We’ll be going to England in September and need your advice. We are taking our phones but will rely on WiFi. Our itinerary is in the southeast, Salisbury, Brighton, Rye, and Canterbury with side trips. The Britrail London Plus pass seems ideal. 8 days in a month for $238. We are flying into Heathrow and out of Gatwick. My main concern is with the m-ticket will we be able to access it when needed having no phone line? We are not very tech savvy and decided the two together pass would be a lot more trouble having to book all our legs.
Also can we get to Salisbury from Heathrow without having to go into London? Your expertise is greatly appreciated. We are staying 18 days and plan to stay about 3-4 days in each town.
Posted by
Lake District, England
7317 posts
Re- Heathrow to Salisbury- not via London.
Yes there are two ways to do that- the rail/air coach to Woking, then train to Salisbury. That will cost £9.50 each.
Or the Flightline #730/731 to Basingstoke Station (quite a lot closer to Salisbury) for £4 each. The bus changes number from 730 to 731 at Frimley but you stay on it. That service only runs from Terminal 5 at Heathrow.
Posted by
Lake District, England
7317 posts
Bumping up- for thoughts on using the pass without data.
Posted by
Lake District, England
7317 posts
as no one has answered the 'bump up' I've just looked this one up as well.
From the website-
Once the pass is downloaded, you can use it ‘as is’.
Most stations have ticket barriers with code readers – open the pass on your device and hold the code over the reader. It should scan it and the barrier will open.
So in other words you download it (when you are on data or wi fi, most major UK stations have free wifi, as do most main line trains, then use the QR code on the readers on the gates, kind of as you would a PDF. So you don't need to have data or a wifi connection. That is how I read it.
Posted by
5 posts
You mentioned being "not very tech savvy" -- me too. (Younger people, stop reading.) You can load transit passes (and all sorts of other stuff) in Google Wallet [that's the Android version; Apple has its version of this app, too] and access them anytime (i.e., offline = no wifi or data connection). One cool feature of this is that you can add your credit card to your "Wallet" and set it so it will pay at transit terminals (e.g. Tube entry and exit points) without needing to "open" your Wallet with your PIN, but the credit card remains "locked" in the Wallet for other uses. I'm totally old school, and always get physical tickets when possible, but some of these new-fangled contraptions are useful at times. I used this in London last week and it worked like a charm.
BTW, if you haven't been to England recently, contactless credit cards seem to be the default payment method. We've been here ten days (mostly in London) and didn't bother to get any local currency. We had dinner with locals tonight, and they confirmed our impression that cash is (almost) obsolete here; some places don't want it. (Whether this is the case everywhere in G.B., I don't know.) That was the case in Vienna as well. Make sure your cards are "contactless" (indicated by four curved lines; not just the chip), and even then U.S. cards seem to be a bit hit or miss for some reason. Ours worked everywhere, but at times the vendor had to read the chip, and they were used to U.S. cards being cranky that way.