Comments on: 033 – Budget travel in Britain

By: Craig and Linda

Craig and Linda — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 06:22:45 +0000

Hi Helene,

Thanks for listening and those are some great tips. I have to agree that the UK system is convoluted…and don’t get me started about Clapham Junction!

I’ve alway used the Trainline to research routes and prices, then bought my ticket through a kiosk on the station. Do you know if there is any advantage to pre-booking?

The two ticket trick is familiar; sometimes we’ve even found it cheaper to buy a RETURN than a SINGLE! That’s madness. True madness.

Thanks for your great tips.

By: Helene

Helene — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 18:43:00 +0000

I’ve just subscribed and made my way through your podcasts. They’ve kept me entertained on many train trips round the UK. Thank you! One quick point, you mentioned about using http://www.thetrainline.com this website charges a booking fee for using credit cards and having the tickets posted too you. Not good for the budget concious.

Booking with UK train companies through their websites is a way of avoiding these fees. Tickets for any journey in the UK can be booked through any train company’s own website. My favourites are http://www.nationalexpresseastcoast.com and http://www.nationalexpresseastanglia.com Both avoid any extra fees. The latter is operated by trainline so the layout of tickets and prices is the same but it doesn’t include the fees. It does include insurance as a default so remember to deselect this!

On another point, the train ticketing system is so convoluted and complicated in the UK that it’s very often possible to book two single/return tickets by splitting up the journey eg if you’re going from London to Glasgow, booking separate tickets, one from London to Newcastle and one Newcastle to Glasgow. This can be cheaper even on walk up fares. I did just this at the weekend as I wanted to travel out of London at peak times and saved myself Ã‚Â£40.

Hope this helps, happy travelling!

By: Craig

Craig — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 07:40:08 +0000

Cheers for that Ryan. (I asked Ryan for some feedback on his post, Orlando Travel & Visitors Bureau Knows Podcasting?.)

By: Ryan Price

Ryan Price — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 16:27:33 +0000

Hi Craig. I’ve just listened to this one episode, but I can understand why someone would want a transcript for this podcast. You give some great tips and specific figures and URLs during your speaking that would translate well to text. you must not write a script if it takes some time to transcribe episodes.

Also, you guys have stepped up your show notes with some great branding. If someone does email the notes to a friend, the document is already portable and still carries links back to the originating site. If I ever do show notes, this is how it will be. Also, this document is serval kilobytes vs. several megabytes.

I’ll be sure and give your podcast as an example at PodCamp Orlando if I ever get that going.