Great Western Coffee Shop

An interesting article from MoneySavingExpert.com suggesting that two flights plus all the connections is far cheaper than a single rail ticket from Sheffield to Shenfieldhttp://www.moneysavingexpert.com/deals/deals-hunter/2016/01/26/flew-home-via-berlin-cheaper-than-train/

Not only international flights. I am flying Easyjet from Bristol to Newcastle on Sunday evening and back on Friday lunchtime (hour in the air) for the princely sum of ^23 each way....as opposed to ^150 return and 6 hours each way on the train. Much as I like train travel, the money saved and time saved makes this a no brainer.
And next week flying Bristol to Dublin with Ryanair for ^9 each way giving me 14 hours in the Irish capital. Didn't even begin to look up the train and ferry equivalent !

Yes, getting decent long distance advance fares on Cross Country often seems to be far more difficult than it should be.  In fact, it's often cheaper to get advances via London on GWR/VTEC than on the direct XC route.  Unacceptable, as there is clearly demand for rail travel on that sort of route but the franchise isn't set up to be able to encourage it.  Perhaps, given the progressive franchises let recently to TPE and Northern, there is hope that the next XC franchise will specify a decent amount of capacity improvements.

Yup, XC just don't have the seats to sell thanks to the very shortsightedness of the SRA at the time deciding 4/5 carriage trains were the answer to the already overcrowded XC routes  ::)

I don't think the issue is 4/5 carriage trains but the frequency of trains.

Really don't see how you can increase the frequency on the Bristol Birmingham Derby Sheffield Leeds Newcastle line. It's half hourly as it is. A increase in carriage numbers would be welcome to ease the overcrowding but are there the trains and carriages available to XC ?

There should be a 15 service from Bristol-Cheltenham-Birmingham corridor once the four tracking of Filton has been done.

This would help a lot.

I appreciate that longer trains would help, but I have missed by minutes a few trains in the last week, and a 15 minute is better than 30 minutes or an hour.

Indeed. Getting any decent long-distance fares on CrossCountry is hard enough: their walk-up fares are prohibitive by walk-up standards, especially with the blanket 09.30 off-peak start.

In fact, I should expand that: getting any decent fares set by CrossCountry is pretty impossible. Charlbury-Birmingham via Worcester, for example, is ^40.50 SOR or ^39.90 SVR - a route where no-one would ever take an XC service yet is set by XC. (A Worcester split brings the price down to ^24 for an off-peak day return, and of course it's cheaper still with a Network or Cotswold Line card. There were previously a few Black Country destinations where fares were set by LM and therefore more reasonable, but XC have now nabbed most of those too.)


Arriva did, of course, trumpet the introduction of five HSTs from December 2008 to increase capacity.

They still have them on hire, but choose to only operate 3 diagrams on Mondays; 3 1/2 on Fridays and Sundays (one set has nothing before 1pm); and 2 on Tue-Thu and Sat. That's just 18 diagrams a week for a fleet of 5. Even GWR get more than that out of their famously unreliable 180 fleet.

I realise it might not always be fashionable to say so around here, but every time I travel by XC or ATW, I'm thankful that my local line is run by First.

I can only agree 100% with this and other similar comments on this thread.
I'm a very frequent traveller from stations in the Reading area to stations in the Leeds area.
If I do an open search you can spot any routes that take in XC (even for a small part) a mile off. There may be fewer changes but it takes just as long as GWR/VTEC and costs 50-100% more.

The 4/5 carriage trains are certainly not helping. I stood from Temple Meads to Birmingham last time I got the train to Blackpool, and it was off-peak.

I researched the same journey by air, via Dublin. It was far cheaper, but had a window of less than an hour to change planes. I checked times for all Ryanair's flights to see if it could have been the same aircraft - that happened to me in Spain, having come into Madrid from Valencia then run like crazy through two terminals - but it didn't look like it. Nice though Dublin is, I didn't want to risk an unscheduled stopover. Ryanair would certainly not have put me up at their expense.

This is the huge risk with the split flights method - the airline has no responsibility for you or the second flight, if the first one is delayed.  That ^7 saving could soon become expenditure on a last minute hotel and new flight home.

However, if the second flight is delayed/cancelled and you are stranded abroad and EU261 applies to your flight, the airline has a duty of care towards you (meals, accommodation, phone calls, etc)

I had researched that too. It seemed that even though both flights were Ryanair, I would not be covered as an independent traveller.

When I went EasyJet, LGW-Athens, and Ryanair Athens-Chania last year, my ^3 travel insurance did however cover a missed connection as long as the connection was within the airports minimum connection time (airport connection time was defined as scheduled arrival time to gate closure time advertised on my ticket).

Athens minimum connection time is 45 minutes, gates closed for my onward flight 30 mins before departure so I needed to arrive 1 hr 15 before the advertised departure to be covered. I risked 90 minutes from arrival to departure, but it was a success with the LGW-Athens flight arriving 30 early.


A quick glance its a lot cheaper to fly London-Alicante-Newquay than an off peak single for 27th April at an example.

London - Alicante 40 Euros
Alicante - Newquay 30 Euros
70 euros= ^53.33

Train Paddington - Newquay ^60, ^78.70 or ^134.50 dependent on time of day.

I don't count food etc as would eat food regardless of flights

Water and other soft drinks can be quite pricey at some airports, compared to the railway.  I've paid ^2.60 for a small bottle at Nice :o

Fortunately, most airports still have potable water taps in the terminal where bottles can be refilled (empty bottles of any size are permitted through security).  Obviously Stansted is the exception to this, where all the water fountains (except one, which is fairly hidden) were removed during the recent "improvements".

Just out of interest, how much would a coach journey cost? NatEx, Megabus etc

My example above, megabus London - Newquay I'm guessing a fiver.... I've paid ^5 each way for megabus Redruth to London in 2 weeks time, which goes via Newquay,

I would hope for a good long stopover in Alicante. I have dined and supped exceedingly well, in restaurants, cafes, and self-catering. The market is a joy to behold for anyone who ever watched Rick Stein cook up a fancy fish dish, and wondered; "Where on earth do I get that?"

I can find 5 pounds + 1 pound booking Sheffield to London then 6.10 London to Sheffield = 12.10

I quite fancy Alicante. Now have I an excuse to go to London with some spare days on the way home... Alicante to Newquay are twice weekly only, but London to Alicante Ryanair alone have three flights a day. I don't think the Mrs will appreciate me disappearing to London for several days and coming back with a Spanish tan.

How about a Spanish Fan, rich warwicker ? And I don't mean the folded paper thingy you wave about to keep cool....

.................has anyone managed to find a scenario where the railway is actually cheaper than all the other options?  :o

Advance Purchase Sheffield to London (few different routes, many tiers) then Oyster Single from whichever London Terminal you arrive at to Shenfield for ^8.20. Could be done for as little as ^24.70. With the bus the guy on MSE used at end of journey would bring the total to around ^29.

Megabus is still a cheaper option than ^24.70 for London to Sheffield.