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Best ticket(s) for triangle, Southampton-Brighton-London

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AndyLandy

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Hi,

A friend of mine needs to make a triangular journey next week, travelling on Monday from Southampton (or ideally from St Deny's, but SOU will do) to Brighton, then on Saturday from Brighton to London and finally on Sunday from London back to Southampton (or SDN). He holds a valid Y-P railcard.

The best I could come up with is an Offpeak return SOU-BTN and an Offpeak return BTN-VIC, totalling somewhere in the £35 region with Y-P discount, although it would involve travelling from London to Soton via Brighton on the way back.

So, I was wondering if any of the lovely fares experts on here can think of a better way of making this journey?

Many thanks in advance.

:smile:
 
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AndyLandy

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Oh, I see where you're coming from now. Sorry.

I didn't see the "Saturday" note.

Sorry, I guess my post wasn't tremendously clear.

We did originally look at SOU-CLJ and CLJ-BTN fares, but that was about £10 more and would require some Oyster-based tomfoolery to get into London proper.
 

Ivo

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Try a SOU-BTN SVR routed NOT LONDON. This is valid as far as Clapham Junction, where BoJ would come in to play. You would need to find a means to get from CLJ to wherever your friend is going, using "Oyster-based tomfoolery" or similar, but it'll still save a fair few pounds. This ticket costs <£17.

(Post moved from above to make it clearer to the OP.)
 

Slough

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Southern day save or all network downlander works out at £12 a day .
 

AndyLandy

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Try a SOU-BTN SVR routed NOT LONDON. This is valid as far as Clapham Junction, where BoJ would come in to play. You would need to find a means to get from CLJ to wherever your friend is going, using "Oyster-based tomfoolery" or similar, but it'll still save a fair few pounds. This ticket costs <£17.

(Post moved from above to make it clearer to the OP.)

I wondered about that, but is it within the terms of the ticket to break a journey overnight? He'd be taking the BTN-CLJ section on the Saturday, breaking for London and returning to CLJ the following day to get back to SOU.
 

Ivo

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I wondered about that, but is it within the terms of the ticket to break a journey overnight? He'd be taking the BTN-CLJ section on the Saturday, breaking for London and returning to CLJ the following day to get back to SOU.

It's an SVR. Unless explicitly noted in the ticket's specific restrictions, this is always permitted (well, it's that simple on the return leg anyway).

In this case, the restriction code is 4B, which mentions nothing of the sort.

On one day last year I was just three minutes from having to break overnight on an SVR return leg twice.
 

AndyLandy

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It's an SVR. Unless explicitly noted in the ticket's specific restrictions, this is always permitted (well, it's that simple on the return leg anyway).

In this case, the restriction code is 4B, which mentions nothing of the sort.

On one day last year I was just three minutes from having to break overnight on an SVR return leg twice.

In which case, this looks like it's ideal! Many thanks for your input, it's been really helpful. :)
 

Ivo

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Not a problem.

I believe all services from Brighton from Victoria, apart from a few Gatwick Express services on weekdays, stop at CLJ, so you won't need to worry about ensuring your train stops there. I'm not sure if all services from Waterloo to Southampton stop there, but certainly at least some do.

EDIT: XX05 and XX39 from WAT (XX12 and XX46 from CLJ). The XX35 departures from WAT do not.
 

AndyLandy

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It also looks like the XX:20 off Waterloo calls at CLJ. (Change at Basingstoke for an XC service back to Southampton)
 

Mutant Lemming

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The Southern site has an £8.55 off peak day single Southampton-Brighton for the Monday (web only fare) and a fluctuating £2.65 to £5.30 webfare Brighton-London on the Saturday (both with railcards) - sometimes you see the £2.65 and sometimes it seems to hide. On the Monday Megatrain have three Waterloo-Southampton services at £6. Even the cheapest option of those would only be 50p less than the £17 fare above and would restrict you to particular trains..
 

AndyLandy

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Just to add a spanner in the works, what's the best way to do:

BTN-CLJ on Saturday
CLJ-SOU on Sunday
SOU-BTN a few days later?

It's essentially the inverse of the route above, but more tricky since you can't do a longer-than-a-day BoJ on the outbound portion. Is there a clever answer to this? It would need to be using the same Saturday and Sunday trains as the first query.
 

bb21

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For your sirst scenario, largely as Ivo suggested above.

She should purchase a Southampton Central - Brighton Route Via Barnham Off-Peak Return for £15.65 and in addition a change of route excess in the return portion to Route Not London (for 55p). This is valid via Clapham Junction as Ivo mentioned above. She therefore breaks her return journey overnight at Clapham Junction.

The excess can be purchased at the same time as the original return ticket. It can also be bought onboard the Brighton - Clapham Junction service without penalty (ie. with full Y-P discount).

Travel within London would be cheapest using an Oyster card loaded with her Y-P Railcard.

For your second scenario, overnight break of journey is permitted on the outward portion of an Off-Peak Return if the journey cannot reasonably be completed on the first day, however "cannot be reasonably completed" is not defined. You would buy the ticket via the cheaper route and obtain an excess for the outbound journey.
 

AndyLandy

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For your second scenario, overnight break of journey is permitted on the outward portion of an Off-Peak Return if the journey cannot reasonably be completed on the first day, however "cannot be reasonably completed" is not defined. You would buy the ticket via the cheaper route and obtain an excess for the outbound journey.

I believe they're intending to travel on the Sunday afternoon, so even without a strict definition of "reasonably completed", we'd still have the issue of completing before 1200 the following day.

I'm happy to accept the answer "You'll just have to do it with two fares then", but I just thought I'd ask in case anyone had any cunning ideas.
 

bb21

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I believe they're intending to travel on the Sunday afternoon, so even without a strict definition of "reasonably completed", we'd still have the issue of completing before 1200 the following day.

I'm happy to accept the answer "You'll just have to do it with two fares then", but I just thought I'd ask in case anyone had any cunning ideas.

There is no requirement for the outward journey to have completed by 1200 on the day following the date printed on the ticket.

The previous version of the terms required travel to have resumed by 1200 the day after, with no further break of journey permitted after 1200. This was removed after the revision in October 2011. Under the existing terms, all travel must have completed by 0430 on the third day, with the date printed on the ticket counting as Day 1.
 
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