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High fare cost Nottingham to Liverpool

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helana77

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Hello,

I want to travel in July from Nottingham to Liverpool but it seems no matter what day I travel, whether it be next week or in 3 months, the return fare is fixed at £64. This seems crazy high? I remember a couple of years ago if booking at the right time you could get a return from Nottingham to Manchester for about £10, similarly booking at the right time I could get to Brighton for half the cost. Are the fares just fixed now no matter when you travel?

Thanks
 
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Merseysider

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Are you coming back the same day?

If so, you could get a Nottingham - Chester/Capenhurst day return for £24.30 (which requires you to travel via Stoke). The trip up to Liverpool thence is only a few quid.

Edit: there are Advance fares available. For example, £14.70 on the 11:47am next Wednesday.
 
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helana77

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I'm travelling Saturday and returning Sunday without fixed times, would like to arrive in Liverpool by around 2:30pm and leave Sunday after around 10am but flexible depending on costs. I also don't know if it's possible to get a group save. There will be 9 of us.
 

alistairlees

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Hello,

I want to travel in July to Liverpool from Nottingham but it seems no matter what day I travel, whether it be next week or in 3 months, the return fare is fixed at £64. This seems crazy high? I remember a couple of years ago if booking at the right time you could get a return from Nottingham to Manchester for about £10, similarly booking at the right time I could get to Brighton for half the cost. Are the fares just fixed now no matter when you travel?

Thanks
Advance fares (the cheap ones that restrict you to a particular itinerary) are not yet released on many routes, or very far ahead. I would expect there to be lots of Advance fares, and maybe even some promotional discounting, in July. Given the current situation, now is far too early to be looking for cheap fares. I would look back again in May.

Flexible tickets won't get any cheaper though (apart from the possibility of promotional discounting). So, if you want flexibility, you may need to do something like what Merseysider suggested.
 

Merseysider

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I suspect it will be quite some time before Advance fares for a weekend in July will be released. At the moment, one is lucky if they’re open a fortnight ahead - sit tight and check back in a couple of weeks as alistairlees says.
 

helana77

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OK, I was just concerned because I can't see any cheap advance fares for any weekend in April or May either. So I didn't know if they no longer exist and it's just these fixed £64 return fares that are the only possible option no matter when you travel.
 

Merseysider

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I wouldn’t worry at all. There are Advance fares for £14.70 on the first train over this Saturday and Sunday, with slightly differing fares throughout the day.
 

Master Cutler

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I catch the same Nottingham to Liverpool train but get on at Chesterfield and off at Manchester Piccadilly.
Booking a couple of days in advance the best one way price I get is £18 with my senior railcard, so currently your Liverpool return price looks about right.
There are often price variations depending on how far in advance you buy your ticket.
 

ainsworth74

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OK, I was just concerned because I can't see any cheap advance fares for any weekend in April or May either. So I didn't know if they no longer exist and it's just these fixed £64 return fares that are the only possible option no matter when you travel.

They do appear to be fairly limited on weekends but if you look at weekdays there's quite a few around. So I'd just check back regularly to see if they've gone on sale. In any event the advance purchase fares are still available!
 

Watershed

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If you are returning the next day, you will either have to get two singles or a period return. The cost of a single is, in most cases, about 10p less than a day return. Hence why this seems a lot more expensive compared to a day return journey.

The only way you are going to get it substantially below £42 per person (which is the GroupSave-discounted price of the Off-Peak Return) is to buy Advance tickets in one or both directions.
 

LNW-GW Joint

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If you split the tickets at Stoke and change at Crewe, you can get the off-peak fare down to £44.30 (20.80+23.50).
There may well be group-save discounts from that.
 

helana77

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Ooh that's good ideally would be happy with anything less than or around £40 with £20 seeming now like an unrealistic dream haha
 

LNW-GW Joint

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This is not applicable - East Midlands Railway (and Transpennine) do not offer Groupsave.
There are EMR Groupsave options in the BRFares listing. I don't understand the rules however.
Via Stoke, it's an EMR fare to Stoke and a WMR fare beyond.
 

T-Karmel

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Not sure how it works but it seems to be like Groupsave anyway

 

Haywain

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Not sure how it works but it seems to be like Groupsave anyway

There are no Groupsave fares between Nottingham and Liverpool. Group tickets area different thing that need to be booked through the TOC’s group travel office and apply to groups of 10 or more.
 

LowLevel

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It is East Midlands Railway (nee Trains) Groupsave. It is a technical difference rather than something obvious to the passenger. It is a priced ticket for 3, 4 or 5 persons on one ticket with a 1/3 discount, rather than the national GroupSave product which is a discount applied to a normal ticket.

Lucrative for EMR as they keep all of the revenue as a bespoke product (and they sell A LOT of them). They don't participate in the standard GroupSave scheme. This is confusing for staff and passengers alike.

It is only available on some flows so Nottingham to Chesterfield inclusive to Stockport and Manchester Stations on this route. Ticket codes GS3,4 or 5. You can sometimes take advantage of it with splits.
 
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yorkie

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Hello,

I want to travel in July from Nottingham to Liverpool but it seems no matter what day I travel, whether it be next week or in 3 months, the return fare is fixed at £64. This seems crazy high? I remember a couple of years ago if booking at the right time you could get a return from Nottingham to Manchester for about £10, similarly booking at the right time I could get to Brighton for half the cost. Are the fares just fixed now no matter when you travel?

Thanks
Train companies often set fares for longer distance journeys very high.

But shorter distance journeys can still be affordable.

Sites like Trainsplit, Raileurope etc figure this out for you. Trainsplit will do it for less than £44 on a direct train, taking this Saturday an example.
not-liv.jpg
 

Haywain

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It is East Midlands Railway (nee Trains) Groupsave. It is a technical difference rather than something obvious to the passenger. It is a priced ticket for 3, 4 or 5 persons on one ticket with a 1/3 discount, rather than the national GroupSave product which is a discount applied to a normal ticket.

Lucrative for EMR as they keep all of the revenue as a bespoke product (and they sell A LOT of them). They don't participate in the standard GroupSave scheme. This is confusing for staff and passengers alike.

It is only available on some flows so Nottingham to Chesterfield inclusive to Stockport and Manchester Stations on this route. Ticket codes GS3,4 or 5. You can sometimes take advantage of it with splits.
There isn’t a fare from Nottingham to Liverpool though, is there?
 

LowLevel

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There isn’t a fare from Nottingham to Liverpool though, is there?

No - but as I mentioned, the Nottingham to Manchester fare is sufficiently cheap that in some circumstances it can be useful in splits to Liverpool if there is no long distance advance availability (best coupled with a Manchester to Liverpool advance which are generally available same day for a few quid) - however it is probably not the best way to proceed in this case as there are going to be less fiddly ways of achieving the same thing, albeit probably travelling via Crewe rather than direct.

Weekends these trains tend to be very busy indeed and advance quotas get snapped up.
 

Haywain

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No - but as I mentioned, the Nottingham to Manchester fare is sufficiently cheap that in some circumstances it can be useful in splits to Liverpool if there is no long distance advance availability (best coupled with a Manchester to Liverpool advance which are generally available same day for a few quid) - however it is probably not the best way to proceed in this case as there are going to be less fiddly ways of achieving the same thing, albeit probably travelling via Crewe rather than direct.
It is worth adding that as well as needing to split to obtain the Groupsave tickets they are only available from staffed sales points.
 

Llandudno

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There are no Groupsave fares between Nottingham and Liverpool. Group tickets area different thing that need to be booked through the TOC’s group travel office and apply to groups of 10 or more.
It might be worth looking at a group ticket for 10 people even though there are only 9 of you?
 

alistairlees

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It is East Midlands Railway (nee Trains) Groupsave. It is a technical difference rather than something obvious to the passenger. It is a priced ticket for 3, 4 or 5 persons on one ticket with a 1/3 discount, rather than the national GroupSave product which is a discount applied to a normal ticket.

Lucrative for EMR as they keep all of the revenue as a bespoke product (and they sell A LOT of them). They don't participate in the standard GroupSave scheme. This is confusing for staff and passengers alike.

It is only available on some flows so Nottingham to Chesterfield inclusive to Stockport and Manchester Stations on this route. Ticket codes GS3,4 or 5. You can sometimes take advantage of it with splits.
They seem to have changed to GR3, GR4 and GR5 now. I only just noticed. There is also an accompanied kids for £1 (GSK) product. All the GR* products are Day Returns. The key difference is that three (or four or five) passengers will share the same ticket, rather than having a ticket each.
 

T-Karmel

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It might be worth looking at a group ticket for 10 people even though there are only 9 of you?
I suppose that could cause some issues if someone checking their tickets wants to count number of them travelling, as the discount offered to groups is usually signifact in comparison to Group up to 9 people. Also, it's even greater taking into account that Group up to 9 is not offered on given route (whilst groups 10+ are offered on any route).
 

323235

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I catch the same Nottingham to Liverpool train but get on at Chesterfield and off at Manchester Piccadilly.
Booking a couple of days in advance the best one way price I get is £18 with my senior railcard, so currently your Liverpool return price looks about right.
There are often price variations depending on how far in advance you buy your ticket.
That fare looks like an Anytime Single (bought in advance), as there are no Advance Singles with railcard as expensive as that on that flow. The closest undiscounted Advance Single is £17.40.
 

helana77

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I could potentially have up to 15 people travelling from Nottingham (depending on whether some people choose to travel form London or whether they come back to Nottingham the night before and then travel with the group from Nottingham). Does this make a difference?
 

T-Karmel

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I could potentially have up to 15 people travelling from Nottingham (depending on whether some people choose to travel form London or whether they come back to Nottingham the night before and then travel with the group from Nottingham). Does this make a difference?
I would say it does. You'd need to write to them for a price but as far as I know the discount for groups over 10 is really good.
 

Master29

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I suspect it will be quite some time before Advance fares for a weekend in July will be released. At the moment, one is lucky if they’re open a fortnight ahead - sit tight and check back in a couple of weeks as alistairlees says.
Some TOC's are and some aren't it seems at the moment. Avanti seem to be on the ball with advance tickets at the moment to around end of July but LNER are only around a month. EMR have been a bit hit and miss as the OP points out.
 
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