Transport costs

So, the travel PLN for this summer's little adventure is this:

Up to Edinburgh, stay overnight (or two nights? Need to speak to martling and others up there and find out crashspace), then from there to Inverness, catch a bus to Culbokie, spend two weeks with the hippies, then from there go to Mark, Somerset for a week of Ki-Aikido training. Then back home to London.

Now, I'm not really in good enough shape to take the bus - these are long, long drives, and I get bus-sick, and buses have a lot less space than trains do, and what with one thing and another I just don't think I can do long bus trips. Flying does take an awful lot of fuel, and invariably involves almost as much travel as taking the train, because of getting to and from airports at each end. So, I'm looking at taking the train.

I'm going to get saver tickets - open would be better, because then I could travel anytime, but saver tickets let me get away if the hippies all turn out to be moonies or whatever, and leave wiggle room for travel to and from Somerset (as I'll probably be travelling back with hairyears and he is as chaotic as I am when it comes to leaving at pre-arranged times). I'd get supersaver but they disable those for the summer.

This is going to cost £301.30.

Ow. That's if I buy the tickets, um, today. Sadly my Young Person's Railcard expires 28th July and I will not be able to renew it, being Too Old, until after I'm back at Trinty in September, so I won't be able to use it except for the single up to Edinburgh.

That's just the trains; it doesn't count the bus from Inverness to Culbokie and back, if such a thing even exists (may have to go halfies on a cab; it's only about 12 miles but I'm not sure how much this will cost), or the cab from Highbridge & Burnham to Mark, Somerset and back. I'm hoping to cadge lifts from various people for some of that but for obvious reasons I don't want to get into a car with a complete stranger in Inverness, and I may not have much luck with the Aikido bit, so I need to make sure I have the cashflow reserves to cover a few £20 cab rides.

I'm really annoyed that they've changed the policy on missed trains when you book specific trains; it used to be that if you booked a specific train but missed it or wanted to travel on another you could just pay a small fee. Now if you do that you have to buy a whole new standard-priced ticket, which is prohibitively expensive.

All-network rail passes are £565 for 14 days, though, so really not a good alternative here.

And people wonder why so many in the UK decide to drive...