I will be in London for nine days and will need to ride the Tube on all nine days. I will travel to and from Heathrow and will take a day trip to Dover and Hampton Court. I am travelling alone.

From what I have read I need a travel card loaded onto an Oyster card. Is that available for 9 days or do I need to buy a 7 day card AND a 3 day card or just 2 one days cards?

When I am traveling from/to Heathrow into London, can I just pick up a ticket for zones 3-6 and use my Oyster for the 1-2?

Does this apply to Hampton Court as well?

Dover wil require a National Rail ticket.

Thanks for your advise.

You can only get travelcards for one, three or seven days. You can load all of these on to the same Oystercard, or you can on the same card mix travelcards and pay-as-you-go money for the other days, leaving it to the great computer in the sky to get you the best deal. You would in any case need to add a but it of PAYG cash for the add-on fares to and from Heathrow (which are much better value than any alternative).

There is an exhausting number of other threads about the merits of getting a paper travelcard from a National Rail station for 2for1 offers to various attractions, and possible alternative combinations of one-day paper cards and pay-as-you-go cash on Oyster. These I leave to the usual suspects....

Hampton Court is reached most quickly by National Rail and is outside the travelcard zones for that purpose. As Robespierre (I think) pointed out, you could do it by travelcard and add-on fares, going by tube to Richmond and a bus from there, but that would be a longer journey for not much saving, I suspect.

The main thing is, never pay cash fares for TfL (tube and bus) services.

Patrick has several errors in his reply...

There are no 1 or 3 day travelcards that are loaded onto oyster cards.

Either you load a 7 day travelcard or use PAYG....

Now there are a couple of simple alternatives neither of which will be really all that more or less expensive...

If for the most part you will be taking only 1 round trip a day on the tube, you might do well with PAYG on oyster all the way. As long as you start out each weekday after 0930, and stick to zones 1 & 2 where almost all the tourist attractions will be found, the most it will cost on any given day is £5.20...now if you're going to take 2 trips on the tube each day, you will best be done with a 7 day travelcard loaded onto oyster. Most likely you might so....

You will have to choose one 7 day period in which you will purchase a 7 day travelcard on oyster. Since you are travelling solo, the 2 for 1's are irrelevant so no need to go the paper route that some people recommend to get the 2 for 1's. You might wish upon arrival to buy a 7 day travelcard on oyster and then add £15 for PAYG and extensions. After the 7 day period ends (it does have to be consecutive days), the PAYG takes over for the remainder of the trip....plus covers the extension from Heathrow on day 1 and on the last day you will pay the oyster fare from zone 1 to zone 6 which I think is £3.80 peak (0630 to 0930 and 1600 to 1900 on weekdays) and £2.20 at other times.....also if you buy a 7 day oyster travelcard at the outset, they waive the £3 deposit.

The only tricky thing is the day you go to Hampton Court...Robespierre has pointed out you have 2 choices...Mainline Rail in which case your oyster card will be useless or you can go partially on the tube and then use a bus where you can use the oystercard whether it be PAYG or the 7 day zone 1 & 2 (I believe there are no zones for the buses, all are considered zone 1) or for that day, so you would want it to be in a period you'r eusing Oyster PAYG, you would buy the zone 1 to 6 paper travelcard and use it for all transportation that day.

So to sort of summarize, the key is how much you intend to use public transportation on one given 7 day period....if each of the 7 days you would reach the cap, 7 x £5.20 is£36.40 compared to the 7 day zone 1 & 2 travelcard at £25.80...also you can use the 7 day travelcard without worrying about peak period travelcards which are more expensive or would lead to a larger cap on weekdays if used before 0930...another ocnsideration on any given day if you only use buses, your cap on oyster PAYG would be £3.30.

Now that you see the alternatives, you have some decisions to make as to how much you're going to use public transportation each day.

The problem with Hampton Court by train is that the trains do not yet accept Oystercard

What you could do is on that day buy a one day paper travelcard at Waterloo for Zone 1-4 for £6.30 off peak or weekends and use that for the remainder of the day. As it's paper it's accepted on the trains

Do this on your first or last full day in London so as not to waste the other Travelcard. I'd also recommend doing that for your trip to Dover and leave the central part of your stay for Travelcard use.

So on arrival at LHR you buy a 7 day Zone 1-2 Travelcard which will come on an Oystercard. Have it start the 2nd full day of your holiday.

Then add some PAYG money to it to cover trips into & out of LHR, to/from the train station for Dover and to Waterloo for Hampton Court

Get out your Excel and do the following:

Load an Oyster card with £7.00 PAYG cash for the first day (6-Zone cap) and £3.80 for the return to the airport (£2.20 if during off-peak).

Add up all the Oyster Single Fares that you anticipate using for sightseeing within Zones 1-2. See http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tfl/tickets/fa...009/farefinder

If the sum exceeds £25.80, then load your Oyster Card with a 7-day Travelcard (effective the second day) in addition to the above.

If it's less than that, load an additional £30 and don't travel before 0930 weekdays - or use buses all over Greater London any time.

Whatever's left on your Oyster can be refunded when you leave town.

I have done my calculations and have decided that I need a Travelcard loaded onto an Oyster. I will buy a 7 day Zone 1-2 Travelcard loaded onto an Oyster to start on my second day. I'll load PAYG funds for the first and last day. Seems pretty easy once it's carefully explained. Thank you for the information, I appreciate it.