Ticket advice - travelling in London

[Chapeltom]

Hello all.

I'm going down to London on Sat 9th April or Sat 16th April depending on finances.. (advance tkts not available yet) from my home station of Chapel en le Frith. 1) When will tickets for these dates become available?

The second point is, my primary reason for going to the capital is to watch football, bit of a ground-hopper and want to see Church Road, home of Hayes & Yeading (nearest stn Hayes & Harlington) before it gets demolished. I've been down to London before but with my college last March and didn't see a great deal, so I'm wanting a few hours in London to look round and take photos and see stuff basically, getting there as early as I can really!

So my 2nd question is - I confess to being completely lacking in knowledge of London transport. Am I best getting a travelcard or Oyster? I'll be primarily wanting to go round Zone 1 before wanting to travel over to Hayes around 2 ish and get straight home after 1730. Whats the best combination of tickets to get?

Then lastly, would getting from HAY to London Euston be possible within an hour? Be leaving Hayes at 1700. Reason I ask, I can get the 1800 or 1900 trains home and don't want a long wait in Euston unless I have to.

Thanks

Tom

 

[cuccir]

In response to your final question - the ground is a 20 minute walk from the station (according to this fairly reliable site). So I don't think you'd be able to plan on taking any train out of Hayes before 17:15, and that's with a timely finish and fairly quick walk. I'd bank on the match finishing at 16:55, and give myself 20 minutes to walk to the station. It's a 20 minute train journey to Paddington from Hayes. You've then got the tube - in normal circumstances you might make it, but there may well be tube closures - I know the lines between Paddington and Euston have been shut for a while at weekends due to engineering works, but I don't know when that finishes. So I wouldn't expect to be able to get the 18:00.

Given that, why not book your return leg as an advance from Hayes to Chapel? That way you avoid any issues about missing connections, as long as you get your booked train out of Hayes. It only costs around a pound more and would give you piece of mind. As an example for Saturday 12th March, you could be on the 17:33 from Hayes to Paddington, giving you plenty of time to make that 19:00. If you don't fancy hanging around Euston, you could easily walk between Paddington and Euston in an hour, or get some food etc.

--

Indeed, you can't reserve tickets onto trains between Paddington and Hayes and Harlington. So (though you might technically be breaking the ticket T&Cs here) your cheapest bet might be to get advance singles between C-e-l-F and H&H, and then a zones 1-2 off-peak day travelcard. Use the travelcard to get round central London, and then head off to Hayes whenever from Paddington.

 

[island]

To answer your very first question, advances for the 9th of April should go on sale this Friday and for the 16th, the following Friday. Note the "should" bit

Oyster would be better than a Z1-2 ODT assuming you already have an Oyster card, in case you end up making only a few journeys. If you don't already have an Oyster card, then you'll get hit for the £5 deposit (which you can get back, but it's a bit of a pain).

As cuccir suggests, it's possibly breaking the ticket rules to break a journey for that long on an Advance ticket, although if your journey to H&H is not by Heathrow Connect I would say you're unlikely to encounter a guard, and even if you do encounter a guard there's every chance they won't pick it up. Not that I would encourage breaking the ticket rules, especially for a £2.70 fare.

 

[Crossover]

On your first question, advance tickets are usually released for sale 12 weeks ahead of time, so I would anticipate possibly released next week/week after for your 2 possible travel weekends respectively

EDIT: Island got there before me!

 

[OwlMan]

I would get a super off peak Day travelcard (£34.60) from Stockport. This ticket is quota controlled, and the outward service needs to be booked, however the return is valid by any train. This ticket includes a day travelcard so there are no further costs for London travel

Peter

 

[moonrakerz]

To answer your very first question, advances for the 9th of April should go on sale this Friday and for the 16th, the following Friday. Note the "should" bit

On your first question, advance tickets are usually released for sale 12 weeks ahead of time

Note the use of "should" and "usually" !

I have noticed that SWT (don't know about others - FGW do seem to) don't always release their Advance tickets at, or around 12 wks. It is sometimes as close as 6 weeks before the cheapest tickets appear for sale.
Start looking at the 12 wk mark and check every few days - start worrying around 5 wks if they haven't appeared - you've either missed them or they aren't going to appear at all !