Cambridge to Sutton (Surrey)

[tivoli]

Travelling from Cambridge to Sutton (Surrey) soon. Looking at the map; Cambridge to Kings Cross then St Pancras to Sutton seems to make sense, but journey planner wants to send me on underground to Victoria and on to Sutton from there. Won't be in any great hurry, is there any reason why my first instinct shouldn't work.

 

[yorkie]

No, providing the Thameslink section is not 'de-linked' when you travel! Without checking the RG, I can say with pretty much certainty that 'London' will be a mapped option - that will be all the maps from Cambridge to London plus all the maps from London to Sutton (Surrey).

 

[clagmonster]

The journey planners often do seem to send you on the Underground rather than Thameslink. If you are travelling on a weekend it is likely the Thameslink will be closed, if not by putting 'via Farringdon' into the journey planner, you will get results.

 

[mathmo]

That route should be fine although the Thameslink route is closed most nights and weekends. You can put via City Thameslink in the journey planner to force it to give you that route, though it allows far too much time for the short walk from King's Cross to St Pancras, and the National Rail site stupidly puts you on slow trains from Cambridge. If you're travelling on a weekday, get the xx15 or xx45 fast train from Cambridge, and then there are a good number of trains from St Pancras. If you get the xx45 from Cambridge then you should have loads of time for the xx48 from St Pancras (which is the quickest to Sutton). The trains from Victoria are faster (only 32 minutes or so) which is why the journey planner may put you on those trains as opposed to the slower trains from St Pancras.

 

[philjo]

I have found that the journey planners seem to allow 50 minutes for the walk from Kings Cross to the Thameslink platforms at St Pancras - which would take 5-10 minutes depending on which platform in Kings cross you are coming from. Often, the system then thinks you will arrive at St Pancras shortly after a train you want leaves, meaning a wait for the next one. In practice you will be on one about 30 minutes earlier.

To check that the Thameslink trains are running when you want to travel, try putting "via city thameslink" into your journey details.
you may want to run the times just from St Pancras to Sutton to get the timetable for that section of the journey.