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?

Happy New Year for 2010 from all at the Cheap Breaks blog.

The last year has seen some fallback in cheap breaks abroad from the UK due to the Strength of the Euro against the pound whilst there’s been a resurgence of cheap breaks and short city breaks within the UK.

Next year will see further developments and small changes but one things for certain, with modern life the way it is there’ll always be a need from time to time to get away from it all somehow, somewhere.

Happy New Year everybody wherever you are, and may your 2010 dreams all come true.

I took my mum to brussels for a treat and really enjoyed it. We stayed in Novotel and travelled there first class on the eurostar from waterloo in London.
Hope you enjoy. Your comments and ratings are appreciated.

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