Latest news with #DidcotDodge
Metro
13-05-2025
- Metro
Passengers are 'swerving' train fares with trick to save over £50 per ticket
With UK train fares at an all-time high, commuters and staycationersalike are going to great lengths in their efforts to keep costs down. For some, that means booking travel months in advance, while others make the most of split ticket loopholes like the 'Didcot Dodge' or 'Chester Cheat'. But these aren't the only ways to spend less when you next take to the rails. A savvy Metro reader recently got in touch to share a trick we're we're calling the Southwest Swerve, which can save you upwards of £50 when taking multiple journeys on consecutive days. While an off-peak return ticket from Birmingham to Penzance will set you back £208.30, if you travel from Birmingham to Worcester (around £10 each way) first, you can then get a Freedom of the Southwest Rail Rover ticket for £135.50. Fuel your wanderlust with our curated newsletter of travel deals, guides and inspiration. Sign up here. This gives you unlimited off-peak travel for three days over the next week (or eight days over the next two weeks if you opt for the £188.50 option) throughout the whole of Devon and Cornwall, extending between Worcester, Weymouth, Cardiff and Swindon and including the likes of Bristol, Salisbury and Southampton. So in this example, you're saving £52.80 just on the ticket to Penzance, as well as getting two extra days out added into the bargain. And to make the Swerve even sweeter still, Railcard discounts also apply. The best thing about this trick however, is that it doesn't just work for this route. There are 45 different Ranger or Rover unlimited travel tickets available across the National Rail network – and some even include bus services – so you can tailor your trip around which suits you. Hop on and off as much as you like within a certain area and for a designated length of time Create your own route Typically available to use on multiple operators Railcard discounts apply Say you're going from Manchester to Aberystwyth for the day: a standard off-peak return costs £88.10, but if you go via Shrewsbury (trains between Manchester and Shrewsbury start from £11.80 each way) and purchase a North Wales Rover All Zones ticket for £45, you've saved at least £20. More Trending Or perhaps you live in Edinburgh but will be working in Glasgow over the next few days: instead of buying three off-peak returns and three Subway day tickets totalling £63.75, get a Central Scotland Rover for £57. Not only will that cover your work travel, you can also venture around the Central Belt as much as you want over the three-day period. The possibilities are pretty much endless depending on your schedule and location, and some even allow you to go first class or get money off child tickets. And although the Southwest Swerve (alongside its nationwide counterparts) may feel sneaky, rest assured that it's perfectly above board – you're merely working a little harder to find a legitimate way to travel smarter. Do you have a story to share? Get in touch by emailing MetroLifestyleTeam@ MORE: Three soldiers injured after shooting incident at UK military base MORE: Best haircare for fine, oily hair? Try this 3-step set from Philip Kingsley – now 41% off MORE: Save £100 on 'astonishing' vacuum and that's 'so easy to carry up the stairs'
Metro
07-05-2025
- Business
- Metro
Travellers are 'cheating' expensive fares to save 40% on train tickets
Train tickets can reach dizzying costs in the UK, with travellers going to great lengths to save cash. One Londoner recently went viral when he swapped a £130 train ticket from Manchester to London with £57 flights — going via Reykjavik, in Iceland. So it's no surprise that rail travellers are coming up with inventive ways to keep costs down (and thankfully, not every hack requires your passport). One such hack is utilising split-tickets, which is when you buy tickets for individual segments of a journey, rather than one, straight through ticket — which is often more expensive. There are many instances of how split-ticketing can save you cash across the UK network. Here at Metro, we've already talked you through the so-called Didcot Dodge, which saves money on the journey from Bristol Temple Meads to London. Fuel your wanderlust with our curated newsletter of travel deals, guides and inspiration. Sign up here. Instead of purchasing one direct ticket for £138.70, travellers buy one ticket from the capital to Didcot Parkway (£43), and then a second ticket onwards to Bristol (£43.80), saving £54.90. And now, there's another hack you need on your radar, which we're lovingly calling the Chester Cheat. This one is handy for any commuters who regularly travel between Shrewsbury to Liverpool. If you buy a single ticket from Shrewsbury to Liverpool, it'll set you back £35.40. We checked prices for May 28 at 8.27am, but the standard single is the same cost no matter the time of day. However, if you use the Chester Cheat, you would buy a ticket from Shrewsbury to Chester for £11.40 (on the same 8.27am train), and then a second ticket from Chester to Liverpool (jumping on the 9.31am train) for £9.25. The split-ticket means you'll pay just £20.65, which is £14.75 cheaper than the direct chain, giving travellers a 40% saving. More Trending What's perhaps even more baffling, is that the change at Chester is something you would need to do regardless — even with a direct, more expensive, ticket. Yes, it feels illegal, but it's all completely above board, and there are even website such as TrainSplit or SplitTicketing that can help you work out the cheapest routes. But, make sure you shop around to find the best deal – and if your split ticket involves changing trains, make sure you have enough time to switch. Do you have a story to share? Get in touch by emailing MetroLifestyleTeam@ MORE: Amazon launches new UK outlet set to rival Temu with 'crazy low prices' MORE: Inside the plan for £189,000,000 futuristic 'very light' transport system MORE: Is it safe to travel to India and Pakistan? Latest advice as flights are delayed and cancelled
Metro
21-04-2025
- Business
- Metro
Commuters are 'dodging' fares to save £50 on train tickets — and it's all legit
Buying train tickets might seem like a simple task, but travellers know just how tricky it can be to get from A to B, without spending a fortune. The charity, Campaign for Better Transport, has long been calling reform, previously saying: 'The rail fares system is riddled with absurd inconsistencies which makes buying a train ticket time-consuming and complicated.' One way that travellers have been attempting to save money is by purchasing split tickets, which is when you buy tickets for individual segments of a journey, rather than one, straight through ticket — which is often more expensive. While there are many instances of how split-ticketing can save you cash across the UK network, there's one split-trip that you can't afford not to know about. If you're travelling from London to Bristol, don't forget the 'Didcot dodge', which has been called a 'classic example' of split-ticketing by travellers on X. While some jokingly say it 'sounds like a 1920s dance move', this tip can save you big bucks. Rather than buying one single ticket from London Paddington to Bristol Temple Meads, buy one ticket from the capital to Didcot Parkway, and then a second ticket onwards to Bristol. It means that, instead of paying £138.70 for an Anytime Day Single fare, utilising the Didcot Dodge means you'll pay just £83.80 for the same journey on the same dates (we checked for travel on Thursday May 1, departing at 7.57am). A ticket on the same train to Didcot Parkway will set you back £43 from Paddington, and it's a further £43.80 onward to Bristol. More Trending That's a pretty impressive saving of £54.90. What's more, you don't even have to change trains. You just need to make sure that you're booking onto a train that does actually stop at Didcot Parkway (as there are some faster trains that don't). While it might feel like you're doing something illegal, we promise it's all legit. The reason for Didcot Dodge is due to the fact that the line that runs from Didcot to Bristol is considered to be a 'regional' service, on which fares are kept lower, compared to those trains that travel to London. While some websites, such as Trainline, will take split fares into account (the website uses their own Split Save tool), it's not the case everywhere, so make sure you do your research to find the best deals. Do you have a story to share? Get in touch by emailing MetroLifestyleTeam@ MORE: Canonization of British teenager as first millennial saint postponed after Pope's death MORE: Family of murdered student renew appeal with £20,000 reward to find his killers MORE: Chinese spies are 'bugging London's pubs and park benches,' security sources say
The Independent
03-03-2025
- Business
- The Independent
Split ticket savings: How exploiting Britain's barmy train fares could cut the cost of your travel
Rail fares have risen again. On 2 March 2025 ticket prices went up by an average of 4.6 per cent in England and Wales; from 1 April 2025, ScotRail tickets will cost 3.8 per cent more. Fortunately, Britain's absurd rail fare structure means there are plenty of pricing anomalies you can quite legally exploit by 'splitting tickets'. And after the latest rail fare rise the potential savings from dividing a rail journey into separate segments are bigger than ever. Rather than buying a ticket from Bristol to London, it pays to use the 'Didcot Dodge'. Get one ticket from Bristol to Didcot Parkway and a second from there to London. Mad, but beneficial. You are 'splitting tickets' to save over £50. Just make sure the train stops at Didcot. The money you legally save by splitting tickets is depriving the rail industry – and by extension the government – of revenue. The more this happens, the better: it will hasten the day when ministers finally have the courage to reform a rotten fares system. So do yourself and fellow rail travellers a favour by seeking savings and accelerating the progress of the necessary root-and-branch reform. What is split ticketing? You would expect someone on a train from A to C that stops in B to pay no more than the sum of the individual legs from A to B and B to C. The passenger might even get a reduction in the per-mile rate for going a long distance. After all, the bigger a container of milk you buy, the less the per-unit cost. Yet since rail privatisation, successive governments have sustained a 'system' that defies logic. As a result, passengers have plenty of chances to save. Suppose you want to travel from Shrewsbury to Liverpool, requiring a change of train in Chester. You might fondly imagine the best course of action is to buy a standard ticket for the journey – price £35.40, whatever time of day you travel. But if you buy separate tickets for each leg – Shrewsbury-Chester and Chester-Liverpool – you save almost £12, reducing the cost by one-third. This is for a completely flexible, travel whenever you like journey. But on each leg Advance tickets are available for many trains, reducing the fare to barely half the number you first thought of. What if I'm not changing trains? No problem. The technique also works where the passenger stays on the same train, as in the example of Bristol Temple Meads to London Paddington. The Anytime fare for the full intercity journey is set at a premium price – £138.70 – because, frankly, businesses are prepared to pay it. Yet you can combine two tickets set according to different principles: A Bristol-Didcot ticket for £43.80. This is priced as a regional journey and therefore much lower than journeys to and from London. A Didcot-London ticket for £40. As the Oxfordshire station is part of the 'Network South East' area, in which the aim is to keep fares affordable for commuters (though many would dispute that). Congratulations, you have saved £51.90, or 37 per cent of the fare. You can also save on journeys that straddle the peak/off-peak boundary, to obtain the benefit of the off-peak portion. For example, from Hitchin in Hertfordshire to Brighton, the 8.55am departure switches from peak to off-peak at London St Pancras. Splitting the journey saves over £6 on the £51.70 through ticket. Sounds complicated – are there any short-cuts? Fortunately technology has come to the rescue. Mainstream rail retailers such as Trainline automatically offer 'SplitSave' fares that exploit a ticket-splitting opportunity. The same technology and feature is available on the ScotRail app, which – unlike Trainline – does not charge fees. More sophisticated dedicated sites such will search through multiple possibilities for the lowest combination of Advance, Off-peak and Anytime fares that will work for your journey. For a trip between Aberdeen and Plymouth at 8.20am tomorrow, the standard Advance fare is £220. But TrainSplit will get you there for £70 less, with splits at Dundee, Edinburgh Haymarket, Carlisle, Stafford, Wolverhampton, Cheltenham Spa, Bristol Parkway and Tiverton Parkway. Yes, nine separate tickets. Is ticket-splitting legal? Yes. The only requirement is that the train stops to set down and pick up passengers at the intermediate station. On that London-Bristol route, most Great Western Railway services stop in Didcot. But if you have booked London-Didcot and Didcot-Bristol and travel on a train that whizzes through the Oxfordshire station at 125mph you will be travelling without a valid ticket. GWR says: 'You could be issued with an Unpaid Fare Notice, a Penalty Fare Notice or be interviewed under caution.' Many people who have tried to split tickets have encountered problems when they haven't scrupulously obeyed the rules. Do I need a whole series of paper tickets? In some cases you do, and any ticket office will sell you the required components for your journey. But for most trips you will be able to buy online and get tickets on your smartphone. Why are fares so irrational? When British Rail was broken up and rail privatisation began in 1995, the fares regime was stipulated by the 415-page Ticketing & Settlement Agreement (TSA). It is a document intended to protect the interests of travellers. The TSA insists that each of the 2,500 stations in Britain must have a fare to all of the others. In the course of setting those prices, anomalies are inevitable. But it was written long before the budget airlines transformed our attitude to travel pricing, with the principle that the most in-demand services will be expensive – and that the more flexible you are, the more you can save. The current rail ticketing system relies on some travellers paying more than they need, which is plainly unfair. Fares reform is way overdue: eradicating anomalies, switching to pricing based on one-way legs and removing the 'cliff-edge' border between peak and off-peak prices. Why hasn't anyone cleared up the mess? Successive governments have failed to reform the system. Instead, once a year ministers just push up all fares. They fear the political risks. The Treasury is concerned that a new fare structure could see revenue falling even further. And governments are aware that reform will see many rail fares fall and others remaining the same – but some tickets will cost more. People who find the cost of their weekly commute or weekend excursion has risen by 10 per cent will make far more noise than those whose find their journeys are 20 per cent cheaper.
The Independent
02-03-2025
- Business
- The Independent
As train fares rise, my ruses to keep ticket prices down
Despite today's rail fare rise in England and Wales, train tickets can be excellent value. That might sound absurd to long-suffering passengers enduring delays and cancellations. But I have never owned a car and always rely on railways. And I never want to pay a penny more than necessary. Some background: fares have just gone up by more than the rate of inflation in England and Wales. The rise of so-called 'regulated fares' is 4.6 per cent, significantly above the current rate of inflation of 3 per cent. (In Scotland, ticket prices go up 3.8 per cent on 1 April.) These are for 'regulated' fares: season tickets, journeys in and out of major cities, and longer-distance off-peak fares. The government has prescribed that the off-peak one-way fare from Manchester Piccadilly to London Euston has gone up by £2.50 to £79.80. At the other end of the scale, advance tickets are set according to demand, and because – like airfares – they fluctuate, it's difficult to say whether they are increasing and if so by how much. In between, you have many other fares that are unregulated but have risen by about the same percentage – including what I think is the most expensive stretch of track in the UK apart from the Heathrow Express. The 24-mile trip on the Great Western Railway from Didcot Parkway to Swindon increases by £1.40 to £32.60 at peak times – well over £1 a mile. The government's justification for putting prices up above the rate of inflation is that rail finances are in such a mess. The presumption is that the formidable cost of running the railways can only come from two sources: passengers' fares and the taxpayer. Things were bad before the Covid pandemic but with fewer people travelling and in particular season ticket sales falling off the proverbial cliff, the taxpayer is shovelling £12.5bn a year into the railway abyss to try to keep the trains on track. That's £400 per second. Much of it is paid by people who never go near a train. They're not tempted because they've heard too many stories about unreliability (on average one train in 25 is cancelled) and because they believe they will be ripped off. And unfortunately, they are often correct. Fares are high, unless you understand that complexity can sometimes unlock savings – and that there are some excellent deals around. The UK has some of the highest fares in Europe but also some of the lowest if you're prepared to be flexible about when you travel. 1 Split those tickets. People with less time on their hands than me who want to travel from Bristol to London and who are booking on the day might fondly imagine that it makes sense to buy a ticket from Bristol to London. But that's the last thing you should do. Nobody who's aware of 'split ticketing' would ever dream of buying a ticket straight through. Much better to deploy the 'Didcot Dodge' and save up to £57 by buying one ticket to Didcot Parkway and another from there. No need to change trains. One essential: ensure that the train stops at your chosen split point – some London-Bristol trains whizz through Didcot at 125mph. Even then, splitting a ticket is only the start of the complexity to be sure you're getting the best deal. If you are coming back by rail, it usually pays to buy a return, with the exact fare depending on timing. Many people who are not regular train travellers will do the obvious thing and buy each journey leg separately, often paying more than they should. On which subject ... 2 Don't use Trainline. On top of the 5 per cent commission the company earns from online sales, it adds a fee to about one-third of transactions, charging up to £2.79 or 4 per cent on some tickets. You can avoid this but still get the excellent functionality of Trainline by using the ScotRail app. Better still, use a retailer that gives a discount on normal prices. Uber is the leading discounter, saying you can 'get up to 10 per cent back in Uber credits to spend on trains, rides or eats'. This applies to Eurostar as well. has a deal of 2 per cent off rail travel up to 20 June 2025. 3 Get a railcard, though annoyingly they've just gone up by a fiver to £35. You get one-third off many tickets (or half price with the 16-17 card) – though discounts do not apply to all journeys, with time and minimum fare restrictions on some cards. People in the 31-59 age range cannot qualify for a railcard they can use on their own, but can avail of Two Together (travelling with a named individual) or Family & Friends (travelling with at least one child). 4 Sign up for loyalty schemes. With LNER Perks you get an immediate £5 in credit to spend on journeys on the East Coast line from London King's Cross to Yorkshire, northeast England and Scotland. Better still, refer a friend and you both get £10 in credit. On all journeys with LNER, you get 2 per cent credit for future journeys. Avanti West Coast, meanwhile, has Club Avanti. Upon joining, members get an immediate 10 per cent off the price of a standard return ticket on the network, which connects London Euston with the West Midlands, northwest England, North Wales and southern Scotland. If you make nine qualifying journeys within a year of joining, you get a complimentary standard premium return ticket. After 20 journeys you get a free first class return. ScotRail has an age-restricted loyalty scheme for older travellers, Club 50, which requires a £15 annual subscription. But this buys the chance to travel anywhere in Scotland for a flat fare of £17 return at certain times of the year; a 20 per cent discount on advance and off-peak tickets bought online; and half-price drinks on trains. 5 Trade speed for savings. On the West Coast Main Line, for example, London Northwestern offers much cheaper tickets than Avanti West Coast on many journeys – particularly at peak times. Between London and Crewe, the journey may take an hour longer but you can typically save £40 – which I think is a decent rate of return. In the north of England, Northern's advance fares are sold up to 10 minutes before departure and are often much cheaper than other operators. 6 Let the train firm decide on timing. Avanti West Coast's Superfares offer trips such as London to Birmingham for £9 and Liverpool to London for £15 if you book at least a week ahead and let the firm select a less-busy train. Choose a morning, afternoon or evening departure window. You will be sent a ticket for a specific train a day ahead of travel.
