A couple of weeks ago I spent a few days in the west country with a brief stopover in Worcestershire.
Over the space of three days, I climbed the Worcestershire Beacon from Great Malvern; I pottered around Clifton village in Bristol and saw the Clifton Suspension Bridge in all her night-time splendour; I walked the length of the Caen Hill lock flight, one of the seven wonders of the waterways; I visited the world heritage site at Avebury, had a nosy at Avebury Manor, and walked over the fields to Silbury Hill and West Kennet Long Barrow; I took in the Christmas markets at the STEAM railway museum in Swindon; I took in the sights of Bath, including Pulteney Bridge, Bath Abbey, and the Royal Crescent; I stopped off at Avoncliff to look at the aqueduct, and had lunch at Bradford-upon-Avon; I walked along the River Tone in Taunton and visited Firepool Lock, where the river meets the Bridgwater and Taunton Canal; and I walked on the beach at Weston-Super-Mare.
With the exception of the bus journeys to Devizes and Avebury, which aren't on the rail network, I did all of this for the £66 cost of a three-day "freedom of the Severn and Solent" rail rover. With a railcard, that price drops to just £43.60 - and there's an eight-day version for the scarcely believable price of £88.50 (£58.40 with a railcard).
I didn't count up what my journeys would have cost had I bought them individually, but I know it would have be significantly more than the £66. An off-peak return from Great Malvern to Taunton (the two extremes of my journey) would be £51.30 alone. So I extracted plenty of value, despite not venturing anywhere near the Solent - the ticket is valid to Portsmouth, Weymouth, and Salisbury, and I made it no further south than the train between Westbury and Taunton.
My ticket was generally met with two types of reaction by railway staff inspecting my ticket, whether on the train or at the ticket barriers. The first was confusion (usually by ticket barrier staff - scanning in a ticket QR code on a barrier in the full knowledge that it wouldn't work got a bit tedious after a while). The second was surprise and delight - most memorably by the GWR team member on the barrier at Taunton station whose reaction to seeing my ticket was a surprised exclamation of "brilliant!". Both reactions made it clear though - they don't see many of these tickets, at least not any more. "We used to see them a lot more", said the train manager on my way from Westbury to Taunton. Which begs the question - why don't the rail companies promote these tickets? They're not for everyone (they aren't valid in the morning peak) but rail rovers and rail rangers offer some of the best value leisure travel of any mode of transport. Sadly the wonderful Strathclyde Daytripper ticket has now been withdrawn but there are plenty of great options in all parts of the country.
No doubt in some cases the rail companies would prefer travellers purchased more expensive tickets, and I know not everyone appreciates my sometimes chaotic approach to exploring, but there must be a market to use these fantastic value tickets to get others back onto the railways - especially with traditional commuting unlikely to return to pre-pandemic levels for a while yet (and possibly ever). Yet you rarely if ever see them promoted. I can’t help but think that the rail companies are missing an opportunity.
One final thought, before I share a few photographs from my trip (and I’m sure that is what you are waiting for really, not my rant about rail tickets). A question for the Office of Rail and Road, inspired by the recent Geoff Marshall video: how are the journeys made on rover tickets counted in the figures? When I pottered around Switzerland using the Swiss Pass in early 2019, I was sent a survey afterwards inviting me to share the journeys I made using the ticket, in return for entry into the prize draw. I dutifully shared my journeys, although (boo hiss) I didn’t win the prize. There’s no equivalent for any rover ticket as far as I can make out. It’s finger in the wind time - and maybe that’s another reason why the rail companies don’t bother pushing these tickets. They have no way of measuring how effective they are, or how well they get used.
Do you have a rail rover or rail ranger ticket that you love? Do let me know in the comments or drop me a line on Twitter.