Is it unwise to take a train from Edinburgh to London to take advantage of round-trip plane tickets?

if everything goes perfectly like a Swiss watch you should be ok.

It is however exceedingly courageous.

You just need one minor issue, any of the 6 of you with an issue, or the train having any issue, or weather or the London end having any issue for the plan to become very stressful and perhaps expensive.

All depends on your risk taking comfort level

I would head back to London the day before your flight. You could stay at Heathrow and do a trip to Windsor or into London very easily, or just arrive later and spend most of the last day in Edinburgh. This will eliminate a lot of stress from your plan.

@Helen, thank for your idea of going back to London on the day before. I didn't consider that because I wanted to minimize the number of moves. But if we do that, do you know if it would be better to stay at Heathrow (presumably at airport hotels) or at, say, Windsor? We will be relying mostly on public transit because we don't generally all fit in one Uber or taxi.

I certainly wouldn't want to do this on the morning of, too much risk- even the 0625 train.

And with your party size I don't think the Caledonian Sleeper night train from Edinburgh makes financial sense.

You could continue to Windsor the previous day from Edinburgh. And if the trains from London to Windsor were having problems there is also the good and fast bus from central London- very modern double deckers until as late as 11.30pm.

A nicer place to overnight than an airport hotel.

There is a combined frequency of 4 buses an hour from Windsor to Heathrow T5, then if the flight is from another terminal the usual inter terminal buses and trains. So Windsor works for me.

I see that the number of nights in each place are not yet set.

It will be a busy summer and with a group as large as yours getting hotels at a reasonable price, or getting them at all this late is going to be getting pretty tight.

You might want to try to nail it down soon...

I would go back to London the day before my return flight, not the morning of, unless your appetite for risk is much greater than mine.

It depends how affected you would be by having to buy six new one-way tickets from London back to the US if you had train problems the day of your flight.

Sure, a direct flight is always easier. But in your case, getting to that direct flight means you have to leave your vacation a day early and train back across the country and change hotels again - with six of you. I would gladly take a connecting flight over all that rigamarole.

Not to mention that Heathrow is infinitely huger and more difficult to get to and get around than Edinburgh airport is.

Given that your flight back isn't until 16.15 you could just get a late train down from Edinburgh, thereby spending most of the day there. Then stay close to King's Cross and you would have a morning in London to do something before setting off fro Heathrow at c12pm. Going to Windsor means changing train stations in London and you would therefore probably want to leave Edinburgh much earlier.

Perhaps your plans to stay in York before reaching Edinburgh are set, but what if you flipped that? If you initially headed directly from London to Edinburgh, then stayed in York on your way back from Edinburgh, you’d be 2 hours closer to Heathrow that last day. Maybe that would give you workable time to make your flight home from Heathrow.

As someone who flies in and out of London a lot because it is dramatically cheaper, I strongly agree with the other suggestions that you need to get close to the airport the day before not that morning. Especially with six people if you missed your flight home, the airline would be well within its rights to tell you that you are buying you a whole new plane ticket and you don’t wanna know what that’s going to cost.

I generally just stay in London, but Windsor probably would also be a good option

I would definitely come back the day before and stay at either an airport hotel or Windsor. I just did a dummy booking for 3 adults and 3 kids for June 25 at the Holiday Inn Express (both the one at Heathrow and the one in Windsor) and they have rooms for around £140 per night with 2 double beds in each.

Obviously, your mileage may vary, but I have stayed at the Holiday Inn Express near Glasgow Airport and found it to be very nice. Clean, comfortable, very good breakfast, and very courteous and helpful service.

well, I would do the open jaw into London and out of Edinburgh.

Once you've added the train fare and the price of accommodation at Heathrow the costs will narrow. You avoid a 5-hour train to London and then travelling across to Heathrow with all your luggage.

If you fly from Edinburgh you get extra hours in Scotland, you check in your luggage and all you do at LHR is go to your gate. It's the airline's responsibility to get you to SFO even if there are delays. All the train company has to do is get you to Kings Cross - after that, you're on your own.

Definitely go down the day before.

Since you will arrive at Kings Cross, you could spend the night near there, have the following morning to do some "last bit of London" and then take the Piccadilly line direct to Heathrow. It will take about an hour.

Between strikes, mishaps, technical issues, weather, etc., I would not suggest staying too far outside London on the day of your flight home.

Have you checked to see if there is a direct or cheaper flight from Glasgow? If there is it would be easier and less time to get to Glasgow from Edinburgh the same day than going back to London.

I would do what Cyn suggested. Go immediately to Edinburgh upon arrival, then York and then end in London.

I would opt for the night before suggestion from Helen. And I am fairly accepting of risk, but why stress out—particularly with kids in tow? There are the added benefits of a cool train ride between the two cities (I love trains and have taken this one) and visiting Windsor—which is also lovely.

Nick, for context, many of us do not insure our trips as travel insurance may not want to pay your claim. I'm glad your insurance is more trustworthy-maybe it's not a US company and the EU regulates the industry more strictly? We now plan to arrive a day early in a destination if we are taking a tour. You also may not realize that airlines are also changing the actual day of the flights-In spring 2023, two couples we know, one in England and one in Italy, had flights cancelled and couldn't get another flight until the next day.

The other context, regarding insurance, to me is what happens if the airline advances the time of the flight by even just one hour (let alone more)?. Not an unusual occurrence currently. Then you are truly up against it.

Neither the insurer, the airline or the train company is then responsible for your 400 mile journey to make the connection.

If say you booked that train ticket now, pulling the timings really tight then a week or a day beforehand some incident caused a line closure or even just slow running, making the connection impossible.
Then an insurer could reasonably argue their liability as you knew before stepping on to the train that day that the connection was a lost cause.

We have at least two emergency line closures in force in the UK now. It happens.

I think that is a fools game, to rely on the goodwill of insurers, who will use any excuse they can to wriggle out of paying.

Thanks everyone for your comments and suggestions! I agree that taking a train on the last day is not a good idea.

An alternative is to change plans such that upon landing in London, we immediately take a train to York because it's a relatively shorter ride, then we go to Edinburgh, then we train back to London for the last week of the trip. I had planned to do London first and travel north because I am guessing that the weather will be nicer that way (i.e., London might get hot or have a heat wave later in June vs. early in June, whereas Edinburgh will be cooler later in June).

The open jaw flight is still on the table. The cost saving is a bonus, but not decisive in the decision making. There are no direct flights from Glasgow to San Francisco either.