Cheapest travel to London

rambo29

My wife and I are going to see a show in London on 11th May and staying overnight. What's the cheapest way to travel and how much should I expect to pay travelling by train or flying. We are staying in Trafalgar Square. Travelling from newcastle.

wealdroam

rambo29 wrote: »

My wife and I are going to see a show in London on 11th May and staying overnight. What's the cheapest way to travel and how much should I expect to pay travelling by train or flying. We are staying in Trafalgar Square. Travelling from newcastle.

What have you found?

For train fares have a look at virgintrainseastcoast.com

Please post your findings and hopefully someone will review them.

yorkie2

rambo29 wrote: »

My wife and I are going to see a show in London on 11th May and staying overnight. What's the cheapest way to travel and how much should I expect to pay travelling by train or flying. We are staying in Trafalgar Square. Travelling from newcastle.

Advance singles to London King's Cross, and using a contactless payment card for travel within London (or, if you do not have a contactless card, obtain an Oyster card).

Some Advance fares on this route are discounted, typically by around 2%, but some as much as around 10%, on the Virgin Trains East Coast website.

If you use Thetrainline, you won't get that discount and you will be additionally charged fees.

It might be cheaper to "split" (use a combination of tickets). If it is, the trainsplit.com website (which was mentioned in the media recently, for example in the Mirror) will probably identify the optimum combination to sell, and offer to sell you the combination, with one itinerary and in one transaction. No fees are charged, other than a small percentage of any saving. It's not my site, but I do know the people who made it (I introduced them to each other!)

macman

A coach will probably be the cheapest way, if not the fastest or most comfortable.

rambo29

It seems buying one way tickets for both journeys is the cheapest. Traveling by coach is not an option.

wealdroam

rambo29 wrote: »

It seems buying one way tickets for both journeys is the cheapest.

Yes it can be.. but not always.

Have you read MSE's Cheap Train Tickets article?

There are lots of useful tips in there, here's just one:

Singles can beat returns

Returns should be better value but often aren’t. Lots of top deals are only available on one-way fares. It's very common that cheaper fares are available for two single tickets but not the return, so always check.

The web makes finding them easy. If you're booking via RedSpottedHanky or a similar site, you'll be shown both single and return fares.

Save £266 on a London to Manchester return

As an example, a search for a seat on a London to Manchester train, coming back the next day, brought up a standard anytime return ticket costing a whopping £321. A quick check instantly found that for the same journey, an outbound advance single ticket was £19, while coming back, a Manchester-London advance single cost £35.50 - a total of £54.50 for the journey.

song_of_calliope

Look into whether getting a "two together" railcard is worth it to you. £30/year or £15 in tesco club card vouchers but you save 1/3 on all (I think all but certainly most) train trips you and your wife take together.

Exile_geordie

song_of_calliope wrote: »

Look into whether getting a "two together" railcard is worth it to you. £30/year or £15 in tesco club card vouchers but you save 1/3 on all (I think all but certainly most) train trips you and your wife take together.

Yes do this. Since we bought one the savings have been great. Saying that though do check the flights depending where in Newcastle you are as Ive had some cheap ones to Stanstead before (though you do have to get from there into London)

dzug1

song_of_calliope wrote: »

Look into whether getting a "two together" railcard is worth it to you. £30/year or £15 in tesco club card vouchers but you save 1/3 on all (I think all but certainly most) train trips you and your wife take together.

All offpeak train trips - after 0930 weekdays, any weekend train

mad_despot

A quick look on the megabus website - you could do the return trip for £7 each.

The_Groat_Counter

If you're willing to get the Metro to Sunderland then you can catch one of the Grand Central train services to King's Cross, on which there are likely to be cheaper fares than for the Newcastle to London trains - it certainly seems so in this case.

On Monday 11 May, the 08.42 from Sunderland (arrives KX 12.30) or the 12.28 from Sunderland (arrives KX 16.12) are £26.90 per person.

On Tuesday 12 May the 11.21 and 12.53 Grand Central trains from King's Cross to Sunderland are £16 each, and the 19.18 is £26.90 each.

These are Advance tickets so you have to travel on the specified train.

The journey will be slower than travelling from Newcastle - the Grand Central trains from Sunderland go via Hartlepool, Eaglescliffe, Northallerton and Thirsk to York then down to London, plus there's the extra time and cost of a Metro journey from Newcastle to Sunderland - but the saving might be worth it.

Definitely worth bearing in mind the Two Together Railcard as well - you don't need to have one to buy railcard discounted tickets from a website, but you do need to have bought one by the time you travel and have it with you.

Grand Central website:
www.grandcentralrail.com