Our nephew, who is a football coach in Vancouver is visiting England next week. He will be going to Chelsea v Copenhagen on Wednesday 16.3, then travelling to Stoke City on 17.3 and staying with them until Saturday 19.3. The problem is that he says he will either be going to see Stoke on Saturday afternoon, or going to meet a freind at West Brom on Saturday afternoon, and see the game there, returning to London on Saturday evening after the whatever game he goes to.
There don't seem to be any cheap advance tickets from Stoke on Saturday evening anyway (even if he did stay to watch the game there) , so I was wondering whether to tell him that the best ticket to buy would be an off peak return to Stoke (which he could then buy from whatever will be his local station in London), but if he goes to West Brom, I'm not sure whether returning via Birmingham is a valid route, and if so, whether he can break his journey there. The Virgin website, on ticket validity says "Break of journey is generally permitted unless prohibited for the journey that you are making" which must rate as a contender for a prize for gobbledegook, and in the back of my mind I have a feeling that Virgin's rules re a break of journey are different to other TOCs.
If via Birmingham is not a valid route, I was going to tell him to break his return journey at Rugby and get a return from there to the Hawthorns so as to get to West Brom, but again, that would depend on whether a break is allowed.
The other thing I was going to mention was that he could save a fair amoubnt of cash by getting a "London Midlalnd only" ticket £22.50 as opposed to £57.70 - would this have the same validity as far as validity of route and break of journey are concerned? And lastly, when I looked up the travel options for London Midland only" ticket on the London Midland website, the last available train back to London from Stoke on 19.3 is shown as 16.54, whatever I do I can't get it to show the 18.33 which admittedly would involve a change and a wait fo nearly half an hour at Northampton. Could it be that this train won't be running for some reason?
Many thanks to anybody who can help.
There don't seem to be any cheap advance tickets from Stoke on Saturday evening anyway (even if he did stay to watch the game there) , so I was wondering whether to tell him that the best ticket to buy would be an off peak return to Stoke (which he could then buy from whatever will be his local station in London), but if he goes to West Brom, I'm not sure whether returning via Birmingham is a valid route, and if so, whether he can break his journey there. The Virgin website, on ticket validity says "Break of journey is generally permitted unless prohibited for the journey that you are making" which must rate as a contender for a prize for gobbledegook, and in the back of my mind I have a feeling that Virgin's rules re a break of journey are different to other TOCs.
If via Birmingham is not a valid route, I was going to tell him to break his return journey at Rugby and get a return from there to the Hawthorns so as to get to West Brom, but again, that would depend on whether a break is allowed.
The other thing I was going to mention was that he could save a fair amoubnt of cash by getting a "London Midlalnd only" ticket £22.50 as opposed to £57.70 - would this have the same validity as far as validity of route and break of journey are concerned? And lastly, when I looked up the travel options for London Midland only" ticket on the London Midland website, the last available train back to London from Stoke on 19.3 is shown as 16.54, whatever I do I can't get it to show the 18.33 which admittedly would involve a change and a wait fo nearly half an hour at Northampton. Could it be that this train won't be running for some reason?
Many thanks to anybody who can help.
