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Given it's possible to buy a first class 15-day Interrail valid in 30+ countries for £60 less than the 7-day standard class all-line, then I stand by my comment that the all line is exceptionally poor value.
On the one hand I agree it's poor value. On the other hand when you look at the price of anytime tickets for routes like glasgow or manchester to London it's hard to see how it could be much cheaper without cutting into buisiness travel revenue.
Interrail avoids this issue by serverly restricting use in the buyer's home country. Afaict foreign buiness visitors don't tend to use long distance rail services much, they are more likely to fly into a local airport.
Given it's possible to buy a first class 15-day Interrail valid in 30+ countries for £60 less than the 7-day standard class all-line, then I stand by my comment that the all line is exceptionally poor value. The whole experience is much more enjoyable around the rest of Europe, too.
Although it doesn't of course have any bearing on the cost of the train tickets itself, you could realistically see most of the country without staying in hotels with an all-line rover, especially if you live somewhere reasonably central in the UK (~between Cheltenham, London, Leeds and Manchester, I'd say), whilst with a few exceptions e.g. Hamburg or Schleswig-Holstein to Denmark, Bratislava to Austria the same can't really be said of Interrail passes.
Although it doesn't of course have any bearing on the cost of the train tickets itself, you could realistically see most of the country without staying in hotels with an all-line rover, especially if you live somewhere reasonably central in the UK (~between Cheltenham, London, Leeds and Manchester, I'd say), whilst with a few exceptions e.g. Hamburg or Schleswig-Holstein to Denmark, Bratislava to Austria the same can't really be said of Interrail passes.
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Alr,s are excellent value I have had one at least two a year since I was 15.
The restrictions are not really a problem most can be planned or the route changed to avoid.
I mostly travel outside school holidays to avoid the rush.
It is yes. It's just designed to make it a bit inconvenient to use as a substitute long distance season ticket (or for something like London-Manchester, just to use it as an Anytime Return) after Lord Adonis talking about it a bit too much led to people buying it for that purpose.
There was a time, prior to the restrictions being brought in, when I persuaded my employer I was doing so much travelling around the country that it would be cheaper to buy me an All Line Rover than pay for individual tickets.
As I worked from home on non-travel days, I then used the Rover to travel by train around the country on those days, seeing places I had never been to, legitimately continuing to work on those days, just from a train table rather than my dining table.
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Alr,s are excellent value I have had one at least two a year since I was 15.
The restrictions are not really a problem most can be planned or the route changed to avoid.
I mostly travel outside school holidays to avoid the rush.
If you're using a standard undiscounted seven day one for all valid days, you'd need to get £82 out of it each day. Of course, that's far from impossible – an anytime return from Newcastle to Manchester or from Paddington to Exeter (or even Waterloo to Exeter, for an anytime return) is above that amount – but that's still far from cheap.
It also means that it's rather limiting in its target market. If you want to explore a region closely, it would be cheaper to get a return ticket and a regional rover (e.g. for £571 you could get an 8 in 15 day Freedom of the South West – I know it's off-peak only – and an off-peak return from Dundee to Tiverton Parkway with £135 to spare). That effectively limits its practicality to domestic tourists who either want to visit different corners of the country on consecutive days or who want to visit a far-flung (for them) region for multiple days in a week without staying overnight. Of course, those making intensive or strange train journeys may find ALRs useful as well, but making up a smaller group.
I do agree that the restrictions are mostly fine though. Because of LNR, Lumo, Grand Central and Hull Trains it's still possible to get to Newcastle or York for eleven, Newcastle or Crewe for nine or Doncaster for ten. The only ones which seems odd to me are the restrictions for Birmingham – Leicester / Nottingham services and Bedford – Corby (presumably left over from when Bedford calls on Nottingham services were common, pre-Corby electrification), although if you're already spending tonnes on an all line rover I suppose a single from Tamworth or Nuneaton to Birmingham or Bedford to Kettering (for interchange for Leicester) isn't a massive hardship.
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