Oldfield Park to York

[WelshBluebird]

I'm planning on going to visit a friend in York at some point, so have just been wondering about how much it'll cost to get up there from Oldfield Park (or Bath Spa). Would be leaving on a Friday evening or Saturday morning and returning the Sunday evening or Monday daytime and I have a 16-25 railcard.

NRE gives a return of around £73, with advances only cutting that down to around £72. I have managed to get it to around £50 using a combination of a particular off peak return ticket to get to Birmingham and then advances from there to York and back.

I don't have an exact weekend planned yet so can't take exact advance fares as gospel, but it would be useful to get an idea of the cheaper ones available and other cheaper splits / tickets if any exist. I somehow doubt it, but you never know.

Cheers.

 

[Romilly]

If using just Advances, the cheapest option on the via-Birmingham route is likely to involve splitting at Cheltenham, Derby and Sheffield and, sometimes, Birmingham as well/instead of Derby. It may well be, though, that you would be best off starting with a £15.05 discounted offpeak return for Oldfield Park-Cheltenham, with Advances after that.

Splitting using just Offpeak returns and your railcard is going to produce a total in the range £61 to £71 depending on how much extra time you are prepared to spend travelling in order to save the finall £10. So around £50 is looking good, although at some times of the week & day separate Advances between Oldfield Park and London, and London and York, might start getting the total down towards £40.

 

[yorkie]

For travel via London, if you book when tickets first go on sale, it is cheaper to "split" in London. I'd allow at least 1 hour to get between London termini. EC tickets generally go on sale a few days or a week before FGW fares. This is cheaper than travelling on XC if you can pick less busy trains and book when fares first go on sale.

For travel on XC, you may need to "split" at Cheltenham, Birmingham, Derby, and Sheffield. This is because XC charge a huge premium on longer-distance passengers. You can avoid paying that premium by splitting. It may be cheaper to split at only one or two of those places; it depends on the quotas.