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A long-winded post for a (hopefully) simple answer

Posted by (east coast, United States) on

Next month, dh and I will return to London for 9 ½ days. Aside from a few last-minute minor reservations, etc., we are ready to go, so of course I can’t stop thinking about our trip. (Why is the last month before leaving always so hard to get through?) While it’s not earth-shattering or anything, though, I do have a question (well, two really) that I’ve been pondering for a while. Inquiring minds, and all that.

Of course, my question deals with one of the more often discussed subjects on the forum - mass transit. But I haven’t found an exact answer in other posts. So let me lay it out for you and hopefully someone can give me an answer - so I can lay this one to rest and go back to dreaming of knights, castles and scones with clotted cream.

Background: we are arriving on a Tuesday morning, into Heathrow. We both have Oyster cards from prior visits, each with approx. £30 each left on them, I think (we can check balances at the airport.) Our plan was to load them both with 7-day zone 1 and 2 travelcards for the first part of our trip.

However, during the first seven days, we will have two “outlier” trips - outside of zones 1 and 2 – one from Heathrow into London and then a trip to Warner Bros./Harry Potter. So, my questions: will these two outlier trips count toward the cap on our 7-day travelcards? If yes, then how much extra will we need to pay (out of our £30 Oyster balances) for these two trips, since they are outside of zones 1/2? I want to make sure we will have enough, but would be ok adding a few additional pounds on if need be.

(Bonus question: we will also be going to Hampton Court Palace and Windsor Castle, but I think I remember seeing that we can’t use our Oyster cards to get there, correct?)

Any help in answering these questions is welcome and appreciated!

Posted by
9259 posts

Heathrow to Central London on the tube is £5.90. But if you go to the Zone 2 boundary it is £3.60 (then go out through the gates and back in on your travelcard).
On the Elizabeth Line it is £12.80 then swap to your travelcard for the rest of the way.

Watford Junction you can use Oyster to- but is in it's own unique zone W- from Euston it is £11.10 each way peak, £7.20 off peak but from Zone 2 boundary it is only £5/£2.30 respectively.

Hampton Court- you can use your Oyster but it is £5.20 off peak or £8.50 peak each way but from Zone 2 boundary it is £5.50/£3.90 peak/off peak.

Posted by
261 posts

isn31c - thanks for the quick (and detailed) reply! We are lodging at the Locke at Broken Wharf, so we'll start on the Picadilly line from the airport. No need for the Elizabeth line, as much as I'd like to try it once.

We'll probably have a lot of free time heading into London the first day, so getting off then back on again at zone 2 is fine if we decide to do that. What would be considered the zone 2 boundary station? Originally, from the airport in, we were planning on getting off at Barons Court, then taking the district line to Blackfriars and walking from there.

And would we do the same get off/get back on for the Euston to Watford Junction trip to make sure part of the journey is attributed to the travelcard (although I think we'd have to do that anyway, going from Tube to train in Euston)?

So then for both of those trips do I figure the extra costs on the Oyster by subtracting the zone 2 from the total? So, for the airport ride it would cost an extra £2.30 (£5.90-3.60) and for Watford Junction (from Euston) would be an extra £6.10 or £4.90 (£11.10-5 peak and £7.20-2.30/off peak) each way, once out of zone 2?

And will the total costs for both trips still count toward our daily travelcard cap or just the part of the trips that go to the zone 2 border? I know it's a bit more to figure out now, but once I can wrap my head around how much extra we will need for these extended trips using Oyster cards, it'll be hard to beat the "free money" still left on ours!

Also, I just now remembered why I wasn't so concerned with Hampton Court earlier (and probably forgot that Oyster was valid on that route now.) We are using the 241 deals, so will need to buy actual train tickets to present once at the Palace. But I appreciate the info!

Thanks again!

Posted by
9259 posts

The effective Zone 2 boundary on the Tube is Hammersmith (it is actually Turnham Green, but that would mean changing from the Pic to the District cross platform at Acton Town, then going in and out at Turnham Green, back onto a District line train), and to Watford Junction the boundary is Harlesden.

So coming from central London take the Bakerloo line to Harlesden, go out of the barriers, back in again and take a Euston to Watford Junction London Overground all stations train.

To Hampton Court the effective Zone 2 boundary is Clapham Junction.

One of the things to investigate is that your caps are calculated daily and weekly. So the big question to investigate is whether to allow the system to use the Zones 1 to 6 cap on the Heathrow and Hampton Court days, the Zones 1 and 2 cap on the other days, and you do the manual split on the Watford Junction day as there is no daily cap to Zone W. Rather than have a travelcard and to be what is called excessing on the out of town days.

The computer does all of that for you. That way (except for Watford Junction) you aren't leaping on and off trains at the boundary stations. There is a lot of maths to do here. Boundary fares used to be used all the time, but not very often now.
Rather than using a station name it is actually possible to buy tickets to and from mythical stations called Boundary Zone x (where x can be anywhere between 1 and 9. Not something I've done in eons but the fares still exist.

Posted by
261 posts

isn31c,

We did debate whether to get a 7-day travelcard or not, and decided to do so because:

  1. We are arriving on a Tuesday. We plan on using mass transit quite a lot, and if we used contactless, we would lose a possible "free" day (Tue-Sun.) once the cap was met. With the travelcard, we would get the full seven days usage (Tues-Monday) and probably two "free" days with the card.
  2. We would really like to use up what money we have on our Oyster cards. It's not enough to subsidize the entire "week" of travel cap, but it seems it could cover the excess on any out-of-zone-1/2 we might do. We might even have enough to cover a few tube/bus rides during our last 2 1/2 days (Tues - Thursday morning), as I don't think that would give us enough time to make the cap again. When the Oyster money is used up, we could then switch to contactless for whatever rides we still need.
  3. We don't have to spend an extra £7 purchase the Oyster cards, as we already have them in hand.

After reading your reply, I think we'll just use our leftover Oyster money to travel the whole way from the airport in, as it's not that much of a cost. Then, we'll use the travelcards to take the tube (probably from Bank) to Euston (zone 1); and using what excess we have on the Oyster cards, take the train to Watford Junction from there.

For Hampton Court Palace, as mentioned before, we will buy actual train tickets on cc, to use for the 241 offer.

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