The UK's £1000 train fare, surely there must be a cheaper way?

It is a rainy and cold Tuesday evening, I am stuck inside reading BBC news online so I decided to undertake a bit of investigation work.

The BBC reported today that the UK officially has its first £1000 train fare. The journey travels from Cornwall (in Newquay) to Kyle of Lochalsh (in the Scottish highlands). As someone who regularly takes the train, I found this particularly interesting as well as being totally outrageous.

Long story short, I decided to research other methods of making this journey and this is what I found..

Now unfortunately the Kyle of Lochlash doesn't have an airport, therefore I had to make some slight modifications to my journey.

I was looking to book in advance so I set my outward date as the 1st December 2009 and my return was seven days later on the 8th December 2009.

I found the site Airsouthwest which would do flights from Newquay to Glasgow for an amazing £162.00 return (inc. tax and exc. credit card fees and booking fees etc)

The flight departed at 4pm and arrived at 5.45pm so a very quick and painless journey I think you'll agree!

Arriving so late it would be difficult to find a train that ran to Kyle of Lochalsh at that time from Glasgow so you would need overnight accommodation. (See, I have thought of everything!)

The Express Holiday Inn offers a double bed for £69 a night which includes such luxuries as en suite rooms, TV and hair dryer!

A train direct from Glasgow to Kyle of Lochalsh is available at 10am the next morning and National Rail offers tickets for £27.60 return.

The train travelling back to Glasgow on the 8th December leaves at the early time of 6.21am, arriving in Glasgow at 12.46pm which leaves plenty of time to catch the flight back to Cornwall at 6.10pm.

OK so now the hard part is done, I started to work out the costs associated with this method.

Adding it up, I found that a flight, hotel and train will set you back £258.60. This is compared to the £1,002 it would cost you on the train.

This is a whopping saving of £743.40!

The BBC also reported that cross country trains sells advance tickets for this journey for £561, however this is still £302.40 more than what I would have paid.

So, in conclusion, if you are looking to get from Newquay to the Kyle of Lochlash in December then don't take the train! I quite like this public service stuff...