The little known London train hack that lets you travel 30 miles away for just £5

Lengthy gone are the times of getting to plan journeys months upfront with a purpose to get the most cost effective tickets. As prepare operators are determined to get bums on seats on their companies out and in of the capital after an 80 per cent drop in passenger numbers on the top of the coronavirus pandemic, they’re experimenting with new affords to draw passengers again onto the railway.

One instance of that is altering the principles on advance tickets. These tickets, which normally should be bought on-line a minimum of 24 hours earlier than departure, assist you to journey on a selected prepare for a reduction value. They’re normally bought as single fares however sometimes seem as returns. The federal government-owned rail operator LNER, which runs trains between King’s Cross to the North and Scotland, has now made their cheap advance tickets accessible to buy proper as much as 5 minutes previous to departure.

Though these tickets supply the perfect reductions on occasional one off-cross nation journeys, they’re additionally accessible to buy between King’s Cross and Stevenage, a Hertfordshire commuter city 30 miles north of the capital quickly remodeling right into a property hotspot.

READ MORE: The little known £22.50 train ticket that lets you visit Windsor, Henley and 30 miles of beautiful places along the River Thames

Stevenage can also be a handy location to start out a visit exploring the Dwelling Counties countryside, with Knebworth Park and Fairlands Valley close by. Tickets begin at simply £5 single, or £3.30 with a railcard, which means it may usually now be cheaper to journey all the way in which to Stevenage than to locations nearer to the capital.

With these advance tickets, you’re nonetheless restricted to a selected prepare, which means that for flexibility, a typical ticket of round £10 single might nonetheless work higher for you, particularly if you wish to use the extra frequent Thameslink trains, which additionally run from London Bridge, Blackfriars, Farringdon and Finsbury Park. For those who miss your prepare with this sort of ticket, you must purchase a brand new one.

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The journey to Stevenage takes simply 24 minutes on LNER’s 125mph Hitachi-built Azuma trains, that are primarily based on Japanese world-record-holding bullet trains. The trains have refreshments accessible to buy aboard, WiFi and charging amenities for digital gadgets which means the fast journey is well one of the most comfortable commutes or brief days out journeys you may get to/from London.

LNER additionally affords advance tickets accessible to buy on the day of journey to locations together with Peterborough, Leeds, York, Durham, Newcastle and Edinburgh.

Competitors on the route has heated up since new ‚open entry‘ (100% non-public) operator Lumo started running a low-cost rival service between King’s Cross, Stevenage, Newcastle and Edinburgh, with each one among their trains bought out from its launch in October till the tip of the yr final yr.

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