Rail Travel: Tips on Cheap Tickets

vegtablepatch

Can anyone suggest a cheaper cost than £49.80 for return s'ham to london
for a weekend trip 19th Jan to 21st Jan. I would prefer to travel by train but happy to get bus to brighton or could use car for part of journey if parking not too expensive.
Any suggestions to reduce the price?
Thanks
Vegie:)

evesham1988la

funkin wrote:

Hi. I'm looking for fares for four people travelling from Twickenham going to Looe in Cornwall on Friday 16th March, and returning sometime on Monday 19th. This'll be South West Trains to Reading, then First Great Western down to Plymouth/Liskeard.

Cheapest I've found looks to be a saver return, which is 70 pounds each return. Single fares seem to be 69 pounds each, each way. The people travelling would much rather train than drive, but at 280 pounds total (return), the prospect of being crammed in a car for 5 hours+ (ignore traffic) actually sounds appealing!

There must be a bargain out there....anyone care to take up the challenge

Thanks in advance.

Firstly, in the South of England, four people travel for the price of two on Saver Returns and Cheap Day Returns (this is called Groupsave) so automatically halving the price of the walk-up fare you have found down to £140rtn for 4.

Cheap advance singles between Reading and Liskeard for your dates looks like they haven't been released yet.. so these will be £13 each way.

An alternative slower journey to consider would be to take the SouthWest trains service from Waterloo to Exeter which is £1 each way when booked in advance at https://www.megatrain.com.

evesham1988la

vegtablepatch wrote:

Can anyone suggest a cheaper cost than £49.80 for return s'ham to london
for a weekend trip 19th Jan to 21st Jan. I would prefer to travel by train but happy to get bus to brighton or could use car for part of journey if parking not too expensive.
Any suggestions to reduce the price?
Thanks
Vegie:)

The standard return price is £24.90 and not £49.80 which would be for two. However you can buy a ticket called a Southern DaySave for £10, which allows unlimited travel on Southern Trains for that day after 10am weekdays and all day saturday/sunday. Obviously you will need to buy two tickets for each of the two days you wish to travel. These can be only be bought by clicking here
and must be bought at least 7 days in advance.

funkin

evesham1988la wrote:

Cheap advance singles between Reading and Liskeard for your dates looks like they haven't been released yet.. so these will be £13 each way.

Thanks ever so much for your suggestions. Any idea when the cheap advance singles get "released". I though there was a 13 week thing for timetables to be published, but do these sometimes appear nearer the date of travel.

Do you know if the saver returns are available as a walk-on fare or do these need to be booked in advance? The groupsave deal sounds great.

weaholt

Hi everyone,

Myself and my husband are due to go to London for the weekend on Friday the 30th of March until Sunday the 1st of April. Have been searching around and have gathered from this site that I need to get in there 12 weeks prior to travel for a good deal - which is this Friday. I have been looking at fares using the week before as a guideline but the return fare is pretty dear at £61.90 each - more than we can afford.

I have tried the spliiting of the journey into multiple tickets but it came out dearer still! Any tips that I've missed?? It would be greatly appreacited!!

thanks

weaholt

oops duplicated post!

asot

If you travel towards London at peak times you pay a premium for your tickets. Purchasing the same tickets but in the opposite direction can save you significant amounts.

One, totally random, example is:

Fratton TO Guildford (Heading towards London)
Standard Day Return £20.90

Guildford TO Fratton (Heading away from London)
Standard Day Return £14.70

In this particular case a weekly ticket is £299.6 so there are no savings to be made if you travel 5 days per week on this route.

However savings vary depending on the stations involved. My particular journey costs are reduced by 33% even when compared with a weekly ticket saving me £10/week.


Obviously this means on your outbound journey you use your return ticket and your return journey you use your outbound ticket. I don't see this being a problem though; how could they possibly prove that you hadn't travelled the other direction already. However, officially it's against the rules:

17. Using a return ticket
A return ticket (including a two-part return ticket) is only valid for the outward
journey shown on that ticket if the ticket is completely unused. You may not use
the outward part of a return ticket after you have used the return part.

vegtablepatch

evesham1988la wrote:

The standard return price is £24.90 and not £49.80 which would be for two. However you can buy a ticket called a Southern DaySave for £10, which allows unlimited travel on Southern Trains for that day after 10am weekdays and all day saturday/sunday. Obviously you will need to buy two tickets for each of the two days you wish to travel. These can be only be bought by clicking here
and must be bought at least 7 days in advance.

Thank you evesham1988la. I misunderstood my quote thought it was per person not total for 2 persons. Have used the link you provided and the price of £40.00 period return to london is excellent. Just hoping now that I will get a good price for a 4* hotel for 2 nights on lastminute.com auction.

evesham1988la

funkin wrote:

Thanks ever so much for your suggestions. Any idea when the cheap advance singles get "released". I though there was a 13 week thing for timetables to be published, but do these sometimes appear nearer the date of travel.

Do you know if the saver returns are available as a walk-on fare or do these need to be booked in advance? The groupsave deal sounds great.

The Saver Return is available as a walk-on fare. I'm pretty sure that you can get Groupsave on this but to be sure ask at your local station.

evesham1988la

weaholt wrote:

Hi everyone,

Myself and my husband are due to go to London for the weekend on Friday the 30th of March until Sunday the 1st of April. Have been searching around and have gathered from this site that I need to get in there 12 weeks prior to travel for a good deal - which is this Friday. I have been looking at fares using the week before as a guideline but the return fare is pretty dear at £61.90 each - more than we can afford.

I have tried the spliiting of the journey into multiple tickets but it came out dearer still! Any tips that I've missed?? It would be greatly appreacited!!

thanks

Click on singles and the fare magically falls to £16.50 single for the 08.09 or 11.11 departure from Blackpool North. However, these advance single fares are released later on weekends so they are not showing up at the moment.