No need to check in for Szczecin to get from London to Edinburgh

The Man Who Pays His Way

‘If you know where to look, UK train tickets deliver excellent value’

By the time I caught up with William Stein, the 20-year-old student was in Glasgow and near the end of an exotic journey from London to Edinburgh.

You may have read about his intriguing trip between the English and Scottish capitals via Szczecin, Berlin and Glasgow.

The Sun picked up the story, reporting: “William Stein took in FOUR European cities for just a fraction more than the cost of direct Virgin Trains route.”

The student from Mill Hill in north-west London was the right man for this kind of jaunt: he is studying Geography with Economics at the LSE. Mr Stein travelled east, west and north across Europe, enjoying the high life on a low budget: sipping cocktails on the 22nd floor of the Pazim building in Szczecin for £3 a pop, and exploring the former Cold War spy tower at Teufelsberg in west Berlin.

“It’s been brilliant,” he told me shortly after touching down from the German capital at Glasgow airport, where the Ryanair crew had posed for a selfie with him. And all for under £100 – demonstrating that this is, indeed, the best of winters for cheap flights in Europe.

But accounts of his adventure implied that cheap train tickets between England and Scotland are rarer than non-Polish people who can correctly spell and pronounce “Szczecin”.

So I set about finding some cut-price options for Mr Stein’s next trip from London to Edinburgh and back, looking at the first week in December.

On the flagship Virgin Trains East Coast line from London King’s Cross to Edinburgh, taking 4 hours 20 minutes, £26.40 one-way tickets are widely available with the 16-25 Railcard that Mr Stein owns.

By taking a slightly longer journey via the West Coast main line from London Euston, the Virgin Trains Best Fare Finder reveals hundreds of tickets at under £20 each way.

One problem may be that Mr Stein was using Trainline, which was inadvertently referred to as a “rail fare comparison site”. In fact, Trainline is a retailer that adds a handling fee for almost all tickets, as well as a 2 per cent credit-card surcharge.

Booking direct avoids these charges and wins other benefits. Buying from Virgin Trains East Coast earns free Wi-Fi throughout the journey, while on the West Coast main line advance ticket holders get automatic compensation for delays of half-an-hour or more.

I shared these thoughts with Mr Stein, who said: “Maybe I was unlucky when I was booking the trains and got lucky when I booked the flights.” He also pointed out that he is restricted to weekend travel, when cheaper advance tickets are more elusive.

So here’s a £55.60 return trip between London and Edinburgh that is available to railcard holders any day you like, with no need to book in advance.

Travel from Euston to Crewe on London Midland for £20.45 return. Take any train onwards to Wigan for £8.80 round trip. Then avail of a long-standing glitch in the space-time continuum on the West Coast main line whereby an off-peak return between Wigan and Edinburgh costs only £26.35 with a railcard on TransPennine Express trains (from the next station down the line, Manchester Oxford Road, the fare almost doubles).

Certainly, some rail fares in Britain are very high, and some air fares in Europe are very low. But if you know where to look, UK train tickets deliver excellent value.