London transportation question
 

Struggling a bit with transporation in London even after searching and reading various threads and am sure someone here can advise how best to handle. DH and DS are heading to London next week, arriving Wed morning at Heathrow and staying in the Earls Court area. There are several locations in the days out guide 2-4-1 deals that they will utilize so we understand the need to purchase 7 day travel cards at a National Rail station and they have passport size photos to take for that.

While most of what they will see and do is within zones 1-2, obviously Heathrow is not. They also plan to visit the Royal Airforce Museum in zone 4 and staying the night before a flight out in Hounslow near Heathrow, also zone 4. There might be one other venture outside zones 1-2.

My question is, how to handle the transportation that is outside zones 1-2. It looks like they would need Oyster cards with money loaded to them and use for pay-as-you go? How does that work with the 7 day paper travel card? In other words, when they get on the Underground at say West Brompton or Earls Court heading to a destination that lies outside zones 1-2, do they use the travel card or the Oyster? All the journeys we know outside Central London involve at least one change to another line - do they use the travel card up to the point of the change and then the Oyster when they change to a different line that will take them out of those zones? I'm sure I'm over-complicating it....TIA

Just quick . . . they can get oysters loaded with some Pay-As-You-Go ££ at Heathrow. That will cover the outside zones 1-2 trips including in from the airport. Then when they are IN London go to a train station and buy the 7-day zone 1&2 paper travelcards for travel around the center and the 2for1's.. They may have to re-load some more ££ on the oyster sometime during the week but easy enough to do in any tube station.

Thanks Janis. I was thinking it would be something like that but wasn't completely sure. And since I won't be there...trying to figure it out ahead of time so they will know what to do.

Now if someone could answer the question about how to use the Pay-as-you-go Oyster and 7 day zone 1-2 paper travelcard when going from say West Brompton in zone 2 to Colindale in zone 4 or Maze Hill or Blackheath in Zone 3.

The easiest is for them to use the paper travelcards for any trips entirely in zones 1 and 2. For trips that will go beyond zones 1-2, they'd use (just) the PAYG Oyster for the whole trip.

They could do the travel in zones 1-2 then exit and re-enter and use the Oyster for the rest of the journey, but that is fiddly and won't save then much money at all since the amount spent per day is capped.

So just make it easy on them: If they are traveling around in zones 1-2 - Paper travelcard; if traveling to/from outer zones - PAYG

Perfect! Thanks so much for the prompt informative answer!