Destination hell: the prices of train tickets are out of control

How far do you think £321 would get you from London? Halfway across the world maybe? Asia? The US?

All of these are possible if you hunt around for cheap flights. But in the wonderful world of UK train travel, £321 of your hard-earned cash buys you a return trip from London to Manchester, a mere 326-mile round-trip.

There are cheaper train tickets, admittedly, but that’s the price a client paid for me to travel to Manchester to do a day’s (high standard and very reasonably priced) consultancy work for them. Their big mistake was not to book the ticket three months in advance or tie me to set trains each way. Fools. But the experience has provided me with a handy anecdote whenever I talk or write about train fares.

In an ideal world you’d be able to show up at the train station, tell the ticket machine or person behind the counter where you want to go and buy a ticket that doesn’t bankrupt you.