@ABGM
If you really want to save money travelling from gatwick to central London Get any train to East Croydon using your debit/credit card to East Croydon. Exit the train and exit the the barriers. Then tap to enter again and get the next train to central London. It’s then charged as 2 journey’s and could be charged at £5.40 off peak or £7.40 on peak. Which is cheaper than staying on the train all the way to London. Whether you can be bothered to save a few pounds?
BTW the cheapest way to pay for your journey is to use debit/credit card and just tap the yellow circle at the barrier and where ever you exit in London. You can switch to using tube in central London and it’ll class the whole journey as one and charge you one fare. Just remember you must tap in and out at the barriers for all London transport apart from buses where you just tap next to the driver as buses are charged a flat fare.
Also look at daily fare caps in London for bus travel only and for multiple transport caps.
Citymapper app is good in many UK towns and cities to give you an idea of routes, transport and costs.
If you plan to use public transport:
- Before applying for a sit, even if the sit is shown as “accessible by public transport”, it’s best not to assume that any buses or trains go from where the sit is to wherever you want to go from and to, and at times that would work for you as some routes are only run during school term times, at the beginning or end of the school day. Sometimes the timings are such that you’d only get an hour or so at the destination. I find Rome2Rio to be helpful.
- Even when towns & cities look close on the map, it may require changes and take much longer than you think, especially if the sit isn’t within walking distance of the route. For example with 2 popular places to visit: Winchester to Salisbury is a 30 min drive plus park & ride times, by train is just over an hour with 1 change, by bus it’s not worth considering.
- If the sit is well into the future it’s worth bearing in mind that sometimes local bus routes/times get cut - such as the one from where I live to the next town where the admin centre is for our area.
- local buses (even from town to town) might take a “scenic route” (I.e. not direct) which can be great if you want to see more of the area from the height of a bus seat (I’m quite nosy & like seeing over hedges!) and have the time for this.
LOVE citymapper!! And your suggestion to split trips for a lower fare is awesome
If you book with Trainline (app or web) it finds split fares for you. It also shows you the prices of journies around the time you are thinking of traveling which is handy if you can be flexible.
I use Trainline all the time. There’s no fee to book your tickets through it. If you’re over 60 (senior) you can buy a railcard which will save you up to 30% on any train fare. Also, if you book around 6 weeks prior to travel it’s always cheaper. But ALWAYS pre book tickets because it’s nearly always cheaper than in the station.
@temba isn’t it whoever blinks first has to reverse! 
And ducking and weaving around parked cars on narrow streets to give way to oncoming traffic is a hair raising experience for first timers in the UK! We soon learned the rules, if you have to cross on to the wrong side of the road to get around parked cars then you had to give way to the oncoming vehicle.
And then there is walking the dogs on narrow country roads with hedgerows each side & no footpaths! Yikes! Make sure you wear something bright.
@Elsa1 we use Trainline all the time with a two together railcard and always get charged a booking fee. How do you book “fee free”?
Google Maps is also great for giving you public transport route steps
@ABGM home delivered groceries are the way to go if you don’t have a car. We are Australian and did 5 months / 11 sits in the UK relying on public transport only. We discovered Ocado when we arrived and used them almost exclusively for online groceries home delivered. They don’t have any physical stores, have great prices including M&S branded foods. We love them. You can usually score 3 months free delivery when you sign up. If we weren’t in an Ocado delivery area (very rarely) we used Sainsburys, Tesco or Waitrose for home delivered groceries. It was great as we’re very used to getting our groceries delivered at home.
You know, I’ve just looked at my expense receipts, and I’m wrong. There is a small booking fee on some of my tickets. It must be charged over a certain amount and a % because it’s not always the same. It’s not much though, and for the convenience of booking early, it’s perfect. We used to have two together but now have separate rail cards because I sometimes travel without my husband.
If you’re going to be walking with dogs (or even without dogs) across countryside that includes fields of cattle, there’s a really sensible guide - do an internet search for Sean the Sheepman, then look for his video on “how to stay safe around cattle”. Actually, all his videos on working with his dogs are a great watch.
Guess I need to get current with my knowledge of phones - I didn’t think Apple phones had SIM cards?
The older models have SIM cards. The newer ones use e-SIMs.
For anyone interested in the phone aspect:
My US phone doesn’t work abroad. For people like myself or those who don’t have a smartphone, you can easily buy an unlocked phone online --I have always used Amazon. The one I have now works great and it was under 100 USD–I don’t need anything fancy.
It doesn’t doesn’t support e-sim so I just put in a local one wherever I go.
Doing this in the UK is especially easy. Just got here a few days ago–Glasgow airport-- and the convenience store in the airport sold sims from a few different companies. You just buy it and put it in yourself, and it worked right away.
Bigger airports, like Heathrow, may have providers on site that you can buy them from and they will put it in for you. but not sure. That is pretty typical in most major international airports.
Last time I was here I flew into Luton Airport and I am pretty sure they had a SIM vending machine so that may be an option too in places. Our hotel was near a mall in town, and one of the cell carriers had a store there, so we bought the SIM from them and they put it in for us. Getting the card in town at the provider’s store is something we have done many times and it’s always an easy experience.
Yup, I’ve bought SIM cards over the years at airport shops and vending machines. Something to consider: If your purchase from a machine doesn’t work, you’re out of luck, because the process to replace it isn’t feasible on most visitors’ timelines and logistics. Because of that, I decided to go to shops instead when I used to use SIM cards.
Depending on where you go, some airports also have currency exchange kiosks staffed by people who can sell you SIM cards.
Yes I would probably not buy them from the vending machine either.
Yup, I had one not work from a vending machine in Russia and ended up buying another at a shop.
Some countries even give visitors free SIM cards as promos. Like I stayed at a London hotel before a sit, to do sightseeing without obligations. When I asked the reception folks where the closest carrier shop was, they just gave me a couple of promo SIMs. That tied me over.
chert voz’mi
(‘damn it’ in Russian)
Please use cash wherever possible. It’s very easy to access cash at ATM’s, all towns have at least one, you can often find them at petrol stations and post offices will also allow you to withdraw cash. I have only come across one business that didn’t want me to pay in cash; when I turned to leave they relented. Even buses accept cash (most people pay by card).
Agree re use of the Wise card for withdrawing cash. I use it on all my overseas trips.
Enjoy your trip!
It’s generally safer to use contactless payments or credit cards. No need to carry cash, and depending on your credit cards, many of them offer protections, such as purchase protection (say if purchases are damaged or stolen), insurance coverage and rewards points. Plus, depending on the purchase, some credit card issuers will protect you against scams and defects, because you can launch a dispute.
For many Americans, because we have such a competitive and robust credit card market, many of us have credit cards that don’t charge foreign transaction fees. Some other countries have that as well with certain credit cards.
If you use cash, many of us can withdraw with our ATM cards. I do that abroad in small amounts, for tips for valets, bellhops, maids, public toilets that require payment or have someone to tip. Nowadays, rarely do places not take credit cards or contactless payment. Of course, depends on which countries you travel to. But with carrying cash, you risk more if you end up getting pick-pocketed or lose your wallet.
And some people trick tourists by giving less change than they’re entitled to. That’s an old scam involving cash. They can’t pull that with contactless payments or credit cards.
Wise is useful for full time nomads who switch countries or others who travel abroad frequently, but most folks don’t travel enough to necessarily make it worthwhile.