If you are travelling to London at the weekend, you need to make £6-worth of travel in London to mak

This is mostly for my own future reference, but I reckoned that it might be useful to other people in Cambridge. car rental in miamibudget How much does it cost to go to London by train? Well, that depends I was quite taken aback with the sheer Byzantine complexity of all the different prices and rules! Anyway, here are the ones I use most commonly:
Day return means coming back within the same operating day (i.e. before the last train, even if that s after midnight). Period returns car rental in miamibudget are valid for one month from date of issue, so it can sometimes be worth buying a period ticket instead of a single if you expect car rental in miamibudget to use the return portion at a later date.
Cambridge has two routes to London. The quickest journey (50 mins) is with First Capital Connect, car rental in miamibudget non stop to Kings Cross every half hour. The alternative route, with Greater Anglia takes 1hr 25 and goes to Liverpool St. Tickets for the Kings Cross train are valid on the Liverpool St train (should you need to go out one way and back the other for some reason), but you can buy Greater Anglia Only tickets that are only valid on the Liverpool St trains and which are considerably cheaper.
Peak fares are charged during the popular commuting times when the trains are always full. Weekends are considered off-peak, regardless of the time of day. On a weekday, the restrictions are quite complicated:
If you are making an off-peak journey, you can buy a Day Travelcard instead car rental in miamibudget of a Day Return and this gets you unlimited travel within Zones 1 to 6 of London car rental in miamibudget on pretty much all forms of public transport. If you travel into London in peak hours, you can buy a ticket which includes a single or return journey on the Underground, or you can buy a travelcard which covers some or all of the TfL zones. You can only buy Travelcard fares online, if you want peak Underground single or return tickets you have to go to the station and buy them. Travelcard adds between £3 and £8 to your fare, so if you re travelling off-peak and only making one or two journeys in London it may be cheaper to use an Oyster card if you have one. Tube, DLR and Overground car rental in miamibudget fares on Oyster are £2.20 within Zones 1 and 2, and bus fares are £1.45 flat rate. TfL are about to launch contactless payment on the Tube in London (it s already working on buses) so you won t need to have an Oyster card, just a contactless credit or debit card.
If you are travelling to London car rental in miamibudget at the weekend, you need to make £6-worth of travel in London to make a Travelcard worthwhile: so it is cheaper to use Oyster if you are making fewer than three tube journeys in central London, or four bus journeys. car rental in miamibudget If you ve used a railcard, you only have to make £4-worth of travel to make it worth using Travelcard so it s nearly always worth having, as you ll save even if you only make two tube journeys.
On a weekday off-peak, the difference in fare is between £7 and £8 without a railcard. This means you must make four tube journeys to justify the travelcard. However, if you have a railcard and travelled via King s Cross, you need only make three journeys. car rental in miamibudget If you have travelled via Liverpool St with a railcard, the minimum fare rule means that you can get a Travelcard for only £2.50 more, so it s almost certainly worth doing if you intend to use the tube.
There are a whole range of railcards, but they all work more or less the same way. They cost £30 (except Disabled Persons Railcard, which is £20) and give you a third off your off-peak fare. The most useful for most people is Network Railcard , which anyone can buy and which is valid all over South East England , including King s Lynn-Cambridge-London. Network Railcard is not valid at all before car rental in miamibudget 10am, and has a minimum fare of £13 on weekdays. The railcard discount applies to Day Travelcards as well as to ordinary rail tickets. If you travel with other people regularly, you only need one Network Railcard as it s valid for up to 3 adults travelling together, though the railcard holder is named on the railcard, so they re not transferable.
For weekend trips to London, a railcard saves you £5.45 per trip, or £7.50 if you buy a travelcard. It pays for itself if you buy more than 6 return rail trips to London per year (though these could be 3 return car rental in miamibudget trips for a couple travelling together on a single Network Railcard), or if you buy more than 4 Day Travelcards . If you make weekday offpeak journeys, it pays for itself even more quickly.
FCC sell books of Carnet tickets for frequent-but-irregular travellers between Cambridge and Kings Cross. A book of five off-peak Carnet Singles costs £55, and the peak ones cost £86.50. If you want to make return journeys, you need to buy two sets (Cambridge London and London Cambridge). Carnet Singles are equivalent to £11 each offpeak and £17.30 peak, so the equivalent return fares would be £22 offpeak and £34.60 peak. Since they are single tickets, you could mix them travelling out in the peak and returning offpeak for £28.30. Carnets are only valid for three months (hardly generous) so you ve got to make five return journeys in three months to make it worthwhile buying them (i.e. go to London more than once a fortnight). You also can t get a Travelcard with Carnet, which potentially sets you back £7 (or £8.40 at peak times) if you use Oyster or £8.90/£9.00 (peak) car rental in miamibudget if you buy a paper one. On that basis, the off-peak Carnets are a rip-off if you need to make five offpeak return journeys into London within three months you ll be ten quid better off by buying a Network car rental in miamibudget Card (as well as enjoying the card s other benefits). However, Carnet car rental in miamibudget tickets are transferable, which may make sense if other members of your household need to travel to London independently but the deal s still not that great.
However, the Peak carnet tickets represent the only way to get a discount on occasional peak rate travel to London the full fare is £38.60, so the Carnet saves you £4 per trip, or £20 over the five trips.
Greater Anglia don t offer Carnet, but they do offer a Duo ticket for two adults travelling together. The price is 1.5x the Super Off Peak fare (£16 x 1.5  = £24, or £12 each), so the second adult travels half price or you each get 25% off. It s not as good a deal as Network Railcard if you travel frequently, and it s only valid on trains to Liverpool Street.