Bizzarre way to get cheaper tickets on the Stansted Express.

[whole diary]

[XPT]

I sometimes fly with Ryanair from Stansted.   The majority of these flights depart early in the morning around 6am/7am ish.   As I live in Bristol though it is simply not possible to depart very late at night/early in the morning to get to Stansted Airport in time for those flights. 

So I can either get an evening train from Bristol, in time to connect with the last Stansted Express service from London Liverpool Street at 2325, which gets to Stansted at 0013.  Which means hanging about the airport all night.  Which is far from comfortable, and is absolutely exhausting.  Tried that a few times before.  Never again!

Or get a train from Bristol in the evening.  Stay in a cheap hostel for the night.  And then get either the coach or train to Stansted Airport about 4am.   The first Stansted Express service is 0410.

Which leads me onto the fares.  The cheapest available single fare from Liverpool Street on the Stansted Express is ^19.80. Which isn't exactly very attractive.    Even if you book in advance, you can't get any cheaper than that. Why are there not cheap advance tickets available from Liverpool Street??  I much prefer to get the train than a coach.  But the train fare isn't very cheap, so I often get the coach from Liverpool Street instead.

But I have found a bizzarre way to get a decent priced single fare on the Stansted Express from Liverpool Street on the 0410 service.   Book several weeks in advance a single ticket from Birmingham New Street to Stansted Airport.  Departing Birmingham late in the evening, and this is what you get.   


23:10 Birmingham New Street 01:13 London Euston Train  VIRGIN TRAINS  02h 03 
01:13 London Euston 04:10 London Liverpool Street Transfer 
04:10London Liverpool Street 05:00Stansted Airport Train  NATIONAL EXPRESS EAST ANGLIA  00h 50 

And guess how much that fare is?    A very attractive price of just ^9.50!!!

So that's what I'm going to do the next time I want to get an early flight from Stansted.   Travel from Bristol-London around 7pm-ish.  Stay in a cheap hostel for the night and get a good night's sleep.    But buy that ^9.50 advance single ticket from Birmingham, so that I can get the 0410 train to Stansted for a decent price!

[inspector_blakey]

Just so you're aware, assuming that's an advance ticket you're talking about, what you suggest is not technically legitimate as you're joining short, so there's a chance you could end up getting stung for a higher fare.

Just so you're aware though, you are allowed to set out late in the day using a flexible ticket (off-peak or super off-peak, assuming they're valid by the trains you want to catch), stay overnight in London and then complete the journey to Stansted the next morning, even though the ticket is dated for the previous day. The wording is something along the lines of "where it is not reasonably practicable for the passenger to complete their journey" so you may have to set out quite late. That way you could book through from BRI^» (Bristol Temple Meads - next trains) to SSD which may well work out cheaper. I've never tried it but it may even be possible to persuade a journey planner to issue an advance ticket for that approach, seeing as the overnight stop in this instance is not considered a break of journey as you can't reasonably complete your journey before the close of service.

[XPT]

Yes I know you're joining short.  But everyone gets chucked out of Liverpool Street station at 1am as it closes for the night until about 4am for the first train of the morning.  So when you give in your tickets in the morning, the gate staff/train conductor is hardly going to know really that you didn't in fact get the train from Birmingham.

You can get good value fares from Bristol-Stansted for just ^13 single. Which is great value.  Which includes travel on the 2235 service from Bristol T Meads, and the 0410 Stansted Express from Liverpool Street.  But the only nuisance thing is you arrive into Paddington at 0034, and the 1am-4am lockout at Liverpool Street.   So you have to hang about outside the station on the street or in the 24 hour McDonalds for about three hours, which isn't very fun.  It would be good if they had a night time lounge exclusively available for passengers travelling on those early Stansted Express services.

[Brucey]

Just so you're aware, assuming that's an advance ticket you're talking about, what you suggest is not technically legitimate as you're joining short, so there's a chance you could end up getting stung for a higher fare.

However (not encouraging anyone to break the rules) as the journey booked involves a cross-London transfer, the chances of being caught are probably almost nil as you could have easily made the transfer on foot.

Perhaps you could look at advance tickets from Bristol direct to Stansted airport.  These start at ^13.00 and go up to ^27.00.  Not only would you be sticking to the ticket's conditions, but you could also be saving even more money.  The FGW^▸ (First Great Western) website actually quotes for this journey, even when the journey continues into the next day:
22:35 Bristol Temple Meads 00:33 London Paddington Train FIRST GREAT WESTERN 01h 58
00:33 London Paddington 04:10 London Liverpool Street Transfer n/a 03h 37
04:10 London Liverpool Street 05:00 Stansted Airport Train NATIONAL EXPRESS EAST ANGLIA 00h 50
I tried for 22nd July and it came up at ^13.00

Edit: I've just noticed you've posted about this fare whilst I was typing this reply 

[Brucey]

I've just been on the National Rail Enquiries website and I've found something.  Choose a train around 17:00 from Bristol, then set an interchange time of 2 hours on the Advanced Search.  It suggests this at ^23.50:

[XPT]

Thanks Brucey, I didn't know it was possible to do that.   That is good to know. I've never used the National Rail website when booking tickets, I usually use the FGW^▸ (First Great Western) website.  I've just had an experiment and setting the interchange time to 90 minutes, it is possible to get a ^13 advance single ticket which includes travel on the 1830 service from Bristol, and the 0410 from Liverpool Street.   Which is great value, and cheaper than the "cheat" method I mentioned in my opening post. And is totally legitimate.  So I will do that the next time I need to get an early flight from Stansted.  Cheers.

[thetrout]

Grrr... I so wish i'd seen this post prior to me travelling to Stansted now...!

I could have booked ADV from WSB^» (Westbury - next trains) and just got a Single from Southampton (Where I was working on the day of my flight) - Westbury...!

Instead I bought a Southern Ticket to London Victoria. Then foolishly, I paid the walkup First Anytime Period Return to Stansted Airport at ^30.35 with DSB Railcard.

(and also had an arguement with the rather unpleasent chap at the desk who tried to say the railcard wasn't mine, I defused the situation with the line "Are you going to sell me the ticket? because if not i'll go to the TVM^▸ (Ticket Vending Machine) and do it? Ticket appeared rather quickly at this point!)

I didn't even get my free paper and was set back a further ^1.80 for a luke warm cup of tea...

It really hasn't been my month!

* Edit to correct incorrect fare - shown in Bold! *