BritRail Pass vs. last minute ticket purchases for a family

Looking for this Wednesday-
London to Hereford £59 for the family on the direct 0952 train from Paddington
Hereford to Conwy £101.40;
Conwy to Penrith for Keswick £207.60 (with a bit of thought I could get that down a lot, it looks way higher than you need to pay even so close to travel);
Penrith to York £79.50. Likewise that feels high. That should come down with a bit more thought, to around £50.
York to London £123.60

Total £570 say $680.

So that is $300 to spread between the other 3 days.

That is debatable if you would do that.

Your choice.

Something to remember is that you don’t need to book trains in advance at all. Trains in this country never sell out so you can be totally flexible and just decide on the day what time you want to travel.

I think that the previous post addressed cost differences very well. Your post did cause me to wonder. You know your itinerary, and you have probably made hotel reservations. It is one thing to say you want to be flexible, but how flexible can you be realistically? Any major changes in your plans will require finding new lodging for a family of 4 during peak season.

My suggestion would be to do advance purchase on the major trips between cities when moving from one base to another and then do last minute ticket purchases when day trips are decided on.

Another thing to consider is the Family and Friends Railcard.
https://www.nationalrail.co.uk/tickets-railcards-offers/promotions/family-friends-railcard/

The Family & Friends railcard costs £30 and gives you 1/3rd of all rail fares for adults and 60% for children. So the figures Stuart gave in the first post would be greatly reduced for tickets bought at short notice or even more for any you can plan in advance. The only restriction is that you can't start a journey with the railcard before 9.30am on weekdays in London & the South East or for first class travel.

Thanks to everyone for their helpful responses!

isn31c-- I've been trying to do this, too- to add up individual tickets and see what possible totals would be. Thanks for chipping in your knowledge about which prices seem reasonable and which seem on the high-side for what I could get.

Helen-- Thank you for the encouragement!

Carol now retired-- Good point! We do have reservations, so we're locked in date-wise, but we don't want to feel pressured as to what time we'd leave one place for another. If we feel like we've done all we want to do, we don't want to have to hang around, and on the other hand, if we've found something really fun, we don't want to rush through it.

Johnew52-- Thanks for the additional information on the Family and Friends railcard. That's definitely worth looking into!

I did a quick and dirty exercise this morning, just looking at the through on the day fares.
What I meant by getting the fares down is that we have now have new ultra short notice advance fares bookable in some cases until 5 minutes before travel.
So Keswick to York I would look at short notice advance fares Penrith to Carlisle, Carlisle to Leeds or Newcastle, Newcastle or Leeds to York.
Sometimes Newcastle is the cheapest route, sometimes Leeds. With my railcard I can do West Cumbria to York via Newcastle for under £15 with a railcard, booking a few days ahead, and have.
Also rather than bus to Penrith and train Penrith to Carlisle you can bus Keswick to Carlisle direct for the same fare of £2 each. That 554 service is newly improved in frequency.
Conwy to Penrith if you book about 2 weeks ahead you can normally get that for about £20 to £25 each, as low as £15 each with a railcard, if you book it correctly.
Not withstanding that I am positive that the £200 short notice family fare Conwy to Penrith can be reduced on the day using the same basic tricks as Penrith to York-before any railcard reductions.
With a £30 family railcard that £200+ fare becomes £117.50 for instance.

Thanks, isn31c! That additional information is very helpful. Whenever I look at train travel, all the different moving parts can get a bit overwhelming, so thanks for breaking things down a bit more for me.

On a side note, traveling around by train is one of things my family is most looking forward to. When I asked my teenager what she wanted to do on our trip, she said, "Trains and castles." :)