I need to get from London to Manchester airport - does anyone have thoughts on the best way. I have looked at trains and they run often, but the cost ($200/one way) seems
seems extremely high?

Thanks for any suggestions!

Well train is likely your best option...when do you need to travel and where in London are you starting from? Central London?

Sophie - will you be flying into London? if so, which airport? have you looked at whether you can fly there?

or are you going to be staying in london and then needing to get to Manchester?

when are you planning to travel? - if you can book in advance you can get some substantial savings on the trains.

Alternatively, you could get the bus:

http://www.nationalexpress.com/where...r-airport.aspx

they run from other airports including the London ones, or central London and some places en route.

"When" seems to be the critical question. Booking for next week off peak I can buy a one-way ticket for 28.50 GBP. Booking for next month I can get it down to 20 GBP. Are you using nationalrail.co.uk? BTW, that's leaving from Euston.

Certainly go to http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/
Even if you are not booking very far ahead, you could get a much better price than the one you quote

When are you traveling? Makes a huge difference.

Plus what website are you using -- since you quote US$ might you be using some American site?

Can you spend $200 (£120) . . . sure, and more even. But you can also spend a tiny fraction of that.

So where are you getting your info??

Thanks so much - I find that I can now fly from Heathrow to Philadelphia the next day - I was going to Manchester because the flight from Heathrow was prohibitive from London, but by waiting one more day, I was able to get a reasonable flight - so no need to go to Manchester!

sophia - that's great.

when we were booking our trip to Sri Lanka last year, we discovered that by delaying our departure a day, we could save £300 each. our extra night cost about 25% of that.