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Outbound trip as two legs?

  • 2 August 2022
  • 5 replies
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Hi,

I hope someone might be able to help. We’re about to leave on our first Interrail trip as a family of 5. The process has been… testing so far, is the most polite way of putting it! We’ve finally got everything sorted for our outward trip from the UK - France tomorrow morning, but have hit another problem. 

The planner for our outward trip suggested one itinerary, which I guess meant it counted as one journey: Newcastle 0959 - London KX 1249; London StP 1431 - Paris GdN 1747. We reserved the seats accordingly (Eurostar via the app, the UK train via the train operator). We then found out that wait times at London St Pancras are currently up to 2 hours, which didn’t leave enough time to get through customs. So… I rebooked our UK train (Newcastle - London KX) as the 0858 instead, leaving the Eurostar the same.

The problem now is that it seems this will count as two outward journeys, as it’s entered into our trip as two legs. As originally planned it appeared as one journey with a change in London, but now it’s journey 1: Newcastle - London and journey 2: London to Paris. Does that make sense? 

How can I avoid this? Should I just re-plan the journey as originally advised (0959 - 1747) so that the pass thinks I’m only taking one outward journey? But then does it matter that I’m on a different train to that in the UK?

It’s so difficult to know exactly what to do / what the conductor is presented with before adding the trip to the pass and getting on the train - by which time it could be too late!
 

Thanks for reading - hope someone might know what to do!

Adam

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Best answer by Angelo 2 August 2022, 15:38

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Hi, you can use on one Outbound trip so many trains as you need to leave your home country one one day. 

Same for the Inbound trip, you can use so many trains as needed to reach your home on one day. 

A day gets from midnight CE(S)T to midnight CE(S)T. In UK this means 23:00 GMT. The important thing is that the last train you will take has a scheduled departure time before, arrival can be the next day. 

Thanks for the quick reply! 

So even if they are booked as separate journeys in the planner, and therefore will be separate when added to the pass - that is, even if it’s a different route or timing to the one the planner suggested? That is great news if so. I’ll go ahead and try it - just that when I tried before, it asked me on both journeys whether I wanted to make them outbound / inbound trips, so I was worried…

thanks!

I tried it. It worked. Thanks again.

Hey Adam, 

I have the same problem as you but I don’t understand what you finally did to make it work. Did you mark your originally planned trip as your outbound but still take the earlier train to London?

Hi, I just went ahead and marked the first UK trip as my outbound leg, as @Angelo had suggested. I was worried that once I’d done that, it would ask me to do the same for the Eurostar journey, but it didn’t and was fine. In the end everything went wrong in a different way, as our UK train was cancelled mid-trip and we had a hellish alternative journey via two other trains, but we were accepted onto a much later Eurostar (the last of the day, 5 hours later than planned). Hope that helps. Adam

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