Hello, experienced travelers! We are going to London in 2019 with a tour, but arriving in London a few days ahead. The tour does not provide a trip to Bath so we want to take a day trip from London and leave from Paddington Station. I've looked at some train fares and felt that $140 one way each person to Bath was very expensive. Any ideas? Are there other train lines where I should look?
Thanks,
Fran
There is only one fast rail line to Bath. You are correct that it leaves from Paddington. (You could go on the SLOW South West Trains line from Waterloo but very few people would do that!). Check out www.nationalrail.co.uk which will give you all the available fares for your dates of travel. The cheapest tickets are called 'advance' and are fixed in that you travel on a specific train. You then click through to purchase your ticket from the train operating company. Avoid the trainline site and other agents as they take a fee.
Wow I’m impressed that you’ve managed to find a ticket for $140 – that’s some fare.
Advance tickets from £15 (tickets on sale about 12 weeks before departure).
If you're looking at train fares on RailEurope.com, don't do that.
At trainline.com, which is known as a reputable agent for a number of European railway companies, I see advance-bought single tickets for USD 30 or less. Buy them a month or so before departure.
I wonder which company quoted the outrageous sum of USD 140.
I took that train with my daughter in 2016, and I recall walk-up return (round trip) tickets we 23 GBP each.
Afraid I have to correct the Scot from here in the States. There is more than one rail line to Bath Spa, you can get from Waterloo Station to Bath on South Western Railway. Yes it is slower. But you can get advance tix for as little as 19£ and return for as little as 12£, though that's only one specific train. And these advance tickets are indeed train specific. You say you want to go from Paddington. Is that becasue you are staying near there or because you have heard that's where the quicker train is from? We've taken this train, it twas a fine ride.
Trainline is often not the cheapest way to buy tickets as their booking fees are usually more expensive than booking through the train operator direct, which for London - Bath is GWR.com.
The best prices are booking 11 weeks before travel and travelling after 9.30am for the outward journey. Looking at a dummy booking for a month hence, a day return could be had for £38 pp. Booking on the day of travel or only a day or two in advance and travelling at peak hours will be expensive.
An Anytime Single would cost £98.40 which isn't that far off from the quoted figure … only you don't want to buy that one.
£59.50 would buy a super off-peak day return, valid after 10:10.
The cheapest Advance is £8.00 one way, but you would need to pounce on that as soon as it goes on sale, if it is available on the day you pick.
If you should decide that the slow train to Bath from Waterloo is your preference be sure to check a couple of weeks before travel to be sure that your train will run. South Western Trains are the next train company to go through what Anglia and Southern went through with trying to remove guards/conductors/train managers from the trains at the behest of central government.
What this means to the traveling public is frequent strikes and disruptions. Although this trip is not until next year, these disputes tend to be acrimonious and protracted so I wouldn't want to guess when (or if) it will be settled, one way or the other.
Thank you so much....all of you! Now I have some guidelines to go by. Yes, I thought $140 for one way was outrageous, so I'm happy to connect with the folks on this forum. I have a ways to go, but like to have everything in line as much as possible so that there are no surprises. For those of you who have traveled in Paris, are the underground trains in London as efficient as the Metro?
Fran
Yes, Fran, London Underground is wonderful. Will your tour provide you with an Oyster Card which is the pass for the Underground?
It's different from Paris in that you load a certain amount and use it until it's gone instead of being tied to a certain time frame like the Navigo Decouverte.
The Great Western Railway links London Paddington with Bath (Bath Spa). If you travel on a Saturday, you can find cheap fares each way for £15 booking directly online with GWR. I just tried it and found £15 fares each way on Saturday, Dec 1.
So whatever time of year is your trip, start looking at GWR's website 90 days in advance of the day you want to do the daytrip.
Fran, if this helps, I long found the British rail ticketing system to be baffling and beyond understanding. After hanging around on travel forums, light slowly began to dawn. What really helped was information provided by The Man in Seat 61 - here's his page about UK train travel: https://www.seat61.com/UK-train-travel.htm
I second the recommendation to use www.nationalrail.co.uk as your resource. It's not a reseller site like trainline.com. You can find your train journey and pricing on nationalrail.co.uk, and that site will then will send you directly to the specific train operator's site when you want to buy tickets. No reseller fees will be added on if you do it that way.
As has also been mentioned, "advance" tickets are generally the least expensive, but they are specifically for a certain timed train departure. If you miss that train you have lost the value of your ticket; you'll just have to buy another ticket if you want to take a later train.
And, IMO, you don't owe us any justification for wanting to visit Bath. Have fun!
I was going to say....interesting is in the eye of the beholder. I found Bath and Winchester interesting. Been too long since I’ve been to Salisbury to remember and have never been to Portsmouth. I have a hunch they’re all interesting places!
You might want to consider the Brit Rail Pass.
https://www.ricksteves.com/travel-tips/transportation/trains/britain-rail-passes
Not the 3-day contiguous pass, but rather the any-3-days-in-a-month (aka: Flexi-Pass).
If you are flying into Heathrow, you can use it to get into London (Paddington).
And back when you are finished with your vacation.
The 3rd day you would use for your day-trip to Bath.
If you have any seniors in your group, there is a very very nice discount.
My word. I'd never looked at the cost of the Britrail Pass but here's a comparison of Britrail vs Advanced purchase - just taken from the RS Eurail website, National Rail and Heathrow Express websites:
Britrail 3 day - $174 from Rick's website( so about 133£)
Heathrow Express - advanced fare (90 days out) 5.50£ to 12.10£, didn't see a return price for this one so just say it's 24.20£ return
London to Bath - as you can see from the above posts, prices vary but just picking a mid-range price from above of 25£ even with double that for a return with a 50£ charge you'd still be at least half of the cost of the Britrail Pass.
BTW, the prices on the RS Rail pass site are for walk up and purchase, not advanced purchase. You can often save a bunch of money if you plan well.
Pam, I agree. The BritRail pass isn't a sensible option for short rail trips or situations like the Heathrow Express where you can buy an advance fare ticket cheap. (And unlike regular train trips, the HEX advance tix are good for any departure on the named day so you aren't stressed and harried trying to catch the exact departure time on a ticket or lose everything you paid for it.)
Somewhere around here, awhile ago, I posted a long comment about my experience with the Britrail passes. They are by no means always a silly idea. The trick is to figure out how you're going to use the pass when you're on the ground in the UK, and whether the price of the pass is something you're comfortable with - knowing that of course you could slice and dice and find cheaper tickets. But also knowing that there is a flexibility built into the BritRail pass. That flexibility could end up being a net extra expense - or if your plans for a trip change at the last minute, a big net savings.
Honestly, I think a BritRail pass for just the HEX and a day trip to Bath, is darn near silly. Obviously, YMMV, and frankly there's no "right" or "wrong" here. It's how much a person is comfortable paying. I'd not be comfortable with the BR pass for that purpose.
Just to chime in about visiting Bath, my daughter and I spent a few days in England in August before heading to Belgium and then France. We took the train from London for a day trip and it was definitely worth the cost (which was not remotely close to $140 for round trip) and also the time. The Roman Baths are fascinating (even if one has been to Rome). And any fan of Jane Austen will love seeing the Pump Rooms and Royal Crescent, among other things.
However I will say that we'd seen enough after about 4 hours because it got VERY crowded in the afternoon (was a Saturday), plus it was unseasonably warm for England. (Although who are we to talk, since we're tourists and were part of those crowds.) Anyway we were really glad I'd purchased tickets that could be exchanged for a small sum to take an earlier train back to Paddington.
We had a similar experience in France when we took a day trip to a small town and it wasn't what we expected. On that occasion I had not purchased tickets that could be amended and so I had to basically buy new tickets so we could get back much sooner and make the most of the rest of the day in Paris. Lesson learned, always buy amendable tickets if possible. (Except in cases of traveling on the Eurostar, for example, when seats can apparently sell out in advance. And we loved the Eurostar -- it was our first time on it, going to Brussels via the Chunnel.)
And as far as the Tube v. the Metro in Paris, with the smartphone apps for each, they are both super easy to navigate. I much prefer the Oyster card though to Paris Metro tickets. Way easier to manage and you don't have the issue of tickets being demagnetized. That happened several times during a week in Paris.
(And just FWIW, on our previous trip to Europe a year earlier we took the train to Portsmouth for a day trip. Seeing the ships (especially the HMS Victory) made it totally worthwhile, and it's a cool little town.
