cheapest way to get from Stoke-on-Trent to London

first78

My partner and I need to travel to London in the morning on 9th October as we're meeting a friend who coming over from the U.S. We plan to spend 9th and 10th October in London and then the 3 of us will be coming back to Stoke on 11th.

Looking at train fares it looks like we'd have to pay around £35 per person each way!! :eek:

Are there any cheaper ways of doing this journey? I do drive so if there's a station that would work out cheaper to travel from that would be fine. Any ideas would be very welcome.

Livingthedream

Your a little bit early for the cheap Advance tickets, keep checking here to see when there released, keep an eye on Virgin trains and London Midland dates.

Failing that if you don't want restrictive tickets, then get some Super Off Peak Returns *London Midland Trains Only* for £22.50 each, can be purchased on the day for that price, only problem is London Midland trains take a lot longer to get to London (nearly 3hours)

Prices from the East Coast Website.

Edit: London Midland have released their cheap advance tickets and the Journey can be done for £16 each, but unfortunately not in the morning. To find this fare on the East Coast website, enter a search 'Stoke on Trent to London' once got your results, then 'select route' and tick 'London Midland only' and update.

first78

I thought it was a case of the sooner you booked the cheaper the fare :undecided:

wearside_2

I always find that Cross Country Trains Website to be the cheapest. The Trainline to be the dearest. You can book help as well on Cross Country at the same time that the tickets are booked.

http://www.crosscountrytrains.co.uk

Livingthedream

first78 wrote: »

I thought it was a case of the sooner you booked the cheaper the fare :undecided:

That's correct for Advance singles, but for 'walk on fares'. London Midland, who are in competition with Virgin trains over that route, try to make their longer journey time more competitive by offer it at a lot cheaper price.

spaceman5

try walking:D

moonrakerz

wearside wrote: »

I always find that Cross Country Trains Website to be the cheapest. The Trainline to be the dearest.

The fares are the same on ALL the websites, but people like Trainline charge commission and postage ( even if you collect them yourself !), some rail companies do charge postage.
It is usually best to use the site of the company you intend to travel on as they often have special offers on their services only, which don't appear elsewhere.

You will NEVER get the cheapest fares on the Trainline - their adverts are grossly misleading.....................

p00hsticks

first78 wrote: »

I thought it was a case of the sooner you booked the cheaper the fare :undecided:

Only up to a point - the cheapest fares get loaded about twelve weeks before you want to travel (possibly closer around dates where they are likely to be engineering works).

Currently tickets are only available up to 5th October - you can check when they're available for a particular date by selecting the 'find out when to buy advance tickets' option here;

http://www.virgintrains.co.uk/tickets-offers/

I live in Stoke, and find the Virgin website one of the easiest to use to book tickets to London; there's no booking fee and if you have a Virgin creditcard, I believe you can get a 10% discount. Because it's actually a Virgin route and Stoke station is run by Virgin, the options are set up with Stoke as one of the drop down options. Use the 'best fare finder' search option to the right of the page I've posted - the cheapest fares on offer are £11 single.