Hey everyone,
My wife and I will be travelling to Liverpool from Bath on May 3rd. Looking at trains, they are 170 GBP! I was wondering if there were any reliable buses that can make that trip? And if so, how I could go about booking the tickets, or planning my journey.
If anyone knows any other options that would be awesome.
Thanks for the help!
Another possibility is flying. Not sure if there are any carriers that fly from Bristol to Liverpool proper, but I think Rynair flies from Bristol, which is fairly close to Bath, to Chester which is fairly close to Liverpool. Will have to do some traveling to get to and from the airports buy you might want to check out the possibilities. .
£82.70 is the normal off peak single price.
If you have a little time to spare, if you travel via Hereford the price drops to £44.90 - a bit more than the advances mentioned above but not tied to any particular train. Takes about an hour longer. You would change at Newport and Chester and arrive at Liverpool Central, or possibly Newport and Crewe and arrive at Liverpool Lime Street.
Sorry, but that's why it is recommended that rail tickets are booked 12 weeks out when they first become available! Travelling just after a Bank Holiday will be more expensive, so it maybe cheaper if you delay travel by a day or two, if possible. Hiring a car will be cheaper than £170 in rail fares. The coach will take forever for this journey.
All of the train routes have you changing trains twice: Once in Bristol and once in Stafford. Often in cases like that you can get cheaper advance fares by splitting off one of the legs and booking in separately, and this is no exception: From Bath to Stafford, you can leave as late as 12:36 for GBP 26.80, and Stafford to Liverpool has departures throughout the day for GBP 4.00. (You don't save any extra money by splitting up Bath to Bristol and Bristol to Stafford.)
Another option would be to take the train partway and the coach (i.e., the bus) partway. For example, take the train from Bath to Birmingham, leaving at 13:00 or 14:00, for GBP 18.10, then take a coach from Birmingham to Liverpool (a direct route that takes about 2.5 hours) for around GBP 6. (The Birmingham coach station looks like it's about half a mile from the Birmingham New Street train station, so you'd want to leave yourself plenty of time to get from one to the other - even if you decide to spend some of the money you've saved on a cab).
All of these train schedules and fares I found at nationalrail.co.uk, and the coach fares at nationalexpress.com. You can try playing around with both those sites to see if you find anything that works even better.
Wow thanks for the great replies everyone! Great tips/advice all around.
OOOPS! Sorry for the misinformation about Ryan Air flying to Chester. Doing research on the internet isn't always infallible.
Hi
Right now there is a 34 GBP fare leaving Liverpool Lime Street at either 10:47 or 11:47...book it now! I would not recommend a bus from Liverpool to Bath or any long journey..slow and can be fairly miserable on a bank holiday or any time for that matter.
Linda
Cross country are particularly stingy with both the availability and pricing of their advances. Any trip involving a leg on them is advisable to be booked as soon as possible.
There are other things that can reduce your train cost - the Two Together card for example which gives two people travelling together about 1/3 off fares for a cost of £30.
