Train tickets

[hawkida]

I want to go to Leicester (from London) on 28th November and return on 29th. The cheapest train fare for this appears to be 48 quid, going by nationalrail.co.uk and thetrainline.com.

Is that really going to be the best I can get, or do cheaper advance tickets come out closer to the time? I note that I can get TO Leicester for nine quid, so why do they want to charge me so much more to come back?

Comments

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Well, some cities are just like that :-) :-).

(Don't actually know much of anything about Leicester, beyond that my father was born there.)

[del-c.livejournal.com]

Law of supply and demand.

[loganberrybunny.livejournal.com]

(Just passing by on my Friendsfriends list and noticed your post. Hope you don't mind my butting in with a potential solution here.)

Do you mind a slow return journey? If not, the way around the problem is to go via Birmingham, as there are plenty of advance tickets for the Birmingham-London route even on a Sunday (and it's travelling on a Sunday that's causing your original problem).

For example:

Leicester to Birmingham New Street:
£5.00 Advance Single: dep 12:52, arr 14:06 (or 13:52/15:07)

Birmingham New Street to London Euston:
£7.00 Advance Single: dep 14:30, arr 15:59 (or 15:30/16:59)

With your £9 outward fare, that's a total of £21, plus anything you might have to spend to get home from Euston.

Edit: If you need to travel back later, I think the Leicester-Birmingham £5 tickets are available all day. There are also some £7 Birmingham-London tickets available in the late evening, from about 19:30. (In between they're £17.50)

[hawkida.livejournal.com]

I meant to reply to this ages ago and forgot - but this is what I'll be doing in the end so thanks for the advice.

[loganberrybunny.livejournal.com]

You're welcome; I hope it all works out.

[stevegreen.livejournal.com]

When I was heading down to Microcon earlier this year, I had the same problem. There were "cheap" seats still available for the outward half, but none for the return.

Knowing what a horrorshow Victoria is, I won't suggest you look at travelling by coach.

[ceemage.livejournal.com]

I suspect there won't be any cheaper advance tickets nearer the time - the really cheap tickets usually become available twelve weeks in advance and get snapped up fairly quickly.

The other alternative is to try to split the journey to make it cheaper. Due to the opacity of the ticketing system, it's possible that (say) four singles London - Luton, Luton - Leicester, Leicester - Luton, Luton - London may work out cheaper than a proper return. See http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/travel/cheap-train-tickets for more details.

[watervole.livejournal.com]

Have you checked coach fares? They're often cheaper.

[hawkida.livejournal.com]

Coaches are the only vehicles that make me travelsick and the fact that you can't open a window makes it worse, unfortunately.

[watervole.livejournal.com]

That can be a problem for me too.

[pwilkinson.livejournal.com]

"Why" is almost certainly connected to the fact that the return journey is timetabled to take over twice the time of the outward one. While there are no engineering works listed, there must be some reason for discouraging rail travel between Leicester and London on a Sunday. Such as minimising the number of drivers they need to make overtime payments to.