington to EarlsCourt.

Under-11s can travel free on Tube, DLR and London Overground services when accompanied by an adult (maximum of 4 children per adult).

Tube options
Paper Zone 1-2 Travelcard £5.60
#Oyster £1.60 * 2 = £3.20 each way.
Request ticket to "Zone U1* Londn" increases purchase price by £9.10 with railcard (effectively £4.55 each way but no faffing around with buying/refunding Oyster cards)

#£3 refundable deposit needed for each card www.tfl.gov.uk/oyster

bestpud

Thanks very much for your replies!

The Gloucester option looks a good one as not far and easy enough to drive. I'm just going to check out parking there - long time since I've been to Gloucester!

That's a much better option than driving all the way to London.

I looked at the Evesham route but ruled it out for some reason - can't recall why now. I'll have another look at that one too.

Thanks for the tube info as well - that's another thing that was baffling me!

:beer: