The Cheapest Way to Gatwick Airport
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- čas přidán 27. 06. 2024
- I team up with my friend James, who told me about an Oyster Split Fare you can do, which saves you money getting to Gatwick Airport from London Victoria. So I met up with him to try it out and see how much money you can save ...
TfL Single Fare Finder : tfl.gov.uk/fares/find-fares/t...
OysterFares Central Fare Finder : oysterfares.com/fare-finder/
James has a Railcard giving him 1/3 off of his off-peak fare, so he only paid £4.80 in total when it would have been £5.95 without the split.
Editor : Dave Stevenson
James is the kind of dude you wish was working in the ticket booking office, sorting you out the best fare with his encyclopedic knowledge.
Hi Geoff, there's also been a recent change getting the tube through central London to Heathrow. There is now a "Heathrow Surcharge" . You can get around this by tapping out at Hatton Cross.
Anyone travelling to Heathrow whose journey begins in zone 1 or simply passes through zone 1 has a 'special' fare of £5.50 at all times. It used to be £3.50 off-peak. Therefore if you travel to the station before Heathrow which is Hatton Cross this higher fare doesn't apply (it only applies to LHR). The journey from Hatton Cross to Heathrow is free because it is used for people changing terminals (say T5 to T4). Therefore you have only paid £3.50 overall.
GREAT HACK AHHHH thank you!
Isn’t it that you can travel VIA Hatton Cross for free when changing terminals, but you are charged if tapping in/out there?
@@robdavies8702 I've just put Hatton Cross to Heathrow into TFL journey planner;
Fastest by public transport
Option 1: Piccadilly line, 11 minsDepart at:23:09 - Arrive at:23:20Total time:11minsCost of fare:free anytime
@@priorktj in which case I stand corrected!
@@robdavies8702 This is a recent change (presumably introduced at the same time as the new Heathrow Piccadilly line surcharge?). Previously, normal tube fares were charged between Hatton Cross and Heathrow Terminals. Quite welcome as Hatton Cross is more convenient for many local bus routes than Heathrow Central.
Geoff is an icon for balancing the coffee, Oyster Card and the Camera.
he has mad skillz.
@@SamSitar defo agree
And there's me thinking that the coffee was the star of the show.....
Surely someone has designed a reusable coffee cup with an Oyster card holder built in?
It’ll no doubt be a Tea
James is brilliant. I haven’t been to a bus rally where James wasn’t a controller. He just keeps everything running smoothly.
I see him at all of them 🤣
Geoff the TV presenter we deserve. Knowledgeable, personable and obviously a genuinely nice guy with a passion for trains.
I do believe he’s single currently if you fancy your chances?
Might be hard to bump into him mind. I suggest hanging around King Cross at all hours of the day in some sort of tight fitting skirt.
In Sydney, we had a funny situation when the Govt brought in a weekly cap, after 10 trips in a week it was free to travel. The clever people would walk 300 meters from one stop to the next in the city & tap in & out during their lunch break on Monday for a one-stop fare then their longer trips were free for the rest of the week. The nightly news actually showed people tapping in & walking off to the next station. You could save 50% while it lasted.
LOL! Made my day!
Presumably they stopped it because they didn't like the fact people were using it to save money.
lol how was this not foreseen. Our weekly caps are based on price (max spend), not number of journeys.
@@Abi-bi6cb NSW now does daily and weekly price caps, but you also get half off the fare if you make a certain amount of journeys in a week.
LOVE IT! Landed at Manchester Airport back in 2018; went down the the kiosk near the train platforms and asked for a ticket on the Transpennine Express to Edinburgh Haymarket. The very nice lady helping me said I'll save ya a bit of money with two paper tickets; one was to Manchester, the other to Edinburgh Haymarket. She said just stay on the train and show the appropriate ticket. I think it saved about 12 pounds. Happy day!
I remember a McDonalds advert that suggested the cheapest way to Gatwick was to book your car into a garage near Horley for a minor defect repair (new wiper blade), and then pick it up two weeks later! It must have been in the 90s when that advert ran! I think it was part of a “money saving advice” campaign where they would boast how cheap they themselves were.
A friend of mine who is a football fan used to drive to matches and get his car valeted (which he would have done sooner or later anyway) at a nearby car wash place and pick it up after the match. Another wheeze of his was to book several hotels in several places if he didn't know exactly when or where he'd be travelling, all booked with cancellable bookings, then cancel them all including the one he wanted to use once he had decided, and rebook that one with the lower, non-cancellable price.
Geoff - James is a fantastic addition, and your continual happy nature is just great. This was a fantastic video. Informative, but still fun because of your personality.
I love content like this......
It's so genuine. So honest......
In a world of 'CZcams wannabe famous" idiots........ This is the antidote to all that is bad in the on-line world.
Thanks lads
The world needs more of you x
I'm amazed that Geoff and not a single person in the comments has mentioned ticket splitter. Like there are whole websites dedicated to calculating the cheapest fares by splitting tickets. Whenever I travel from Cornwall to Leeds I use split ticketing and have about 8 separate tickets and often save £40-50 in the process
I met James at show bus last Sunday on the e400EV when there were some noisy kids at the back of the bus being annoying, thanks James for sorting them out.
No problem :) I didn’t want the risk of an accident causing none of the company buses to attend rallies in future, plus they were disturbing the other passengers
@@metrowake11 If we could clone you and have one on every bus/train to sort out the numpties that would be great.
Crosscountry is probably the richest source of split tickets! I once did a day return Nottingham to Cardiff central (an endurance test in its own right). This involved splits at Long Eaton, New Street, Cheltenham, and Gloucester. All on the same trains. Saved approximately £60
Hi Geoff, I used to run ticket office courses for a TOC. I can tell you lots of similar journeys with fare anomalies.
I love that high angle in the corner of the train Geoff your creativity never ceases honestly!
Thanks Geoff for pointing out the ridiculous fare structure. I know this is one of many from my trips from London to Exmouth. Splitting the journey without having to change trains, has saved me a lot of money in the past.
There is so much knowledge in this comment section than anywhere else and i love it. great video
Oh! So Jay gave back your soul! Nice!
One thing to bear in mind are for journeys over 75 miles. A very long time ago British Rail stopped cheap day returns for journeys over this distance. They were replaced with saver fares which were usually more expensive. It’s always worth checking. Birmingham to Sheffield was always worth splitting at Derby.
Why is it only 20 pounds to fly to Cork from Manchester for a day visit cheaper than anywhere to 66-75 percent of the whole mileage to Cork in comparison to what it does cost on a train in the UK? Dublin - Charleroi is 26 pounds and many more can be found under 50 pounds. (Worth to do a max of 80 pounds considering it's a plane and consider the destination)
Crazy is it not?
If going from Birmingham to Sheffield you should check out Birmingham to Burton on Trent then Derbyshire Wayfarer
Yup, used to do this coming cross country from Berkshire to Leeds… splitting at Banbury (to make use of my network card), Birmingham, Derby, Sheffield would save a fortune compared to the single RDG-LDS fare.
I use the double split for work now from Three Bridges to Gatwick and then the same as in the video. Costs me 1 train, about 5 minutes, at East Croydon but saves over £70 a month (travelling 10 days per month). It's even cheaper then the new flexis.
James is what trains is all about
Many People don't get it, but his passion is what it means
Thank you Geoff for bringing him to my attention
Agreed! He is so awesome!
My wife first eye rolls when I tell her I'm watching this, but she will be the first in line to use this technique!! Great work guys!
nice to see the variety of Geoff's friends, would love to have someone in my network doing this kind of thing! very helpful!
Yeah it's so nice and refreshing to see an open minded, tolerant and outgoing "straight cis male", which we hate upon in the community very often, at least in some circles. (which is toxic and unfair too btw). Love, like, dislike and hate people for the personality, and not purely their identity.
@@offichannelnurnberg5894 live and learn as I myself fall into this category 😇
That's a pretty decent saving and over a year, it all adds up. Great little workaround James and Geoff!
Omg we need James in more videos! He’s awesome! 👏🏽
Thanks James (and Geoff), really brilliant explanation. And so helpful cos Gatwick's a journey I do loads. Great video 👌
Brilliant video, thank you Geoff and James!
I save around £5 daily just by tapping in and out at upminster station when traveling by c2c, the reader is at the platform so on the journey back to Essex you can even get into the same train
Great to see James on the channel.
Excellent video highlighting the absurdities of the railway fares in this country!
For me, the cheapest way of getting to Gatwick is getting someone to drive me to the long stay car park (it’s only a couple of miles away!)
Used to use the 'TrainPal' app when I was still in the UK, absolutely amazing app that works all this stuff out for you and gives you the cheapest ticket possible, just have to put in your start point and destination
I use to work with James, nicest and most decent guy you could ever meet! Great vid!
Nice one that guy really knows his numbers 👍
If I ever have to go to Gatwick, I will remember that Geoff’s videos always have my back lol
Hi Frank Pick
I was sure that somebody will do that 😂
🤣
LOL
This is geoff's life now
He's been reanimated.
Southern trains can leave from Gatwick Express platforms 13&14. They do make you use the barriers on platform 12 to gain access to it. If your travelling GEX you use the barriers on 13&14.
Your account seems to have been hacked by the Southern Rail Network.
happy 9th anniversary of your Tube Challenge world record, Geoff!!!!
what an editing, and what a content.. marvelous as usual. thanks geoff. ❤️ from a rail fan in 🇮🇳
Ha! This just came up the night before I've to go to Gatwick. Thanks Geoff (and James)!
excellent show thank you
Love James’ badges!!
It would be interesting to do a cost vs time analysis. If you are in a rush, sometimes it is worth spending the $$$ for the direct connection if it means making the flight.
Or how much do you value the extra minutes of sleep/shower/whatever?
@@lisakaz35 oh for sure, I find these little loopholes really interesting I just factor in what your time is worth too. That said if I commuted constantly about 4 quid a day adds up FAST.
If you're in a rush, it's worth knowing that the Gatwick "Express" actually takes longer than the stopping train, so you can still save money and time by just paying the £9.
@@MakeItWithCalvin Yep. I like knowing of oddities of schedules and stuff. Ya never know when you run across a starving student who'd benefit from saving every little bit possible. When I was doing my PhD research and had a decent deal on a room for a week, I knew exactly when the first off-peak Tube train time was, so I could get from my location to research library near the Colindale stop (that was a branch of the British Library that housed periodicals in storage or microfilm). I tried to live on such a shoestring budget it wasn't funny. I sometimes feel like Monty Python's King Arthur getting info on swallows' migration patterns.
If you are carrying large or heavy luggage it would make sense to pay the extra £1.70 and get the direct train. (Not the outrageously priced GX of course!)
It's also the same with Heathrow via the Elizabeth Line - Paddington to Heathrow T4 is a flat £11.50, however if you go Paddington to Hayes & Harlington it's £3.40 off-peak, and tap back in at Hayes & Harlington to Heathrow T4 and that's £6.40 making it only £9.80 instead of the £11.50 saving you £1.70
jumping off a train for 3 pound is long
James is ace. More please.
I really enjoyed this video. James was also excellent.
Nice vid Frank!
Love the IOW Beer and Buses badge James is wearing
I travelled from Reading to Gatwick often. I never paid a fare and I always got a seat. It was the one with the best view too.
You were the driver?
James seems like a top bloke. Great video, the £20 odd fare for Gatwick Express I’m cynically going to say exists to rip off tourists.
Back in 2000 I worked in Birmingham for a couple of years, tried the M6 for a week, didn't fancy that so Stoke to New Street it was 6.56 am .
Tripped over the fact that a Stoke to Stafford and Stafford to New Street ticket was a pound cheaper each way, same train.
Must have been BR trying to get more Stafford commuters on the train.
A class 47 and coaches was ok to get a seat, but if a Voyager was on, Manchester to Bournemouth it was rammed to New Street then probably pretty empty after that.
I used to travel regularly in the morning peak from Euston to Milton Keynes. At one particular time window it was cheaper to buy a ticket to Northampton, which is further, on the same train but get off at MK. The barriers at MK would open and it was perfectly allowed. The reason was the same physical train was an off-peak when booked to Nton but peak to MK.
Yeah I have a weird train which from Didcot is a peak train to Bristol, Weston super mare and every station in that area except for Nailsea and Blackwell where it is off peak and substantially cheaper
I've noticed this on journeys into London - depending on whether it's peak, off-peak, or super off-peak it is sometimes more expensive to get, say, a ticket to tottenham hale instead of liverpool street (or finsbury park for kings cross), but at other times it's cheaper!
that's so strange, that when I just arrived to live in London (exactly one year ago, more or less when the video was made) and found out that this is an extremely expensive city in terms of transportation fares, I played with a fare calculator and found out more or less the same thing: changing in East Croydon reduces the fare. But my way is even more tricky: I traveled from Wapping station by tapping out on West Croydon and tapping in on East Croydon (and 15 mins walking between them) - and the whole trip costs 2 + 3.7 off-peak (used to be even cheaper last year, probably below 5 pounds)
Thanks for the video, will be waiting for new interesting money-saving lifehacks.
I now live in the Merseyside area (ex Surrey/SW London). If I look up fares to London from Liverpool it's just Avanti eyewatering fares, but if I do Liverpool-Crewe (using Avanti or LNWR) then Crewe-London I can get the LNWR only fare from Crewe, which can come including a Z1-6 Travelcard for only a couple of pounds more. It's far cheaper than the direct fare, I can leave from Liverpool earlier, even the peak fare to Crewe is reasonable. The journey time isn't bad from Crewe to Euston as the services are now direct and not via Northampton, as was the case in the past.
There are LNWR only fares from Liverpool/Runcorn etc. too. The connections between their Liverpool-Birmingham and Crewe-Euston services are generally decent. In most cases it's cross-platform or same-island at Crewe.
⚡ *He needs his own channel!* Knows his stuff 🤙🏼🤙🏼
Great video. I'm going to Gatwick next month and I think I'll do this route, otherwise I have to pay nearly £40 to get from Victoria to Gatwick on the Gatwick express
From Kettering where I live, a peak 1 day travelcard is £123.50, but by splitting the journey at Luton Airport Parkway it is £33.90 Day return Kettering - Luton Airport Parkway and then £40.20 For a day travelcard from Luton Airport Parkway, saving £49.40.
The same thing happens for just a standard return too, except that a return to/from Kettering will be to London Terminals {St Pancras) but the return from Luton Airport Parkway will be to London Thameslink (St Pancras, Farringdon, City Thameslink, Blackfriars) so you can actually travel further for less.
James knows his stuff..! 🙂👍
and even a quick passing shot of my work as you travelled 😊
Interesting split journey 👍
Fantastic video love your content!
James is the bees knees! One of life’s good guys.
Thank you for information tip Gatwick, I never knew it
split tickets is cheaper using national rail as well. Clapham junction to Gatwick discounted is £10.40 single, but split at east croydon is £6.98
Genius. It would take three years at least for the company to invoke your value countermeasures and stiff you for another ten quid. Love it.
Geoff the only guy to get excited going to Gatwick and not going on holiday lol
Thanks James 😊
I honestly thought you would get a Pret Coffee since there one round the corner at East Croydon. I have found that Worcestershire Parkway has a good use for split ticketing if you want to get from Birmingham to Swindon/Cheltenham/Gloucester or even Bristol, Great Video
its crazy that things like this exist, basically punshing customers who dont wanna look for splits, from what i gather this happens all over our the UK
Once they see this it will soon be closed down.
Not only in the UK. I've witnessed this in Germany as well.
It's almost like it's run for profit by competing companies who don't care to make it an integrated simple service for the customer and use tricks to make us pay more than we necessarily should. Oh...
@@TalesOfWar So these never existed under British Rail?
It's not really punishing customers, because the UK train network isn't an integrated system any more, it's a bunch of competing companies with truly Byzantine fare structures that throw up oddities like this. It used to be so much simpler (and cheaper) under British Rail.
The East Croydon trick savings are bigger if you're going from a Zone 1 station via Victoria to Gatwick. The savings are also bigger if you're going from a Zone 2 station via Clapham Junction to Gatwick.
I did Christchurch, Dorset to Telford, Shropshire via New Street, a few years ago using a split ticketing site and ended up with about five different tickets.
Awesome video!
East Croydon is intriguing, it must have the best London service of any station anywhere. I've just counted 26 trains to London stations in the next hour!
I can't remember how much I saved as it was about 15 years ago but I remember it being quite a large amount but I travelled from Birmingham International down to Southampton Central and the ticket guy at the station sold us Birmingham- Banbury- Oxford- Southampton. Being able to stay on the same train as it stopped at those stations anyway. Also a few years before that there was mega train available from Southampton to Birmingham New Street and quite often got a fare of £1 each way. I miss those days of Mega Train.
Splitting at Banbury still works - I've done off peak singles from Derby to Oxford, splitting at Birmingham and Banbury and it saved me a few quid. Often you can get very cheap advance singles on that route if you split at Leamington Spa as well - I saved a fortune after my housemate let me in on that secret! Leamington Spa to Derby for ~£8 with a railcard if you get lucky
My commute from Leamington to Marylebone can be cheapest with a triple split sometimes! eg. split at Banbury, Haddenham and Thame, and High Wycombe (all staying on the same train)
Thanks Pete and Stewie.
southerns metro routes technically are 5 coaches but it’s told in a misleading way. the only ones are london bridge - east croydon and london bridge - beckenham junction, not all of them. first class is declassified when the train is full
My current favourite fare lunacy is Bath to Bicester via Didcot and Oxford for £22.80 off peak return but Bath to Dicot off peak return for £23.90. It’s cheaper to get to London via Bicester than Reading!
brilliant thanks..just subscribed.
If you're travelling from Birmingham to Oxford you can save a huge amount by splitting your ticket, usually at Banbury if I remember correctly.
You can avoid the Heathrow always-charge-peak when you go to Zone 1 by doing a tap out and tap in at Ealing Broadway. You can save more than in this video!
The fact that you've managed to create an entire video on this highlights how completely and utterly screwed the rail system is in the UK.
It shouldn't have to come to this.
Train splitting has pros and cons though. If you split and you miss a connecting train you wont always be allowed to get the next one, or a refund etc. Not splitting means you're covered if a train is late or cancelled etc.
Some have mentioned difference between 2 x cheap day returns rather than saver return. The other issues this can offer is not just cheaper but also possibly using peak time trains
Saw your great performance of Frank Pick on Jay Foreman's latest upload.
Good video Geoff and James.
Could you split journey from zone 1 to heathrow by getting off at hatton cross leaving and tapping in again to get to Heathrow?
Quote of the Day: “Gatwick’s a complicated thing.”
What a nice chap.
Serious Miles in Transit vibes!
I can see a new series coming here!
Welldone guys
for me going from southeast London to Gatwick, the trick is not to go from London Bridge but to somehow get to East Croydon and avoid zone 1 - usually I use it as an excuse to get a tram!
Thank you for making this. I need to go to London Gatwick soon, and this helps a lot. Thanks, Geoff!
Unbelievably complicated. I can't imagine people in many other countries putting up with such a complex system.
These anomalies exist in at least the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and the US too.
@@OneKnifeYeHand Not in the US. Public transit may be limited but what does exist is very straight forward. There is one price, one service, one schedule, one operator. That's it.
Hey geoff if you ever want to ride a pacer again then the East kent railway in sheperdswell has 2 or 3 pacers and I think at least one of them is a 142 with the original bus style seats.
In 2017 I had to go from London city airport to Gatwick. I did DLR and overground to Clapham junction and then picked up a southern service from there by buying a return
My local station is Whitechapel and if I change at Farringdon instead of Blackfriars going to Gatwick the system charges an avoiding zone 1 fare as you don't go through any barriers
Hey, it's the extra guy from the Unfinished London video! (j/k)
I saw james as a conductor of one of the hertiage bus day tours on route 37
Nice vid 😋👍🏿👍🏿👍
Some years ago, I was off to the US. So (from clapham Juntion) I got a cab to pick the family up, off to Heathrow. Proper cab, black cab.
In we got, hurrah, I just check I have everything - all the passports, check the tickets. ARGGHHHH! It goes from Gatport Airwick!
The cab driver didn't miss a beat.
As it happened, the flight was 3 hour delayed we go stuck overnight in a blizzard in Atlanta; just one of those trips where everything went slightly wrong. But at least I read the bloody boarding card.
🤣
I did that returning from our first foreign trip, to Belgium. Kids in tow. Taxi at Victoria off the boat train, asked for Paddington. Half way there, I remembered we wanted Kings X.
Driver, cool as. Round all kinds of back streets, got there with 5 minutes to spare. London Cabbies are awesome.
On a East Croydon split from Richmond to Gatwick you save £2.40 each way... Superb!
I can't believe Frank Pick is making CZcams videos
His style has really loosened up.