Cheap Breaks UK – Road or Rail?
Posted by Allen
UK Cheap Breaks by Road or Rail?
We started thinking about the question of cheap breaks by road or by rail, the respective merits and downsides toward either train or private car travel here on the cheap breaks blog and I’m afraid it has turned out into something of a monster blog post! Once we got going there were so many factors to take into consideration that the decision is now, if anything, more difficult than ever unless there are specific circumstances for you which point to one or the other modes of transport, which there may well be, but often isn’t.
So here below, for the benefit of anybody looking for cheap breaks in the UK are some of the main issues involved with two of the main options, namely rail and road breaks. Whether to book train tickets or take a car.
‘Staycation’
It seems to be all the vogue these past few years to make a bit of a thing about staycations, the act of taking a holiday within the UK rather than going abroad. Sometimes this could be an extra break added into the busy year, and for some it’s a way of saving money as inflation and exchange rates have made foreign holidays more expensive while people are on ever tighter budgets due to wage freezes, cuts and growing utility and food bills.
But we don’t want to look on the negative side of things here at cheapbreaks, we like to make the most out of any situation and discovering more of the UK is a worthy aspiration for any citizen in good times or bad.
Decisions
Before deciding where to go, how much to spend and where to look there are some basic decisions to be made about the type of breaks that will best fit the bill and one of the first decisions is often going to be about the travel mode. Whether to go by car or by train is the question we’re looking at today, and the answer of course is always going to be “it depends” but we can certainly point out a lot of factors that are going to make that decision easier to make for you.
Comparison
So what we’ve tried to do is to list some of the advantages and disadvantages of both modes of transport, so you can do a reasonably fair comparison of the two main types of cheap breaks available.
1. Advantages of Self Drive Breaks
Let’s start by considering cheap breaks by road, and by that we are not looking at coach trips in this instance, that will have to be for another blog, so we are talking about self drive breaks in the UK either taking your own car or else hiring one for the duration of the holiday.
Door to door
One of the main advantages of going by car is that you can travel literally door to door. You don’t need to change trains, get a bus to the station or worry about arriving at your eventual destination late in the evening perhaps. So there is no walking involved, no steps or lifts or waiting rooms, no underpasses, overpasses, bridges, pedestrian crossings or any of the other obstacles that can take up as much of your times as the actual train journey. You just have to get that car from your house to the location where you’ll be staying. The luggage travels from door to door too, so you won’t be dragging it around the town and stations.
If you own a car, you might as well use it
No matter how the price comparisons work out between car travel and the railways, if you need to own a car anyway, perhaps for work, or the school run, then it’s easy to come to the conclusion that you might as well get the use out of it, in part to justify the considerable overheads of ownership. Be a bit careful with this one though, because you still need to look at the advantages of rail travel which will be described in just as much detail a bit later on, and also consider the hidden expenses of racking up the mileage on a private car, such as depreciation and maintenance costs. It’s not just the petrol.
Tax, insurance, maintenance, depreciation all fixed costs
The fixed costs of car ownership cannot be denied though, and once you have paid for the annual motor vehicle tax, insurance and maintenance and depreciation based on age of the car, then the cost of NOT making use of the car for more than a couple if days can seem like a bit of a waste.You can’t claim the expenditure back again and put it towards the train fare.
4 passengers plus luggage
How many people will be in your entourage? Even a small family car can carry three or four passengers plus luggage in relative comfort so if you have that many in your party it’s most likely to be more economical by car, but if it’s a family with a family railcard then there are often deals to be had such as 2 kids go free with 2 adults which can tip the balance back towards the train again.
Air conditioning, own entertainment
Modern cars have air conditioning systems, heating, and in-car entertainment centres so even if you get stuck in a traffic jam there’s no need to get all hot and irritable. You can just sit in comfortable surroundings listening to your favourite music with the windows wound right up so that nothing from the outside world can disturb you.
Off the main tracks
The thing about cheap breaks by car, is it’s not just about choosing a particular mode of transport in order to get to a chosen destination, the choice of mode actually affects the possibilities open to you for choosing where you can visit at all. Rail travel by definition keeps you on the main tracks, where everybody else goes, from population centre to population centre and there are huge tracts of the British Isles which are only really accessible by road. It’s a great shame, because it wasn’t always like this, but since the Doctor Beeching cuts of huge numbers of smaller branch lines back in the 1960s and 70s, the rail network is really only serving the cities and major towns. And one of the main purposes of going away for a break may well be to get away from such places! By taking a car you can explore quieter back roads, wilderness areas, coasts and estuaries, uplands and depopulated areas where life is very different to the hectic pace of the city. If the last thing you want to do is be surrounded by other human beings who are travelling or going about their business then taking the car out to one of the rural backwaters may be just the ticket.
Flexible itinerary
Then when you get there, if you don’t like it you an always go somewhere else! A party in a car can decide when and where to proceed, without being bound by timetables or tickets. Stop when and where you like, take a diversion, go on a long circular or triangular tour, change your mind as many times as you like. It doesn’t matter because with a car you always have that flexibility, whether you use it or not.
No Sunday engineering works
If you’ve ever endured the misery of the rail replacement bus service on a Sunday due to planned engineering works then you’ll appreciate the fact that never happens if you travel by car. Oh no, there’s just the permanent road works, cones and counterflows from the Hanger Lane Gyratory System onwards to contend with!
Sitting next to other passengers
The train may be more relaxing than having to drive a car in many circumstances but at least with your own family car you are only sharing the compartment with your own passengers, with whom you have presumably chosen to share your holiday. That should greatly reduce the risk of ending up stuck next to somebody unbearably noisy or irritating, we hope.
No waiting around on cold drafty stations
Yet another advantage of cheap breaks by car is really again, just another way of pointing out one of the downsides of rail travel. In a car, you choose your own schedule and depart when everybody is ready, so there’s no waiting around for a late train, or indeed one that is on time when you arrived at the station deliberately twenty minutes early because you never know when you night get stuck behind a tractor.
Useful to have a car with you when camping or picnics
A car can really be a vital part of the holiday when you use it for camping and picnics. It’s a relatively safe place to lock things away such as valuables, and the boot can carry all sorts of useful equipment and provisions which may come in handy for an ad hoc hunger stop or delightful meal with a view.
Shelter and comfort
And if the weather turns nasty, well you have a nice dry place in which to sit on padded reclining seats, you can even sleep in the car if some disaster happens like a flooded sleeping bag or hurricane force winds.
2. Advantages of Breaks By Rail
So now, at last we come to examine the advantages of rail travel for away breaks. It cannot be an exact cost-for-cost comparison, because the economics and benefits are complicated, so you have to weigh up the benefits and challenges of each mode of transport in terms of the overall experience and dependencies.
You don’t need to drive
For example if you are the person who would be driving, then the journey by train should be less tiring on your eyes, nerves, back, neck and temperament. You may actually enjoy driving in some circumstances, when there is little traffic and the roads are good – but planning a holiday by train allows you to get much further afield more quickly, so can take you to places beyond reach by car.
The journey is part of the break
Once you’ve found your seat and settled down in the carriage you can enjoy the train journey as part of the holiday. Fields, hills and rivers whizz past the window as you travel in straight lines and gentle curves quietly towards the destination.
Non drivers can travel alone
There is one category of travellers for whom rail travel affords a particular freedom and they are the non-drivers. As a train passenger, you are free to travel alone if you wish to, or with a party of non-drivers who wouldn’t be able to go away at all otherwise without being totally dependent on somebody else, a possibly less than enthusiastic car driver.
View the landscape instead of the traffic ahead
The view from the train will almost always be better than that from a motor vehicle, due to the massive nature of multi-lane roads compared to railway lines, and because both the embankment and the seating position within the railway carriage are much higher up than that of a vehicle on the motorway, so you get to see far more than just the traffic ahead and to either side.
Faster
There’s only one ultra high-speed railway line within the UK so far, and that’s High Speed One, the line the Eurostar and other trains use from London St Pancras through Essex and Kent towards the Channel Tunnel and beyond, but any of the main intercity routes will be much quicker than the car as well. London to Edinburgh in four and a half hours for example, would reasonably take two days by car if you don’t want to risk the danger of driving while dangerously overtired.
City to city
So if your planned sojourn is going to be a city-to-city break then the train is by far the best option. It will still be faster, thus allowing a longer time on the actual break itself, provided you have reasonably good transport to the nearest city station, and if you don’t it’s probably because you already live somewhere wonderfully remote and exotic so you don’t need to go away in the first place! If you do live near a station you may also own a car for shopping, local trips and touring type breaks but the train would naturally be the first choice for breaks away from the area.
Cheaper than petrol if booked well in advance
The trick with getting the best price rail tickets is to book in advance, online, and to check both the period return and two single journey prices. Supersavers superadvance and supergroup saver tickets are all restricted to certain train services so you need to be flexible with your dates and times and plan forward at least three weeks to get the best bargains. But if you do manage to snag the lowest prices then even with a party of only two people it can work out a lot cheaper than the equivalent cost of just the petrol for a private car, let alone all the other costs involved in running a car on a road journey.
No parking charges or problems
With local authorities’ budgets being constrained by local business recession and national government cuts, they are all looking at motorists as a source of revenue these days, and that means ever restricted parking and increasing charges, in addition to congestion charges in some areas such as London. The train of course relieves you of all parking, navigation and traffic problems.
Dinner on The Train
Motorway service stations are dreadful places, and all the time you are refueling your own personal tank with low-grade and expensive snacks you aren’t getting anywhere closer to your destination. But when was the last time you ate in a good intercity buffet car service? No longer are there stewed tea urns and curling up at the edges sandwiches, those days are gone. Now you can get healthy nutritious wraps and salads, freshly grilled steak hache and high-end branded potato crisps with an interesting selection of regional beers and continental wines from the minimarket style onboard shop. So you can eat and drink in comfort without interrupting your progress towards the holiday destination of choice.
Read a book, or use the wifi or power
Five hours spent driving a car is just dead time. You’ve covered the miles, but done nothing else of value, but on the train you could have read a whole novel, watched a couple of DVDs ( with the headphones plugged in of course) or indulged in some web browsing or online social networking using the onboard wifi or ambient 3G mobile broadband and taking advantage of the power supply sockets next to most seats on many of the modern intercity train services.
Catch the Sleeper, Sleeping Carriage or Couchette
Finally, did you know you can still book sleeper carriage rooms on some services, such as Euston to Glasgow or Paddington to Penzance? It’s a premium rate, first class service but you do get to steal almost a whole day onto your break or save one nights hotel bill, whichever way you like to look at it.
Paddington Station
So there we have it. A lit of no less than twelve reasons to take the car for cheap breaks in the Uk followed by eleven reasons to take the train. Now I’m sure we’ve left out something equally important to you when making your mind up, and probably you can see alternative points of view which would influence the decision differently so we’d love to hear what you think after all this. Does anything you’ve read make you want to make some new plans or alter your thoughts in any way? What are YOUR main reasons for choosing the alternative you like to take most often?
UK hotel prices drop significantly as hotel owners try to tempt holidaymakers to stay at home
Posted by Allen
According to figures released this week by Hotels.com, UK hotel room prices fell 12% to £93 per night in the last three months of 2008, compared with the same period in 2007
In contrast British tourists are having to pay more for accommodation at many popular overseas destinations, supporting suggestions that Brits will turn their backs on destinations such as Spain and are instead planning to spend this years holidays in the UK.
But it’s not just Spain where prices are soaring, one night in a Swiss hotel rose, on average, to £120 – an increase of 22% – and France, Holland and Greece saw rises of 11%, 14% and 15% respectively.
Figures for individual cities showed average London hotel room rates dipping 12%, Edinburgh prices falling from £99 to £95 and Belfast room rates down 17% to £83. Bucking the trend was Cardiff, where average prices rose slightly from £87 at the end of 2007 to £93 at the end of last year.
The most expensive city at the end of 2008 was Moscow with rooms costing an average of £207 a night, although the biggest percentage increase was in Rio de Janeiro, where room rates rose 63% to £164 at the end of last year.
Other destinations with rising prices included, Geneva up 34% to £136, Zurich up 20% to £119, Washington DC up 18% to £115 per night, Paris rising 13% to £112 and Munich up 10% to £93.
The least expensive major city at the end of last year was the Latvian capital Riga where average rooms cost just £50 a night.
Hotels.com worldwide president David Roche said: “Our report shows that hoteliers around the world are being forced to cut rates to fill their rooms.
“Due to weak sterling, UK travellers will have to work a bit harder to find the bargains but there are still plenty to be had.
“For travellers from any part of the world, this is a great time to explore: travel has not been this cheap since January 2004.”
“The indications are that 2009 will continue to be a good year for travellers. If sterling strengthens, UK travellers will start enjoying the great savings our European and US counterparts are currently experiencing.”
Overall, the average price for a night in a UK hotel fell to £93 in the last three months of 2008.
My Trip to London ’07 – Part Two
Posted by Allen
Part two of my break in the capital, and what I got up to there. Enjoy! 
Places featured –
1. London Eye Area
2. Imperial War Museum
3. Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre
4. The British Railway
Part One — http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZ5O2fS80co
Duration : 0:4:17
Cheap breaks within the UK
Posted by Allen
Cheap Breaks UK
The advantages of staying within the UK for taking cheap breaks from home and work are becoming clearer to more and more people turning their backs on the hidden costs of last minute flights to Europe. Inflation in the UK has been at a lower level than the Eurozone for some time, so spending your hard earned cash in pounds sterling is becoming better value all round. But where in the UK will you go for a cheap break that compares with the sun, sea and rioja?
Cheap Breaks in Scotland
Scotland is often overlooked by southerners because of the perceived distance and stories about the midges but climate is particularly interesting during the British summer and autumn. The coastal areas can be remarkably mild and offer cheap breaks in rented cottages or bed and breakfast with all the beauty of Cornish cliffs coves and beaches but without the traffic jams and over crowding you get in Newquay in the high season. The east coast railway is now very fast fro London to Edinburgh in only four and a half hours.
Cheap breaks in London
Ok, London is known as one of the most expensive cities in the world to stay in but that’s because of all the business conferences and meetings realted to the finance industry. American tourists also get hit by their expectations to be able to stick with certain well known hotel chains and other brands but if you are a regular visitor to the capital then you can get to know your way around such that it’s possible to be well equiped to recognise cheap breaks in London when they are offered. How would a three star hotel in central London, best seats to see the classic show “Les Miserables” and return rail tickets from Chester all for only £193 each suit your pocket for example? That’s a genuine package that a certain Miss Jones put together for herself just yesterday and I think you’ll agree it’s got to be one of the best cheap breaks available in the country and it’s for right here in London.
