Geoff and Vicki finally finished their All The Stations journey yesterday, after almost 15 weeks on the trains. They started out in Penzance back in May and reached Wick yesterday evening, having visited all of Britain's 2563 National Rail stations. In doing so they've travelled the length and breadth of the country, via almost everywhere, including places you'll never go, and knocked out over 50 videos along the way. Damned impressive stuff.
Should you ever want to follow in their footsteps and undertake a lengthy railway adventure, the ticket you need is an All Line Rover. Try gadding about wherever you like on a normal ticket and an inspector will shake their head, because random meandering's not allowed. Meanwhile all the other rover tickets, of which there are many, are geographically quite restrictive. But an All Line Rover allows allows unlimited travel on any National Rail services for either 7 or 14 consecutive days (certain peak trains excepted, terms and conditions apply), which is definitely the way to go.
Walk-up tickets for some long-distance journeys are ridiculously expensive, in which case £70 a day is a bargain. But unless you're planning to do a lot of cross-country journeys without getting off to explore, those aren't very appealing fares.
So here's some news that may make you very cross. If you're not British, you can travel for half price.
The Britail GB Pass is sold online by Visit Britain and allows 8 days unlimited rail travel for £250. Several other durations are available, including 15 days for £372, which is half the cost of the equivalent All Line Rover. What's more a Britrail GB Pass has no peak time restrictions, so it's actually a better product. But it's only available to tourists coming from abroad. As the website confirms, "You can't buy a BritRail Pass if you have a UK passport".
BritRail GB Pass
3 days
£140
£47 a day
BritRail GB Pass
4 days
£173
£43 a day
BritRail GB Pass
8 days
£250
£31 a day
BritRail GB Pass
15 days
£372
£25 a day
BritRail GB Pass
22 days
£466
£21 a day
BritRail GB Pass
1 month
£550
£18 a day
Look, overseas tourists can even buy a 22-day go-anywhere rail ticket for less money than Britons pay for 7 days. How can that fare be fair?
Stringent checks are made to ensure you can't buy a Britrail GB Pass if you're not entitled to one. You have to provide the date of your outbound departure from the UK, plus details of the flight number, train or ferry booking number, and you have to be staying in the country for 6 months or less. During ticket checks inspectors will expect to see "proof of return travel from Britain", and if you live here you can't do that, so you have to pay twice as much.
Britrail GB Passes are clearly marketed as offering "preferential rates as an overseas visitor". That's great, if it helps overseas visitors take the train rather than fly or waste time travelling by coach. But there is a general underlying air of admitting Britain's fare system is ridiculously complicated, so buy this expensive ticket and save the worry of having to queue up or pre-book tickets before you arrive.
Other Britrail Passes are available, but UK residents can't buy any of those either. For example the BritRail England Pass costs £199 for 8 days, which sounds nice, but you can't have one. Only if you surrendered your passport and went and lived abroad could you have the freedom of England's railways for £25 a day.
All of this preferential treatment might make you very cross. But if you are peeved, the thing to be angry about isn't "why do foreigners pay half price?" It's "why do Britons have to pay twice as much?"
