Oyster Card / Day Trips

You can buy an Oyster card at machines at tube stations. You can add payment at the aforementioned machines; you can also top up at small shops such as newsagents/convenience stores (there will be stickers in the windows advertising this).

Whether you can use the Oyster for day trips depends upon where your trip is.

We use the Oyster Card every trip (we take home almost-empty cards and stow them for the inevitable next trip) and top them up at the machine available in the stations. It is so convenient to have the Oyster Card and there is a "fare capping" feature which means you won't pay more than a certain amount per day even if you take many rides. The following is from this site.

Capping is a feature of pay as you go which allows you to make a
number of journeys in a single day but limits the amount you pay for
your travel. Each time you make a journey, you are charged a fare.
Once the total cost of all your fares reaches a certain amount you
won't have to pay for any more journeys for the rest of the day. This
is called a cap.

If you make a lot of rail journeys or a mixture of rail, bus and tram
journeys in one day within Zones 1-9, pay as you go with daily capping
is better value than buying a Day Travelcard. If you make a lot of bus
and tram journeys, pay as you go with daily capping is better value
than buying a One Day Bus & Tram Pass.

To benefit from capping, you must touch in and out on every journey
using the same Oyster card (touch in only on buses).

Day trips normally mean going away from London. Many people here take trips to Windsor Castle, Bath or the Cotswolds. These are all impossible to reach using an Oyster Card, which is basically only valid within the 6 main zones of London, plus a few nearby higher zones. You can use the Oyster Card to get you to the bus pickup for these trips, or to the train station for Windsor Castle.

Where did you have in mind?

Yes, you can get Oyster Cards from Tube stations, using a machine. That's the same place to top-up. There used to be a huge network of small shops selling Oyster cards and top-ups but the Mayor's office is cutting that number way down. Stick with a Tube station unless that is particularly inconvenient for you.

Day trips normally mean going away from London. Many people here take trips to Windsor Castle, Bath or the Cotswolds. These are all impossible to reach using an Oyster Card, which is basically only valid within the 6 main zones of London, plus a few nearby higher zones. You can use the Oyster Card to get you to the bus pickup for these trips, or to the train station for Windsor Castle.

Where did you have in mind?

Yes, you can get Oyster Cards from Tube stations, using a machine. That's the same place to top-up. There used to be a huge network of small shops selling Oyster cards and top-ups but the Mayor's office is cutting that number way down. Stick with a Tube station unless that is particularly inconvenient for you.

dianne, think of it this way: the Oyster Card is good for transport within London but not on the National Rail system. The tube is not part of the rail system.

A good basic introduction to transportation in London is the PDF from the official website. However, ignore the part about the Visitor Oyster Card - just get regular one on arrival. http://content.tfl.gov.uk/london-visitor-guide.pdf

As for day trips, the Oyster is only valid for the London area. So, it will work to Greenwich or Hampton Court Palace or even the Harry Potter Studios, but not to Oxford or Cambridge or Stonehenge.

Here's a list from the PDF I linked earlier of some daytrips that you can take using an Oyster:

Crystal Palace Park (Zone 3)
Hampton Court Palace (Zone 6)
Harry Potter Studios (Zone 9)
Kenwood House (Zone 3)
Kew Gardens (Zone 3)
Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park (Zone 3)
Richmond Park (Zone 4)
Wembley Stadium (Zone 4)
William Morris Gallery (Zone 3)
Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Museum and Wimbledon Stadium (Zone 3)

dianne, think of it this way: the Oyster Card is good for transport within London but not on the National Rail system. The tube is not part of the rail system.

Not quite so. The Oyster card is valid on all rail and buses in London, including the National Rail system. It is not valid on the National Rail system (or any other system) outside London.

Harold's list included some trips on the National Rail system for which the Oyster card is valid:
Hampton Court Palace (Waterloo to Hampton Court station, Zone 6)
Harry Potter Studios (Euston to Watford Junction station, Zone 9)

The main tube station for Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park (Stratford) and a few other tube stations in that area, mostly running north-south from there to the North Greenwich area, have been reclassified as Zone 2/3

Some info here:

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/transport/zone-2-boundary-shifted-in-east-london-to-make-commute-cheaper-for-thousands-a3148056.html