Doncaster to Any Belgian Station

[johnnychips]

Maybe this should be in the Fares thread, but here goes anyway.

I want to travel from Donny to Gent on Friday 15th Jan, returning Sunday 17th, leaving Donny after 1630. When I enter this on the Eurostar website, the latest train it gives is 1517. In the past it has offered the 1656 to connect into the 1934 E* from St P to London. So I thought that the 1934 might be full, but in fact I could book it from London.

Then I thought I could just book an advance from Donny to London. But then of course, if it is late there is no guarantee... Unless I vaguely remember you can buy a ticket to something like London CIV or something like it which would guarantee it so we would have to be accommodated if late, even if it's not an advance and I have to pay more.

Anybody any ideas?

Then there's the return. When I selected the 1517 out of interest to see how much the return was, it came up that there were no possible return Sunday trains from Belgium to Doncaster at any time due to engineering work, and it would have to be Monday. I assumed this would have to be in Belgium or France. However, when I tried to replan my route using Sheffield not Donny (didn't work as outward leg too early) it offered many options to Sheffield on the Sunday. So obviously the E* website engine can't think out of the box and offer another route to Donny.

I can see myself having to ring E* on Sunday but I would welcome any observations.

 

[Ianigsy]

Think this is the relevant part of the Eurostar site:

On the weekends of 16-17 and 30-31 January 2016, we’ll be running a revised timetable between the UK and Paris, Brussels, Lille and Calais.

This is while engineers replace the points in the Channel Tunnel, meaning we can only run trains through one of the two tunnels we normally use.

Tickets for most of the services running on 16 and 30 January and the last three trains from London on 17 and 31 January are now available. The remaining trains will be released on sale at a later date; we’ll announce this on eurostar.com and you’ll also find updates on our Twitter page.

Virgin East Coast seem to be operating normally- certainly plenty of Leeds trains calling at Doncaster on the Sunday.

 

[johnnychips]

Thanks Ian.

It just seemed strange I could not get back to Donny, but could to Sheffield. I suppose I'll have to ring them, because the first part of my query is still puzzling, then actually if the problem is in the tunnel, why you can get back to Sheffield but not Donny?