Travel Frazzle

[rj_anderson]

So originally I thought I was doing this research trip to the south of England and west Wales in late October, and it would be the off-season so finding accommodation would be easy and there was plenty of time to make plans.

Now it looks like we're doing it in mid-to-late August, and... not so much. Especially as it seems unavoidable that we'll be there over the dreaded Bank Holiday weekend.

I am, frankly, overwhelmed. Flights aren't a problem, but once we get into Gatwick, my planning brain freezes.

I know London is ridiculously expensive to stay in, so I was thinking it'd be better to take the train out of London and find a B&B in some pleasant town in Kent, although I am not entirely sure which. Any suggestions from those in the know? We'll need easy access to a train station, so we can get back into London on a couple of day trips, but it would be nice to travel a bit around Kent as well.

I'd like to visit Squerryes Court in Westerham, on which my fictional "Waverley Hall" is partly based; I've had my eye on Eynsford in Dartford as a possible location for the village nearest to where the McCormicks (and the Oakenfolk) live. But other than that, I know nothing, and would be glad of recommendations for other nice places in the area that we ought to visit or where we might stay overnight without utterly impoverishing ourselves (and which can be easily accessed using public transportation, please -- I don't think we'll rent a car until we get to Wales).

After we've spent 3-4 days touring Kent and visiting London, I'd like to take a train to the Cardigan Bay area of Wales and do some touring around there before we return to London and fly back home. Again, any suggestions for what we should see (or avoid) in that area?

Thanks for any help you can offer...

ETA: By "we" I mean "my husband and I", as we will not be taking our kids on this journey. So we'd only be needing a double or twin room, no "family" accommodations or attractions. Thanks.

Comments

[fpb.livejournal.com]

NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!
Avoid the trains wherever possible. Mismanaged, crowded, appallingly expensive, and not in the least customer-friendly, they seem to be run according to the management principles of Prince Dracula of Transylvania. If you want to travel from one place to another, try and find a bus/coach. www.megabus.com can get you some good cheap deals if you plan ahead. And while it is sad that your laptop is not internet-enabled, you can find an internet cafe virtually anywhere in urban England.

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

So, theoretically speaking, if you happened to be on the run from some homicidal faeries, and you needed to get from Kent to Wales as quickly as possible with said faeries flying after you at top speed, you would go by bus rather than train? Or is the train still the fastest and most direct way to travel long distances in the UK even if it is all the horrible things you describe?

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I doubt whether you could travel from Kent to Wales without changing at last once, in London. And I would say that trains and buses would be roughly the same - except that it would be harder to run from a train in case of serious trouble. Most Britons would drive.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

ACtually, if speed were of the essence, I would go to the local airport and see if there is a flight. There is a well-developed (but expensive) internal air network.

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

Let's assume you are fourteen years old and in possession of limited funds (and even more limited time to make your escape), so neither flight nor car rental is an option.

Given that the nearest village has a train station and that you can buy a ticket from there to Aberstywyth (albeit involving changes at Blackfriars, Euston and Birmingham New Street), and also given that the trains probably come more frequently and go more quickly than buses would (though I'd be glad to be corrected if I'm wrong about this) wouldn't you be more likely to choose the train at short notice than anything else?

That was my logic in writing the first draft, anyway, but if I'm wrong and my young hero would be more likely to hop on a bus instead, it would certainly help to know.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I guess it would depend on whether there was a bus line available or not. Most bus/coach lines end up at Victoria in London, so it would be easy to find one going to Aberystwyth, which is a main destination. And if there was a coach stop in the neighbourhood, then the matter of limited funds would be absolutely decisive: while coaches are not necessarily cheap, trains can cost from three to ten times as much as coaches.

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

It might be financially preferable, but if the buses only run twice a day and they take 10 hours to arrive, plus making stops every ten or fifteen minutes all through London... perhaps not so practical for the equivalent of a high-speed chase. :)

[fpb.livejournal.com]

You are mistaking coaches for buses. Coaches travel from town to town and only make a few stops - less than those of trains, on average. The coaches from London to Oxford, for instance, make three stops in London, one half-way through at a place called Lewknor, and three in Oxford. The coaches from London East to Stanstead Airport make no stops at all.

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

I looked up the schedule for a National Express coach going from Dartford Bluewater (the closest station I could find to the area I had in mind) to Aberstywyth. The results are here (http://www.nationalexpress.com/bp/view.cfm?d=2092558716573660A210820081040210820081150SH2108007I0825AK5736612183A0210820081300210820082005NX2108420O1300EB) and yes, it does take nearly 10 hours and make stops every 10-20 minutes along the way. Unless National Express is the wrong coach line to be looking at...?

Sorry about the confusion in my terminology -- in Canada we tend to use "bus" interchangeably to refer to both local buses and city-to-city coaches.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Well, if that's the case, that's the case.

[alawston.livejournal.com]

I think it's a good place to use a bit of dramatic license. If you could work in some handwavey way of said 14 year old acquiring a ticket cheaply (because it would almost certainly cost over £100 for a ticket bought on the day, although maybe as a child he'd get on cheaper), then it would be much faster, particularly between London and New Street which is one of the fastest routes in the UK and only stops (ISTR) at Coventry and Birmingham Airport.

The trains aren't managed particularly well and are over-priced, but the coaches have their own problems, and I wouldn't use them at all if it wasn't for the fact that there's a bizarre non-stop service from London to the village next to mine... The number of crackheads around London Victoria Coach Station would probably give you a chapter in itself. Not a nice chapter, either.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

When I travelled by coach to Dublin a couple of years ago, the coach only stopped once on the motorwary and at the harbour. It is urban buses that make frequent stops. Coaches are no different from trains, in fact they stop less often than commuter trains.

[emmaco.livejournal.com]

I don't know about Kent, but my colleagues and I travel all over the UK by train (including some from Aberystwyth) and generally it's the quickest and most reliable way to travel. Buses get stuck in traffic (British roads can be very crowded!) more than trains run late in my experience. So if there were scary faeries after me I'd hop on a train :)

[kerravonsen]

Me too. When I visited the UK I went by train everywhere. Yes, it can be a real pain changing trains for some routes, particularly if you have much luggage, but the trains themselves are perfectly fine train-like trains. But then I always prefer trains to busses when I can get them.

And if scary faeries were after me, another advantage of trains is that they're bigger and you can hide in the toilets if need be.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I wonder what your standards are? British trains are the slowest and most expensive in Europe. They only ran on time since they slowed down the whole time-table, sometimes by 20% or more. And some companies (Virgin springs to mind) are notorious for unhelpfulness and bad manners as well as greed and inefficiency.

[kerravonsen]

My standards are:
- it's hard to judge costs in the UK because the exchange rate is so horrible that everything is expensive
- it's hard to judge speed because the UK is so small compared to Australia that it seems incredibly quick to get anywhere
- as for being on time, I'm kind of baffled as to how European trains manage to be as punctual as they are; so I guess you'd consider my standards lax on that front.
- as for unhelpfulness, bad manners etc, it isn't until one needs help that one runs into problems with unhelpfulness, and I didn't need help. Websites helped me figure out which trains I needed to catch, and signs on stations told me where to catch them, which is all as one expects.
- as for the comfort of the actual trains themselves, that varied depending on the particular line, but they were all reasonably comfortable. Again, perhaps my standards are low in that regard, because comparing with how trains were when I was a child, they're all more comfortable than they used to be.

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

Thank you for your answer, Emma! It's good to hear various perspectives.

[persephone-kore.livejournal.com]

*bemused* There are spikes in the seats?

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Thou Shalt Suck Thy Customer's Blood. If spikes were any good, they would be used.

[speak-candidly.livejournal.com]

expensive, yah, but I never had a problem with them. I traveled in the off hours, though, and never needed customer service.

Coaches are indeed very nice, however.