Any additional ideas for Oxford to Birmingham Snow Hill splits...?

[whole diary]

[inspector_blakey]

I'm going to be staying in Oxford in a couple of weeks' time and planning on meeting my sister in Birmingham for lunch one day (either Monday 17 Oct or Tuesday 18 Oct, but I don't think that makes a lot of difference).

She works near Snow Hill, so I was planning on taking an XC^▸ (Cross Country Trains (franchise)) service to Banbury then changing there onto a Chiltern service for the remainder of the journey - this is also partly out of nerdy curiosity as I've never had The Chiltern Experience before now! Aiming to leave Oxford around 1000, probably returning from Brum some time around 1400 so both journeys should be comfortably off-peak. I know that a lot of the Chiltern services from Banbury serve Moor Street rather than Snow Hill, but I'll either walk or jump on an LM^▸ (London Midland - recent franchise) service for the transfer.

I'm not going to play around with Advance fares as my journey plans are not set in stone, and I'm too long in the tooth to have a 16-25 railcard these days so full fare it is! The cheapest OXF^» (Oxford - next trains)-BSW fare I can find is a SVR at GBP 31.20, but this drops to a total of GBP 21.30 if I re-book at Banbury and use CDRs^▸ (Off Peak Day Return [ticket type] (formerly 'Cheap Day')) (OXF - BAN CDR GBP 5.30, then BAN - BSW CDR GBP 16.00). I think a saving of 9.90 is already pretty impressive, but does anyone know of any other splits I could use to get the price down further? Ideally I don't want to be massively limited in the Chiltern services I can use, so a split at, say, Warwick Parkway would be fine, somewhere like Dorridge less so!

Edited to add...
Looks like a split at WRP saves me an additional 60p! Whoever said the fares system was a mess?!

[ChrisB]

You're about there....

[eightf48544]

With the money you saved you can try Chiltern Mainline Business offering on the 16:55 ex Moor Street it stops at WPR and Banbury. Only ^10 upgrade for a Mark 3 First!

[ChrisB]

Sure that's a 'silver train'?

I thought the last one south was 1555?

[inspector_blakey]

I did vaguely consider working my journey around the 'Silver Service' and upgrading, but unfortunately the times aren't really right, and I don't think that the CDRs^▸ (Off Peak Day Return [ticket type] (formerly 'Cheap Day')) are available on them either. No matter, the 168s look nice enough.

[ChrisB]

CDRs^▸ (Off Peak Day Return [ticket type] (formerly 'Cheap Day')) are available on silver trains, upgradable if using Business Zone.