No Really.
Apparently, my one natural born talent is the ability to find cheap tickets - here I share my gift with you. Although, it's all pretty obvious, it's more some of yous are a bit dim. This mainly covers the all-important London-Notts route.
- First off, it helps to be flexible if you want to penny pinch; obviously try to stay clear of peak times: Fridays/Mondays, before 9am (why would you want to anyway?) after 4/5pm. In terms of days if possible for weekends away and such try Thursday - Sun/Tuesday. Although saying this it is still possible to get cheap tickets for these, they just usually go alot quicker.
- The time of day is usually most important. For that all-important route - Nottingham/London on East Midlands, between 11-13.00 is always a good bet, also if given a choice make sure its the fast 1hr45 train that doesn't stop at every station. In the evening the 21.45 train is often the cheapest. Means getting back a bit later, but can be half the price of the ones in the afternoon/evening and creates a good excuse to the pub it!
- ALWAYS use the train providers website or
national rail, which directs you to other websites to pay anyway, but can sometimes be easier to navigate - when its not fucked, which admittedly is fairly often. Most important point being never use third party websites, trainline.com etc. just no. they add extra fees - credit card charges/postage etc. which you dont get with the provider.
- East Midlands Trains has a great new
fare finder option, that finds the cheapest ticket around a few days (which slightly renders this blog useless but nm) and using that website for advances also gives you a £1 off the Nat Rail quoted price. It's also worth signing up to the mailing list for new offers and competitions.
- On the nat rail website, make sure you always search by 'cheapest' rather than 'fastest' - actually took me a while to notice that.
- Railcard - you really should have one. Thanks to NatWest I have saved a lotta money, well a 1/3 to be precise, well and also the £26 each year. I very much plan to buy one, when my free one sadly runs out next year : ( if you take even just a few trains a year, it's worth it - probably. Incidentally, owning one also gets you
a few other exciting discounts including 25% off at Bella until the 25th of Oct, ooh-er. Although don't bother showing it at Waterstones, that offer finished TWO YEARS AGO you freak, so say the cheery Waterstones staff.
- Other general tips: on long journeys, separate tickets can often be a lot cheaper i.e. instead, for example, of a return from London to Edinburgh, a single from London - York, York - Edinburgh, may work out cheaper. This is also true of slower routes and going via less busy stations. Pretty arduous, but could be worth checking out for the really expensive tickets.
- Obvious tip - make sure you search for generic place names, rather than the stations, e.g. LONDON rather than London Kings Cross. This is especially important for coaches, where the funfares are pretty specific to the main stations, so a coach from NOTTINGHAM to LONDON (Broadmarsh to Victoria) may cost £5, a ticket on exactly the same place from Nottingham University to London Golders Green, may cost £30. You can always get off a stop early anyway!
- Prices for a single for between London & Nott should cost £5-8 (good) or £15-20+ (bad!). If there are definitely no cheap train advances below £15 then just go for coach, the most exp is usually around £12. Always just compare both train and coach prices, the nat express system is pretty easy to navigate anyway. You should never expect to pay more much more than £20 for a return, but that's if you book it late.
- Obviously, the further in advance you book the cheaper the fare, however, the advance fares only actually show up something like a 2 months beforehand - funfares show up a bit quicker than the trains, so book coach if you really want to book it early, if not just wait a bit.
- Coach funfares obviously go alot quicker, having a lot fewer seats and all. Also, buying tickets for two people can sometimes bump up the fare, so watch out for that.
- Although generally it's best to buy advance singles, open returns are often more convenient and sometimes cheaper or at least the same price and are the same price when bought at the station. Unless you're travelling before 9am (crazy) ask for a cheap day return or cheap open return.
- If you're looking for a cheap holiday, it's all about
this page. There's more but I can't be bothered.
Sorry, if I bored you, hopefully it helps someone, probably not.
