Cheap Train Tickets? Still possible the day before

Good afternoon from somewhere in the United Kingdom. Where, I’m not sure as I’m typing on move.

Well I know I left Birmingham on the way to London – that much I do I know. The rest is a blur. Much like my life is at the moment.

I’m on a train to London on what are pretty much last minute tickets. And as usual – between Birmingham and London, there’s a variety of options

• The “Express” service offered by Virgin Trains, which can price out up from £32.80 for Super Off Peak Ticket, right up to £50+ for an “Off Peak” ticket (and don’t get me started on the cost of Peak Tickets
• The “Slightly slower” Chiltern Railways service, which arrives and departs from different terminal in London and Birmingham. Normally my preferred method as it’s £29 or so return on a Super Off Peak, £49 off peak (and again something scandalous on peak)
• The “We have all the time in the world” option with London Midland who offer a £15 all day ticket – but it takes 2 hours 3o plus to get to London.
• And then there’s National Express Coaches. I’m going to have to suffer that “pain” next month, so one less opportunity to avoid that would be peachy.

So, lots of options. Not for Cheap Train Tickets normally.

Well- not that many this time. I – as usual – have some constraints to for-fill. Namely:

• The Chiltern Line suffered a major landslip, which has resulted in the line closed between Banbury and Leamington Spa till Easter
• I need to hang around London pretty late for once (meaning the last train home).

So, this cuts the Chiltern service out of the picture as well as London Midland (which last service goes around 9:30pm in the evening)

Rather than suffer the indignity of National Express coaches again, I checked Virgin Trains – to be honest, the supersaver fare was looking attractive at this point. However, I popped in my travel details in Virgin Trains booking engine, and found a £10 fare each way – or £20 return:

‘ll draw your attention to when this was booked – the 17th February for travel on the 18th.  Normally at these times you’re paying top-coin for the privilege.  However, Virgin Trains did have a load seats on the services I needed for £10 each way.

If I went for more popular services however, the numbers I suspect would had been very different (and my wallet shudders at the thought of the price of an advance ticket at peak time).

But with a little flexibility, it’s amazing what fares you can find – even one day before.

And as a point, whilst I paid £10 each way to travel on Virgin Trains, I could had paid £6 to London Midland for the slower train service.

I do recommend you look your journey up on the National Rail Enquiries site and check if your scheduled allows a bit rigidity to it (much like an airline).

If you can, there are good savings to be had.

And I worked out where I finished writing this: Rugby.

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