Great Western Coffee Shop

Hi, if you have a ticket valid "via London", which covers the underground between the respective London termini (e.g. Paddington and Victoria), can you use it to travel from one of those points to some other intermediate station, for example if you want to spend some time in London? Obviously you'd need to pay for a ticket to complete the journey across London, but that would mean buying one ticket rather than two.

All explained here http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/times_fares/ticket_types/46587.aspx#travelling_connect (http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/times_fares/ticket_types/46587.aspx#travelling_connect)

As you correctly assumed, you can exit from an intermediate Underground station, but you would have to purchase another ticket or use your Oyster or contactless payment card to continue your journey on the Underground.

What it says is:

I suspect you are more accurate than the "real thing", chrisr_75, which appears to stipulate that you must purchase another ticket and thus excludes a continued journey on a payment card!!  :D  Probably a question of the 'law' not keeping up with the technology.

I guess that opens up the debate as to what exactly constitutes buying a ticket and what a ticket actually is - does it have to be a physical item, or is it simply permission to commence a journey? One could argue that using an Oyster card or contactless debit/credit card is purchasing a ticket, if you think of a ticket as being permission to travel rather than an actual physical item!

AFAIK if exiting at a station that is not on the interchange list you may have to go through the manual gate. I have broken journeys like this several times and the automatic barrier has rejected my ticket (e.g. at Leicester Square). Obviously on an advance this is not allowed. It makes sense to use oyster/contactless for the second part of the journey of course (or like myself you may prefer just to walk it).