Booking advance London-Inverness

Hello all. I'm planning to travel London-Inverness (return) leaving late Aug, returning early Sept. I also want to get a bike reservation. As there's only one direct train a day I'm a bit paranoid about leaving it too late and missing out on a bike space. As far as I can see they aren't on sale yet.

Question is: When do they go on sale? NationalRail.co.uk seems to offer current month plus 2 more months. Currently (May) goes to the end of Jul, which would mean that August would open up at the start of Jun. But my outbound is in Aug and my return is in Sept, so I'm a bit confused about when I'll be able to book.

Any advice? Any sneaky things I can do to book earlier? Is NationalRail a good guide to this? I've emailed LNER to see what they say.

It may well be in sale already on the LNER website.

Sieni said:

As there's only one direct train a day

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There are 2 (including the Sleeper)

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Do LNER do return tickets anymore? And secondly, does the LNER website have an option to notify you when tickets are available?

gordonthemoron said:

Do LNER do return tickets anymore? And secondly, does the LNER website have an option to notify you when tickets are available?

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No, and yes.

Currently the LNER website is offering up to Tuesday 4th August.

From previously having booked this journey I would suggest keeping an eye on availability via the LNER site once a week until the availability has reached the week before you wish to travel and then a bit more frequently.

TrainTraveler said:

Currently the LNER website is offering up to Tuesday 4th August.

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The LNER app will sell a London to Inverness single as late as 27th August on the direct train (£76.50 standard class).

And the return ticket is available all through September already on the direct train - as long as you are not travelling at the weekend. Even for the weekends, the first two are already open to book.

IlkleyRunner said:

And the return ticket is available all through September already on the direct train - as long as you are not travelling at the weekend. Even for the weekends, the first two are already open to book.

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Looks like a couple of weeks more have been opened since I posted this morning (probably around 40 minutes after!).

Thanks everyone for your responses, and sorry for appearing to ignore you.

LNER got back to me

Thank you for contacting London North Eastern Railway.

In regards to your timetable enquiry, I can confirm that tickets dated 29/8 will go on sale the 11th June and tickets dated 6/9 will go on sale the 18th June at both at 10am. The reason these dates are a little bit later than usual is because any scheduled engineering works are still waiting to be finalised by Network Rail for these weekend dates.

An update. This is doing my head in.

I managed to get my outbound ticket but the return on 6th Sept is proving impossible. I kept my eye on the LNER website and tried every day. The return tickets appeared some days before 18 Jun, but every time I tried to buy they said that no bike spaces were available. OK, I thought, maybe the'll come available on the 18th. They didn't so I rang LNER and the guy said that bike spaces would be available this Monday (22) at 10am. Now I've got an email from them telling me that all the bike spaces have been booked for 6th Sept. I'm finding that hard to believe because I've been trying several times a day to buy this ticket and they have never been available. Someone must have got very lucky to sneak in and snaffle them from under my nose.

I think I'm going to have to abandon my hopes of getting my bike on the direct train on Sept 6th and maybe change at Edinburgh. I can see bike spaces on these services.

This is aside from the problems I've had buying tickets from Scotrail with bike reservations for onward travel beyond Inverness. I won't bore you with that but it has been very difficult.

I'm currently googling how much it will cost to get my bike shipped separately.