[suws-members] Re: Calling all 'ferry' experts. Not SUWS related.

[Murray Colpman]

On 13/02/15 20:31, Raphael Sikorski wrote:
>
> When searching all London stations no other routes to Victoria appear
> but when searching for Victoria specifically a number of indirect and
> faster routes appear but which do not seem to be valid.
> Could I buy the cheaper ticket and still travel on the indirect routes
> or would I get into trouble?
The cheap ticket to Victoria is effectively* only valid on Southern
services — ones that go via the south coast first. If the "indirect and
faster" routes require going on a South West Ferries service to Clapham
Junction or London Waterloo, then it won't be valid on the cheaper ticket.

There is a slightly cheaper way (unfortunately the price seems to have
gone up recently so it's almost the same price as a normal ticket) that
involves getting a specific ticket to Brighton (Southampton to Brighton
route Not Via London) which will take you as far as Clapham Junction on
the fast services, then you can get a Clapham Junction to London single
or use an Oyster card (this requires the train you're on to stop at
Clapham Junction, which not all of them do). But this might not be worth
it due to the now small difference in price (which is really quite
annoying, it used to be much cheaper!). But if you chose to do this you
probably wouldn't get any hassle, I've done it many times before.

There are other tickets which are much cheaper but they exploit much
bigger loopholes, and I would not be confident doing them myself
(despite knowing they're valid).

Murray.



* Not technically, but for the fastest possible journey this is true