Bath Spa - Winsford return

[whole diary]

[Mark A]

Checking fares online... Bath Spa to Winsford, with a railcard, off-peak, on the national rail site, £82 return, route 'Any permitted'.

On the TfW^▸ (Transport for Wales) site, £58 return and, for the ticket, select 'Details' and that's route 'Any permitted' too - which can't be right (& the £58 fare corresponds to 'Via Hereford'...).

Tempted to buy the TfW variety and check the wording on the ticket as printed, as, isn't there an indication of the routing conditions on the ticket itself?

Mark

[froome]

Checking fares online... Bath Spa to Winsford, with a railcard, off-peak, on the national rail site, £82 return, route 'Any permitted'.

On the TfW^▸ (Transport for Wales) site, £58 return and, for the ticket, select 'Details' and that's route 'Any permitted' too - which can't be right (& the £58 fare corresponds to 'Via Hereford'...).

Tempted to buy the TfW variety and check the wording on the ticket as printed, as, isn't there an indication of the routing conditions on the ticket itself?

Mark

The ticket will say 'via Hereford' (at least all TfW tickets I've bought from Bath Spa to points up north say that), which means you need to travel via Hereford, so not directly from Bristol to Birmingham. Presumably the 'any permitted' refers to any permitted via Hereford, so can mean travelling to Newport and then northwards or travelling via Worcester to Hereford and then northwards.

[Ralph Ayres]

Odd. I get the £58 fare on nationalrail.co.uk and it's Any Permitted according to https://www.brfares.com/!fares?orig=BTH^» (Bath Spa - next trains)&dest=WSF&rlc=SRN&period=20231001. VIA HEREFORD is a tad cheaper but would exclude useful routes via Birmingham. I can't get an £82 fare at all. I often have trouble with NRE^▸ (National Rail Enquiries) retaining old info so I'd suspect a cache issue.

[Mark A]

*Eats worms* - apologies, my figures were all over the place. Looked it up again and ticked the right boxes this time. With a railcard, any permitted route to Winsford is £58 off-peak return, via Hereford is £53.75 (and is a useful-for-some-destinations anytime return) and both National Rail and TfW^▸ (Transport for Wales) agree with each other.

Mark