If, like me, you find the reality of trying to get a family from A to B on a train a jaw-droppingly expensive and therefore an almost always abandoned experience, check out The man in Seat Sixty-One.
One of the train ticketing websites, Trainline.com, has today been pushing its latest brilliant offer of tickets for just £9 in June and July. But as ever when I try to book I find it would cost a family of four more than £300 to visit Newcastle from London for the weekend. Not bad, you may argue. But not £9 each way each either. Not on the days and times I want to go and not as cheap as jumping in the car.
But help is here. There are alternatives to Trainline.com and there is a world of affordable rail travel out there if only you can work out the fares and the timetables. And that is where the man in seat sixty-one comes in.
Seat sixty-one is 'The Man's' favourite seat on the Eurostar trains between London and the Continent. He's done it a few times, you see. And he argues that the Eurostar has opened up Britain to a network of railway freedom that previously we could only oggle at from the cliffs of Dover.
Whether you can find the affordable fares he promises is something I have not been able to do. But it doesn't really matter because spending a lunch hour studying the possiblities is a wonderful bit of escapism. Check out...
http://www.seat61.com/UKtravel.htm
And once you're hooked: buy the book
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