Cotswold Eagle

4 hours ago, Globaliser said:

It takes about 10 minutes to walk from St James's Park Tube to the Clermont Victoria, so that's how much further away you would be

Or if you end up on the tube, one stop, around two minutes 😀

As always, it depends on what sites and attractions. If you moved to St James’s Park, you’re marginally closer to Westminster Abbey, Houses of Parliament, Cabinet War Rooms etc. For Buckingham Palace it’s much of a muchness (depending if you want the front, the back or the Royal Mews). You’d be a little further away from Hyde Park, Kensington Gardens, the museums in South Kensington. 
 

But it’s really a marginal consideration, in my view - add it in to your decision matrix if you know what you’ll be doing, but don’t let it dominate.  

The awfulness of the drive from central London to Gatwick is one of the few things that unites us on this board, I think. I have a pad not too far from London Bridge and I have taken the longer early morning drive from the Cotswolds, rather than stage from my flat in town, to get to Gatwick for an early flight... I'll even pay for the airport hotel instead. 

And Gatwick at that time can be a zoo, a completely surreal out of time experience, particularly in any of the licensed premises 🤣

2 hours ago, John Bull said:

But at Waterloo, for instance, the barriers are at each pair of platforms - so you need a valid ticket for a train leaving from those platforms.

I don't know the barrier layout at Clapham Junction. 

 

Clapham Junction has barriers to enter the station, not between the platforms - I suspect partly because there isn't much room and partly because it would be utter chaos given the number of people who change trains there! 

Again, not suggestion anyone take advantage of that to try to game the system😎 For example, one might have to explain at some point why your Advance ticket from Waterloo has not been used at the barriers there....

2 hours ago, markeb said:

Is there actually anything that would keep someone from simply buying an advanced ticket from London Waterloo and boarding at Clapham Junction?

You’d need a valid ticket from Clapham Junction to get through the ticket barriers. 
 

6 minutes ago, gnome12 said:

The automated bag drops that Air Canada uses at Pearson airport in Toronto will reject your bag if it is more than 4 hours before your flight. It has nothing to do with being busy or not.

The OP is flying from Heathrow, not Toronto. 

You check in with whoever is operating your flight, which I think from what you have said is BA.

I am not as confident as others in this thread. Officially the 'anytime on the day' bag drop policy applies to those in Club or First or with BA Executive Club status. If flying economy (or economy plus) long haul, bag drop is from three hours before the flight.

https://www.britishairways.com/content/information/airport-information/london-heathrow-airport/heathrow-t5 (see the 'Bag Drop' section)

I am pretty sure I have heard that this may not be strictly enforced, particularly at quiet times and at the self service bag drops, but I have no experience of this. 

21 minutes ago, John Bull said:

 

Sorry, my feathered friend, but I'm too busy to answer at the moment.

I'll check & get back to you in 4 days' time 😏🤣

 

JB 🙂

I see what you did there 😉🤣

24 minutes ago, John Bull said:

On the LNER website "Advance single" is the left-hand column, and for the morning of 6th August it's showing between £14 and £16, depending on the train time. 

From 13.05 (1.05pm) fares are showing at only £9.70,

JB, like everyone else on this thread, I'm not seeing Advance tickets yet for 6 August. The latest date they are currently showing is 2 August. 

(The fare pattern you describe is showing for 6 JULY, though!)

1 hour ago, princeton123211 said:

The Savoy can be a little bit less expensive than those but it can also be wildly expensive depending on the date. Unless you have access to a good corporate rate it will most likely be above your budge

As so often on this board (at many price points), there may be a mismatch between the OP's budget and aspiration! At $500/night, which really isn't much in London terms anymore, places like either Clermont are probably achievable, but as you say there is a layer of grand old hotels that won't be.

27 minutes ago, MeHeartCruising said:

I prefer hotels in the County Hall area, just across Westminster Bridge from Parliament.

Of which, the Marriott County Hall is most likely to satisfy the OP's requirements, although a "real British experience" is a little ambiguous.... And, like the Dilly, it has a swimming pool, which is relatively unusual in central London. 

6 hours ago, T-2 said:

Trying to guess how you approximate how much time it might take going from one line to another.

Don't bother! As markeb says, the map is not a physical representation, so you can't make that guess anyway. There is a table of values for street to platforms and interchange times at each station that is used by the various online journey planners, such as TfL or National Rail, which therefore do the work for you. 

6 hours ago, T-2 said:

Waterloo to Windsor we change for the Elizabeth Line at Tottenham Court Rd,

I guess this is to get to Slough to connect to the train to Windsor & Eton Central? from Waterloo it makes much more sense to take the direct train from Waterloo to Windsor & Eton Riverside. 

35 minutes ago, sandancer said:

Being a city centre station with many cruise ship passengers passing through they may have a left luggage facility.

It doesn't. 

9 hours ago, dickinson said:

but I want to take an early afternoon train to have time to walk around Southampton

Without wanting to be rude to the place or its residents, why would you cut short your time in one of the great cities of the world, where you clearly don't have time to see everything you want to, so that you can 'walk around Southampton'? 😀

One possibility might be the cafe at Central Hall, a meetings and events venue, (but not the modern QEII Centre in the same area), literally across the road from the Abbey and on the way to the War Rooms. Or the Westminster Arms next door if a pub is an option. 
 

But to guarantee quick and easy, if it’s a sunny day, buy some sandwiches or other picnic food and sit in St James’s Park, across the road from the War Rooms. There is also a cafe in the Park. 

39 minutes ago, Globaliser said:

 

You keep saying this, but what's your alternative? I think that the only way of eliminating such anomalies would be to price all fares on a flat pence per mile basis.

And there's often a conflation of fare level and fare complexity, Simplifying the fare structure does not mean cheaper fares all round, as the LNER experiment has shown. More people may be paying the same fare, but some will be paying more than before. 

Airlines have significantly more complex fare structures, which are very opaque to most travellers, who just accept that fares on any given day or time may be wildly different to any other given day or time. 

1 hour ago, FionaMG said:

Re luggage storage at the Premier Inn Westquay, going back to October 2022 now so can't be sure it's still the case, but at that time they definitely did offer luggage storage even if you weren't staying there in exchange for a donation to a charity. I can't remember which one, but I'm fairly sure it was something to do with children. They had a collection tin on the reception desk and you just dropped your donation into it.

The charity was probably GOSH (Great Ormond Street Hospital, a leading children’s hospital  and medical research centre), which is PI’s longstanding charity partner. 
 

I wonder if this storage arrangement survives, given PI’s now commercial relationship with Stasher.  

6 hours ago, John Bull said:

No left-luggage facility at train or coach station, and this is the first I've heard of it at Premier Inn,

Some (I don’t think all) Premier Inns now offer storage for non-guests through Stasher in addition to their usual locations in convenience stores. 

1 hour ago, Markanddonna said:

So, we decided to take the 10:15 train to Edinburgh

Great. So this means I don't need to check JB’s railway maths, right? 😀

2 hours ago, PhillyTravelBug said:

It’s starting to sound like it may just be easier to take the tube to London and drop the bags off at our hotel and then head to Windsor.

I'd agree, almost certainly, but an alternative would be to take the Heathrow Express or Elizabeth line in to Paddington station, drop your luggage at the left luggage facility by Platform 12 there, take your return trip to Windsor from Paddington via Slough, pick up your luggage again and on to your hotel. Depends to an extent where your hotel is, of course.

3 hours ago, CRUISIN2X2 said:

We booked our train tickets for May 8th, we now see a notice that they are striking May 7-9th.

You can also keep an eye on this page - as the notification was only made today, it doesn’t yet have any service impact information, but will be updated.  
I’m with Globaliser - there will be trains on your route on 8th, but service recovery after a strike and the overtime ban may affect frequency of services.  If you have ‘Advance’ tickets and the service you are booked on happens to be cancelled, you will be able to switch to another at no cost. 

15 minutes ago, ace2542 said:

And also you cannot be arrested or detained or hours or days you are simply refused and walk out of the airport

Yes, this is known as the “right to withdraw’” from the pre-clearance area. 

The American agents (known as pre-clearance officers in the law) do have a limited power of detention within the area, broadly speaking when there is an immediate threat or if offences against Irish State law are disclosed. The person detained must be then handed over to Irish law enforcement to be dealt with. 

4 hours ago, tc-cruise said:

I just want to take a train to Poole. 

Then take the shuttle to Weymouth. 

On 4/20/2024 at 1:49 PM, John Bull said:

couldn't find the hours of the nearby quite small but excellent volunteer-run D-Day museum.

For future reference, it’s 1030, but currently they are not open every day - important to check their Facebook page, where they are posting opening days weekly. I believe the ambition is to open every day in the summer. 
https://www.facebook.com/castletownddaycentre

5 hours ago, gumshoe958 said:

Bath to Paddington trains do have first class. It will normally be at the very front of the train (but on occasions may not).

Yes, it should be at the London-end of the train. On GWR 9-car trains that will be coaches L and K, on 5-car sets it’s D and E.  On GWR trains there is a large white sign with a ‘1’ and the words ‘First Class’ by the door on the First Class carriages.  

The platform train indicator sign will usually say if they are at the front or rear on the day (it will have a rolling scroll of information beneath the train indication), as will the train announcements. At some stations, and I’m afraid I’m not sure about Bath, there are ‘zones’ on the platform and so you may hear that First Class is in Zone 1, for example - the zones are indicated by numbers on the platform itself.

1 hour ago, T-2 said:

I can't wait to give the ticket purchases a try tomorrow,

As JB says, the GWR site may not be the easiest for a ‘novice’ user (I use it all the time, but I’m on GWR trains very frequently!j. The journey planner at National Rail has a different layout and may be easier for you - you will be redirected to GWR to book. Both have apps as well, of course! 
 

Feel free to check back here with your results 😀