Folkestone to Gatwick

[Bazball]

Hi - question on behalf of a friend of mine. They are travelling from Folkestone to Gatwick Airport in a couple of weeks and looking for the cheapest return. They visited a ticket office and were quoted approx £120. I was surprised as this felt like a lot, but after some initial playing around with different options I didn't get it that much cheaper without having to use a lot of Advance tickets, which aren't ideal for their travel plans. Details:

Leaving Folkestone on a weekday at peak time (around 7.30am)
Returning from Gatwick on a weekday 7 days later (plane lands around 6pm - aware that off peak will kick not long after so they could wait for that)
They have a Network railcard
Assuming they have an Oyster card for London travel.

Cheers

 

[AlterEgo]

Don’t bother with ticket offices. Use the forum’s site to input the journey details and find appropriate splits which the ticket office can’t find for you.

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[Bazball]

Don’t bother with ticket offices. Use the forum’s site to input the journey details and find appropriate splits which the ticket office can’t find for you.

RailUK Tickets, powered by Trainsplit

TrainSplit is a free service that makes it easy to find the cheapest train tickets for your journey.

tickets.railforums.co.uk

Thank you. The routeing via Tonbridge is certainly a lot cheaper and doesn't have Advances on it. Downside is time but seems worth it for the significant savings. Cheers again

 

[Watershed]

Hi - question on behalf of a friend of mine. They are travelling from Folkestone to Gatwick Airport in a couple of weeks and looking for the cheapest return. They visited a ticket office and were quoted approx £120. I was surprised as this felt like a lot, but after some initial playing around with different options I didn't get it that much cheaper without having to use a lot of Advance tickets, which aren't ideal for their travel plans. Details:

Leaving Folkestone on a weekday at peak time (around 7.30am)
Returning from Gatwick on a weekday 7 days later (plane lands around 6pm - aware that off peak will kick not long after so they could wait for that)
They have a Network railcard
Assuming they have an Oyster card for London travel.

Cheers

Surely they would be prepared to use an Advance on the way out as they need to get to the airport for a specific time?

I appreciate it's not really feasible to rely on an Advance on the way back as they would be reliant on the vagaries of flight punctuality. But buying an Advance for the way out and a walk-up ticket for the way back could well work out cheapest.

Do they definitely want to travel via London or would they consider avoiding it by changing at Ashford/Tonbridge, and Redhill? This is much cheaper, and only slightly slower (~2h15m vs ~2h3m via St Pancras or London Bridge). Appreciate it does involve one or two extra changes though.

Avoiding London in both directions would result in the return trip costing just £48 with the Network Railcard, assuming they bought walk-up tickets - an Anytime Day Single on the way out, and a Railcard-discounted Off-Peak Day Single on the way back, noting neither this nor any of the other (through) fares for this journey have evening peak restrictions.

 

[Bazball]

Surely they would be prepared to use an Advance on the way out as they need to get to the airport for a specific time?

I appreciate it's not really feasible to rely on an Advance on the way back as they would be reliant on the vagaries of flight punctuality. But buying an Advance for the way out and a walk-up ticket for the way back could well work out cheapest.

Do they definitely want to travel via London or would they consider avoiding it by changing at Ashford/Tonbridge, and Redhill? This is much cheaper, and only slightly slower (~2h15m vs ~2h3m via St Pancras or London Bridge). Appreciate it does involve one or two extra changes though.

Avoiding London in both directions would result in the return trip costing just £48 with the Network Railcard, assuming they bought walk-up tickets - an Anytime Day Single on the way out, and a Railcard-discounted Off-Peak Day Single on the way back, noting neither this nor any of the other (through) fares for this journey have evening peak restrictions.

Good points, thank you very much. I guess for air travel it comes down to how much faff you want to go through whilst carrying luggage. I certainly would do the tonbridge/redhill route, but for many others I can see it not being attractive.