Easter falls on 20th April, with Good Friday 18th April and Bank Holiday Monday 21st. A perfect amount of time to enjoy Easter 2014 short breaks by train. Train travel is (for me at least) far less stressful than flying and, with a bit of a search, cheaper too. Even if it means not going as far. I’ve looked into places in the UK it’s easy and cheap to get to by train from London this Easter weekend…
London to Oxford – from £5 each way
Good Friday fares are as low as £5 London to Oxford and from £6.45 one way Oxford to London at the moment with First Great Western. Great sites in Oxford include (probably) my favourite museum in the UK, the Pitt Rivers Museum, as well as the Ashmolean Museum, which the city-promoting people tend to make more of a fuss about. Also worth a visit is the Museum of the History of Science with it’s ancient globes. There are several wonderfully old pubs you may have to bend your back a little to walk around inside, and the punting scene, if that’s your thing.
London to Cambridge – from £6 one way
Not so long ago I went to stay in Norfolk for a week, stopping off at Ely on the way up to Kings Lynn and stopping off at Cambridge on the journey back from Kings Lynn to London. Breaking the journey in that way is free if you have a ticket valid for the entire day, however the cheapest tickets mean travelling at a set time on a specific train. I discovered slower trains from London Liverpool Street to Cambridge are cheaper. So ignore anyone at ticket offices who tries to encourage you not to buy them. Vive la révolution! Hooray! This Easter Weekend, you can get a single with Greater Anglia on Easter Friday from £6 one way and the same on Bank Holiday Monday. Cambridge has famous and beautiful colleges, Christ’s Pieces – a stretch of land where goths hang out, and the Fitzwilliam Museum – although that’s closed Good Friday and Mondays generally. Oh and you can go for a punt of course. Or a pint. Or both.
London to Bath – from £13.50 one way
Book now with First Great Western and you can get fares from £13.50 each way from London to Bath for the Easter weekend. Bath has the Abbey, Royal Crescent, Pulteney Bridge and Roman Baths, that, last time I went, were accompanied by Bill Bryson’s thoughts in the audio guide. I lived in Bath for a while and learned things like, there was no Sally Lunn and Jane Austen actually disliked – read hated – the city, plus the Bath Chronicle said Queen Victoria looked drab when she visited, so she never returned. As such, Bath is best appreciated for it’s aesthetic beauty, celebration of the elite, and pubs like the Raven, the Royal Oak and the wonderful – co-operatively owned – Bell Inn. Toppings bookshop is lovely too, they’ll make you a cup of tea while you browse. Talking of tea, check out the Tea Emporium rather than taking afternoon tea in the tourist traps if you fancy a bit of peace.
All three cities have some fantastic places to stay from about £30 per person per night sharing on airbnb.co.uk
