Best train fares to liverpool
 

What is the least expensive way to get to liverpool and stratford upon avon for a cheap day return?
Of course not doing both places on the same day. What train and where would I but the tickets?
thanks,
MIke

A cheap day return to Stratford-upon-Avon by train will cost you £23. You can buy it a Paddington Station on your day of travel.

There is no cheap day return by train to Liverpool. A day return by coach (National Express) will cost you £20, but it takes 5 hours or more each way and there are no early morning departures. So unless you want a day in Liverpool that starts at 3 pm and ends at 11:30 pm, it is not much of an option.

ttt

Check out nationalrail.co.uk, thetrainline.com, and qjump.com (or qjump.co.uk - I can't remember). You can book in advance and pick up the tickets upon arrival in London.

Virgin.com is the place to go for train tickets to Liverpool. Click on trains and then value fares. You can collect tix from a machine or from a person at the station with a PIN.
You don't say where you are travelling from, but I presume it is London.
I am afraid that you are unlikely to be able to travel cheaply to Liverpool from London before 11am. And returning yuo might have restrictions. Do NOT just turn up at Euston and ask breezily for a return on the day. You will faint.
Why not spend an overnight or two in Liverpool? There is much to do and see.

There is supposed to be a solution to the "no cheap day" Liverpool problem.

If you play with the web sites, you should find that returns from London to Milton Keynes, and from Milton Keynes to Liverpool, do not have the restrictions that London-Liverpool trains do. And the trick is supposed to work if you use Northampton or Rugby instead of M Keynes.It is less likely to work on Virgin's own site than on the intermediary sites.

So you should be able to get an 8-ish train from Euston, get into Lpool around 11, see the stuff, have a pint in the Philharmonic, a decent Chinese and get a 7.30-ish back, getting in around 11pm.

And take pleasure in having outsmarted Branson.

Flanneruk,
Do you know hoe much a roundtrip ticket is?
thanks,
mike

Mike:

How long is a piece of string?

You need to go onto the web sites and play around. You can get an advance purchase ticket, heavily restricted, for 20 pounds or so on the Virgin site. This will almost certainly require an overnight stay in Liverpool. An unrestricted, second class ticket, letting you travel at peak times (which is what same-day return probably requires) is 163 pounds. No misprint. That really is 300 dollars.

And there are hundreds of fares in between. It's a simple matter of supply/demand and yield programmes.

Use the web sites to work out alternatives. You may find a way round the problem. But, if you're nervous of complicated tricks with multiple tickets, just stay overnight in Liverpool.

I checked raileurope and found $175 rt
(3 hrs 30 min).
Does anyone know another rail line or airline that would get us there cheaper?

Sorry.

There's no airline. Unless you're coming from Paris, Dublin or Amsterdam (all three of which do good prices on Easyjet/Ryanair), or a European charter destination. You CAN fly to Manchester and then train, but discount operators to Manchester are pretty scarce.

And there's only one direct train company from London (Virgin). You can try Silverlink to Birmingham, then Central from Bham to Lpool (or GNER to Leeds then FNW), but that slows the journey back to a point where a day return makes little sense.

I've offered one solution above. I doubt traineurope really covers the huge complexity of British fares, and you'd do better to try qjump, nationalrail or thetrainline. But the solution isn't to look for non-existent alternative suppliers: it's to play with lots of time alternatives on the websites, or to accept overnighting outside London.

It's a journey I have to do frequently: I've simply given up trying to do it in a day it by public transport and drive.

If donna b and mike b are related, I'd drive to Stratford, then drive to Lpool and drive back. Giving you the opportunity to seek the Cotswolds, Chester, Ironbridge, Oxford and all the other goodies.

yes we are related, good call!
We decided before we read your last response to rent a car.
Thanks,
Mike &Donnae B.