London 2 for 1 deals...

charlierogan

I am trying to fathom how I would buy National Rail tickets?

Can I just buy them from Hackney Wick to London Bridge and they be national rail tickets or do I have to buy them online before I go? i travel in roughly 8 weeks and want to completely understand what I had to do!

alanrowell

I take it you won't be travelling to & from London by train.

If not all you have to do is use Travelcards bought at a train station ticket office.

charlierogan

I'm travelling from Liverpool Lime Street to London Euston on 2nd August with Virgin Trains. £24 return Very happy with that!!

________________________
The T&C state:

Each person must show their own valid National Rail ticket. A ticket will have a [National Rail Symbol] and be valid for rail travel on the day of your visit.

Oyster cards and London Underground issued tickets are NOT valid for use with the 2FOR1 offer.
________________________
I have looked up travel cards - how do i find out which zone Hackney Wick and London Bridge Station is in?


I have found lots of vouchers to use -basically for everywhere we want to visit, and both being post grad students, we really want to save money!!!

dzug1

London Bridge is in zone 1, Hackney Wick zone 2

There's a selection of maps on the TfL site

Hackney Wick is a London Overground station so sells national rail tickets

It may be worth noting that the next station out (Stratford) is in zone 3 and you are probably going to have to travel that way to get anywhere useful

charlierogan

We are going to Stratford to the new shopping centre on the Saturday.

Can we pay per zone?

dzug1

Your tickets from Liverpool will cover you for the 2 for 1 offers.

Yes you can pay per zone - but cash fares are very expensive. Either a railcard or a PAYG Oyster depending on how much travel you intend to do will serve you better

charlierogan

I got the impression that we had to use tickets that showed a departure/return in London for the 2 for 1 things because it asked us when we downloaded the vouchers where we would depart from in London. But it will be great that our tickets from Liverpool will suffice

Where do I buy an oyster card from -we don't have anything like that up here!

p00hsticks

It's probably easiest to buy your Oyster card from the Travel Information kiosk right in the centre of Euston station when you first arrive.

With regard to your train tickets for the 2-4-1 offers - if you are actually travelling with two single tickets (one from Liverpool to London and one back from London to Liverpool) then your tickets will be valid for the offers for all dates in between the inward and outward journeys, but you may be asked to show both parts, so don;t forget to keep them with you.

And check at Liverpool - you may be able to pick up a leaflet at the station listing all the attractions taking part in the offer with half a dozen blank vouchers at the back, which is handy.

charlierogan

We are using self service ticket machines so we weren't going to pick up our tickets back until we needed them to mae sure we didn't lose them, but if we need to we will pick them up when we get there.

What do you do with oyster cards, do you just swipe them or something?

jemcart

You just hold them against the yellow circle on the front of the ticket turnstiles, and they open for you.

Oyster cards are a good idea, they save you quite a bit of money and are easier to use. The card tickets you get don't always work if they get creased or folded at all, and then you have to wait for an attendant to let you through, which can be fun when it's busy!

p00hsticks

charlierogan wrote: »

We are using self service ticket machines so we weren't going to pick up our tickets back until we needed them to mae sure we didn't lose them, but if we need to we will pick them up when we get there.

Yes, you may need to show both the outward and return tickets in order to take advantage of the 2-4-1 offers in the intervening days (in practice, they often don't ask to see the rail tickets, but it;s not worth running the risk).