Triangular journey London-Birmingham-Manchester-London

[JoeM1V]

I need to travel from London to Birmingham, then 1 week later, from Birmingham to Manchester followed (on the same day) by Manchester to London. All journeys will be at a weekend, and I'd prefer flexible tickets.

So far the best I can find is an Off-Peak Return (route: Any Permitted) from London to Manchester (£94.50), which is valid via Birmingham, plus an Off-Peak Single from Birmingham to Manchester (£40.60), for a total of £135.10.

A cheaper option would be Off Peak Returns London-Birmingham and Birmingham-Manchester for a total of £101.60 but this involves returning via Birmingham which adds at least another hour to the journey. There might be savings to be had with Super Off Peak fares or Chiltern/LNR this way though.

Is it possible to do any better than this, ideally without having to return via Birmingham?

 

[Watershed]

I need to travel from London to Birmingham, then 1 week later, from Birmingham to Manchester followed (on the same day) by Manchester to London. All journeys will be at a weekend, and I'd prefer flexible tickets.

So far the best I can find is an Off-Peak Return (route: Any Permitted) from London to Manchester (£94.50), which is valid via Birmingham, plus an Off-Peak Single from Birmingham to Manchester (£40.60), for a total of £135.10.

A cheaper option would be Off Peak Returns London-Birmingham and Birmingham-Manchester for a total of £101.60 but this involves returning via Birmingham which adds at least another hour to the journey. There might be savings to be had with Super Off Peak fares or Chiltern/LNR this way though.

Is it possible to do any better than this, ideally without having to return via Birmingham?

It would be a lot cheaper if you went to Manchester first, and then to Birmingham on your return journey - as you could then use just the one Off-Peak Return. But otherwise it's unlikely there is any combination of flexible tickets that would be cheaper, unless they added restrictions such as LNR only, as you say.

As Advance tickets are priced on a single leg basis, these could also be quite a bit cheaper than any of the options you have identified. Though of course with the downside that you are tied to one specific train and that there is no guarantee of a good price.

 

[plugwash]

There is a super-offpeak single route any-permitted from London to Birmingham for £26.60, add that to an off-peak single add that to the off peak single from Birmingham to Manchester at £40.60 and Manchester to London at £66.10 and you end up with £133.3, cheaper than your proposal but only barely and it leaves you with peak restrictions on the London to Birmingham leg even at weekends.

There are various operator-restricted fares for "regional" operators, but I suspect they will cost you as much time as returning via Birmingham would.

There are few opportunities for splitting Manchester to London journeys without losing time, because the trains don't stop much, and different trains have different stops, so splitting comes at a big cost in flexibility. You could maybe save a little by splitting at Crewe, but you would be restricing both your Birmingham to Manchester and Manchester to London trains to routes that run via Crewe.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 22 Feb 2022 ==

Another idea, If you can live with the time restrictions on the London to Birmingham super offpeak single how about £26.60 (London to Birmingham super off-peak single) + £94.50 (London to Manchester off peak return) = £121.10

 

[kieron]

So far the best I can find is an Off-Peak Return (route: Any Permitted) from London to Manchester (£94.50), which is valid via Birmingham, plus an Off-Peak Single from Birmingham to Manchester (£40.60), for a total of £135.10.

You can improve your suggestion by using a Birmingham-Irlam single instead. This is valid via Manchester because Irlam is associated with Manchester, and the NFM64 Birmingham-Irlam and Manchester-Birmingham fares are the same. This costs £31.90, giving a total of £126.40.

You can save a bit if you commit to returning on one of the trains via Stoke. As the train via Crewe is a bit slower, this would see you arriving no more than 15 minutes later than you otherwise would, provided they don't cancel any services. You could buy off peak returns for London-Stoke (£77.90) and Stoke-Manchester (£18.50), and a Birmingham-Stoke single (£19.50) for a total of £115.90. The first ticket is valid via Birmingham, or on a direct train, but not via Crewe.

You could save a few pounds extra if you use a Northern Only Stoke-Manchester ticket, to make the total £109.60. There's only an hourly train each way, however, and you'd have to leave Manchester 25 minutes earlier to reach London at the same time. There are also "Avanti only" tickets, but they only cost 10p less than the flexible version.

There are lots of of cheaper options with a slower journey. For instance, London-Birmingham and Birmingham-Manchester tickets would be fine on trains which don't go through Birmingham, so long as you catch a train which stops in Nuneaton. In this situation, that means a LNR train.

 

[P Binnersley]

There is an Avanti-Only Off-Peak single from Stoke to Manchester for £10:10. (the any permitted ticket is £18:10).
You can combine this with a Birmingham-Stoke Off Peak single for £19:50.

Purchase flexible walk-up fares for any British train journey

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A look at this Saturday shows the Avanti leaving Stoke 4 minutes after the Cross Country, but it will be the same platform.

Best to buy the Stoke-Manchester ticket on a mobile app as you approach Stoke and know if you will make the connection (or not).