The vagaries of travel

As Fiona indicated, BritRail is happy to sell a rail pass that stops at the borders of Wales and Scotland. Further investigation revealed that they have another flavor of pass that gets you to Scotland and Wales as well. However, it was not entirely clear one could get it on short notice or after arrival. It is only available to foreigners as well. (For all you Americans reading this, yes, you can get them. In this context - gasp - you are among the foreigners.) in any event, the potential cost savings was real, but we did score first class tickets at the second class price for half the trip without the passes.



As far as I can tell, you can often do very well on train prices if you book far in advance. By very well I mean you can sometimes see an order of magnitude price difference between the cheapest fare - only available in limited quantities, supplies going fast - and the basic, buy it today and ride now fare. The system is maddening to say the least.

To complicate things further, just last week I saved 26 pounds on two tickets by waiting a week to book, after which time the super secret deluxe low advance fare for 8 pounds became available for one leg of my Liverpool to Oxford journey after having once been available, only to disappear overnight before I booked it. This price was down from about 21 pounds, the lowest price available after the mystery disappearance of the good fare. I actually had the temerity to ask the agent why the price disappeared overnight and after much persistence was told that it was because it was raining and that if I checked in a week I'd probably get the lower price.


I was sure he was full of shit until the lower price showed up.


So, it seems like I'll get there, but I'm no travel agent, that's for damn sure.


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