London ; Trains -Buses from airports

Sounds reasonable :) Difference between say an hour and a half max there and back on the train compared to three hours on the bus makes a big difference when your time is that limited! Have fun and post back if you had any different experience - like I said it was from memory and I haven't bothered the ticket desks for this in quite a while so any clarification or amendment would be most welcome.
 
When I fly into Gatwick I use Southern to the city. You can book online and get 40% discount at the moment. They will issue you with a receipt. You can retrieve your ticket at the ticket dispenser using the credit card you purchased it with online or just go to the ticket desk. Here's a link
http://www.southernrailway.com/offers/advance-tickets/
 
I know online tickets are cheaper but they have two great disadvantages:

First, you never know what time your flight will actually arrive. When you pre-book a ticket for a particular train, you may end up missing that.

Second, with the UK's fragmented rail landscape, you have to decide on one rail company to get the best price. Even if the ticket was flexible across the company's services, it might happen that the next couple of trains are run by the competition, leaving you stuck at the airport for ages.
 
In terms of the second point undo, the National Rail website will take the legwork out of finding the best fare. If you do a search for your journey and check fares it will return all available fares then connect you to the appropriate website for that fare.

However you can buy it from any provider - so you could ask Virgin trains to handle your ticket purchase for a journey between Gatwick and London if you prefer (say you are a regular traveller with another train company and they have your card details or have some incentive to book via them). Insofar as I know, you should be treated as if you are purchasing from Southern and get the same deals.

There are two specific ticket purchase companies that I am aware of (trainline and easyrail) but they charge a booking fee - I prefer to use National Rail as my starting point.

...Won't make the planes land on time though :)
 
so-crates said:
In terms of the second point undo, the National Rail website will take the legwork out of finding the best fare.
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Sure, the NR website will find all options. I know that. But it will not prevent then problem I described: If you want the best deal, you have to choose one of these options and then you are stuck with whatever rail company you picked. It is a pity rail transport in the UK is so complicated and so extremely expensive. But at least it runs rather well.
 
so-crates said:
Well undo in that case (and assuming you don't mind coach travel!) I would suggest you check out these guys [broken link removed] (£2 one way to London)

National Express also go from Gatwick, fare seems to vary during the day but it would be less than a tenner to London anyway.
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When I was in London recently, it was £8 from Luton to Baker Street Station
 
I am off on my weekend trip to London in 8 days. Will report back what the tickets and prices were like.
 
Hello,

I was in London just before Christmas for three days and flew into Gatwick. When you arrive in Gatwick you can buy a standard return ticket from Gatwick into one of the city zones - depending on which station you need to get your connecting train from. This ticket you keep until you are travelling back to the airport. The girl at the desk will validate the ticket for the date you need. At the same time you also buy a one, two or three day travel card for peak or off-peak travel within the zones you need. We only needed zones 1 to 3 at off peak times for three days which was approx £19 per person. This was perfect for us. You can use it on bus, rail, underground - basically all public transport and you get 30% discount on the riverboats - which are a great way to get from Westminster to the Tower of London. As far as I remember, all in for two people for all our travel over three days we paid about £54 which was well worth it. We used it a lot. Here is the link for more info - [broken link removed]

Hope this helps.
 
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