Due to travel on Friday with friend who has damaged their knee and cannot walk.
Advance Tickets booked using two persons railcard.
Have I any other options other than throw away the original tickets and book a brand new set just for me?
Good retailers will allow you to easily make a "change of journey" on your Advance and in so doing, change the Railcard and passenger details. There's nothing against this in the
Advance T&C's so I think all retailers ought to be permitting it; the only things the conditions say need to remain unchanged are the:
origin, destination and Train Company or route shown on the ticket(s)
Although pragmatism needs to be used even with this, as sometimes changing to a different train will necessitate a change of fare location (e.g. London Kings Cross to London Terminals) or change of route code (e.g. "LNER only" to "LNER & Connections"), neither of which are changes In think a retailer could reasonably deny their customers.
Bear in mind that the maximum admin fee for a change of this nature remains £10, which some retailers do charge. Of course there are several that don't charge an admin fee for Advance changes, so I book all my Advance tickets through one of those!
Alternatively, you could try going to a ticket office and excessing away the Railcard restriction on both tickets, or getting an excess to change the Railcard restriction on one of the tickets to another Railcard (if you also have e.g. a 16-25 or Senior Railcard). No guarantee either option would be offered though - it's very much something that is discretionary.