I am very pleased for all of you who have booked your train tickets and got a bargain. Despite looking for tickets on the day that the cheap ones were supposed to go on sale, I am still faced with £113 to get from Liverpool to Morar. This is on Friday 9th May (as I'll be starting to walk on the Saturday).

Does anyone know how I can find out if cheap fares were ever available on that date? Of if they have not yet been released?

On 28th Feb the same journey is £53. £27 on 14th March and £42 on 28th March - so cheaper fares ARE available sometimes on a Friday on that route.

I could get the price down to £33.70 if I did not mind arriving at Morar at 2335 but that seems a bit late to be disturbing a B&B and I wouldn't fancy the walk to the campsite at that time of night.

I am currently weighing up the options of staying in Glasgow or Tyndrum/Bridge of Orchy and reaching Morar on the Saturday.

The coast-to-coast bit will be easy after this!

Hi Judith,

Try this:

Search for only Liverpool to Glasgow in the first instance. Friday 9th is busy but £18 is still available for Liverpool Lime Street 6:57 to Glasgow Central 10:31, as a Standard Advance Single ticket.

Glasgow Queen Street 12:21 to Morar 17:36 is showing up as full fare (Anytime) at £32.90, but buying these 2 tickets at least gets you down to £50.90.

I will try a couple of splits on the Morar leg to see if the price there can be reduced and e-mail you if so. To try it yourself, have a look at where the Glasgow - Morar train stops. It is legitimate to split your tickets to any station where the train stops. E.g. if you found you could still get an Advance Single from Glasgow Queen Street to say Corrour, then it is fine to buy the advance single from Glasgow to Corrour, then a standard from Corrour to Morar.

I think the problem is that from Liverpool to Morar typically routes over three different train operators so there may be fewer advance singles allocated for the whole journey and it's busy around the time of the Challenge. So it helps to search for sections of the journey separately.

Jaya John

Thanks Jaya John

I can get the Glasgow to Morar leg quite cheaply. £15.70. It should be £32.90 but if you say you want to go to Mallaig (one stop further) it comes down to half-price. (Crazy, I know).

There was one piece of information I did not give you. I don't like getting up early! To get the 6:57 from Liverpool I would have to leave the house at 06:00 and that's way too early for me. It may be the only way to get a reasonable fare, though.

The thing that I find puzzling/annoying is that it's apparently impossible to find out if cheaper tickets were ever available. If I knew that there had been three cheap tickets on this train and I had been too slow to buy one then at least I'd know to stop looking. As it is, I am hoping that maybe the prices may come down ...... but I am probably too late.

Thanks for your help.

Good news, and I'm posting it in case useful to others:

You can still get the 12:38 Dalmuir to Morar 17:36 for £15.30, an Advance Single ticket. That should give you a reserved seat for most of the journey too.

Then you just have to add on a £3.40 Anytime ticket for Glasgow Queen Street to Dalmuir to cover the initial gap.

You could board the same 12:21 departure from Queen Street to save changing trains, or take any of a multitude of earlier trains between Glasgow Central or Glasgow QS and Dalmuir (it's heavily served).

That will get things down to £36.70 now

Jaya John

You're enjoying this puzzle, aren't you!

OK, so it's a case of how much is my lie-in worth to me? £80? I suppose I can go back to sleep on the train.

Thanks for doing the calculations.

And if you fancy it, Click here to take the entire trip in real time This is very wonderful. It's a continous 4 1/2 video shot from the driver's cab taking you from Glasgow to Mallaig. Wild and crazy!

Judith, puzzles are fun, yes

The Puzzle of the Fairly 'ffordable Fare and the Lovely Lasting Lie-In looks intractable this time, to me at least. Someone has used up all the cheap later tickets from Liverpool to Glasgow (ideally you'd want say the 7:57 - 11:16, but is it worth the +£50?), and they have apparently done for various intermediate combinations as well. As you should be able to get seat reservations, trying to sleep on the train sounds worth a go.

On whether fares may go down later if you keep looking: from a few years of trying to optimise rail costs for mainly the Challenge and some trips in the south (i.e. not vast experience), I haven't yet seen fares go lower later on, unlike airlines, where various algorithms may be used for sales, so airfares may sometimes go lower at a later date, depending on what a particular airline does. I'd be glad to hear from others though to compare notes.

Vicky, glad that worked out

Hey! The prices came down!! £41.40 from Liverpool to Mallaig by splitting the journey. The Preston to Glasgow leg has come down from £61 to £13.

Happy now. Thanks for all the tips - but it turns out that patience was all I needed.

.... and I don't need to get up really early and I will arrive before the sun goes down. Success.

Thanks John, you've just saved me £35 on a train ticket. I'd looked at a number of combinations but hadn't got round to trying out Dalmuir.

My bank account thanks you too!