robin1234

Well, the one place in England that's NOT well endowed with holiday cottages is the inner commuter belt, such as Surrey, simply because house prices are so high. I'm sure there are some, National Trust ones for instance. I suspect that any holiday cottage in Surrey would charge top ££ year round though!

As for friends or acquaintances etc., absolutely no problem. Get an allotment. Join a club. Get involved in politics, environmental advocacy, litter cleanup projects. I'm now a volunteer carer at a charitable care trust in my town. We have lunch clubs for old people, day trips to nearby attractions, sitting with dementia patients so their spouses can go out shopping, etc. etc. Literally all the volunteers are retired folks in their 60s and 70s. Beyond that, I travel by bus all the time and find it very easy to strike up conversations at the bus stop etc.

Another option would be to get a dog and then you'll have all the friends or casual acquaintances you could ever want.

makingwaves

Oh dear. It looks like Surrey was not such a good idea. So then I need to find some area where the prices are more reasonable that has good rail connection, since I won't have a car.

I'm glad to hear there are so many opportunities to socialize and get integrated into the community. I'd love to have a dog, in fact I have one here, but don't think one over there would be practical since I'll be gone for long periods.

makingwaves

Thanks for the input. You make a good point. I'll see if I can call ahead to make an appointment, however I suspect they'll want to wait until the application comes in.

robin1234

The trains really are a pleasure. Anyone 60 or over can get a senior railcard, it costs £30 per year. (Not just restricted to British residents.) You get one third off fares, so it quickly pays for itself. The biggest hassle is the complexity of the fare structure, but when you get the hang of it you can make it work. For instance I can get a ticket from Norwich to London for about £10 booked in advance, but it would be about £60 if purchased on the day of travel...

makingwaves

How much in advance do you need to book to get that much saving? And, can you make the booking online? I didn't get this right the last time I was there and wound up paying a good deal more at the station than I'd seen quoted online.

robin1234

There's no single answer, each journey is different. And each train operating company has its own arcane policies. Fortunately, booking between different train operating companies is (usually) seamless.

Yes, booking is online. Each train operating company has its own booking site, but (AFAIK) they are all more or less the same booking system with a different front end, and you can use any booking system to book any journey, and get more or less the same result. I always us the Abellio Greater Anglia site, just because it's the company that runs most services in my area, East Anglia. You choose to either pick up your tickets at a machine at a railway station, or they'll post them to you.

Short journeys, London to Cambridge, Norwich to Ipswich etc., usually there's no cost advantage to advanced purchase, so at least that is simple.

Taking Norwich to London as an example, the price seems to be low until suddenly it jumps up to very high - but whether that is two days before date of travel or four I don't know. I just try to book as early as possible.

holly_1948

You might look at Hoylake.
Half way reasonable prices, trains into Liverpool city centre every 15 minutes or free buses if you are elderly and not in a hurry. Walks on the seaside. Old fashioned high street shopping. https://www.google.com/maps/place/Ho....1762801?hl=en
https://www.wikiwirral.co.uk/

As to dog, if you offer to walk other people's dogs you will have no shortage of people wanting to take advantage of your offer.

BritInParis

In my experience you can't go too far wrong with East Midlands for booking any UK train journey.

makingwaves

No kidding about the sudden price jump. I just checked a trip I want to take in mid-July from London to the south coast. Last time i looked it was 13GBP, and now it's 43. How can that be when it's still 2 months out??

makingwaves

Is this based on ease of booking or are there any price differences?

makingwaves

Thanks I'll look into Hoylake. It sounds great. That's a wonderful idea to walk dogs--I love it. I can have all the fun, not to mention exercise, and none of the responsibility. Kind of like being a grandparent!

BritInParis

The former certainly but a friend who is an expert in these matters also declares that it's cheaper as well. How true that is I'm not sure.

robin1234

Not sure. In fact, one journey I made was on an East Midlands service. There's a great hourly cross country service from Norwich to Liverpool. It goes Norwich - Ely - Peterborough - Nottingham - Sheffield - Manchester - Liverpool. It's run by East Midlands. My wife and I went to stay in Manchester for four nights, the return Norwich to Manchester was about £60 each which seemed reasonable. I booked it on Greater Anglia. East Midlands advertising for the service recommended booking it on their site, for the best prices. Er no. I simulated booking the same trip, and it was obvious that it was actually the same booking engine serving up exactly the same prices.

However, it's certainly possible that each train operating company does offer exclusive deals for its own services, from time to time.

Pulaski

If you take the Web address of the different train operators' websites and run them through whois.com you may be able to see which servers they are sitting on and potentially prove that the different websites are all just windows into the same database.

My employer was selling services to a competitor for them to market as their own service, and neither side wanted customers to know about the arrangement. .... Unfortunately, despite the competitor having their own "front end", a quick check with Whois showed that the competitors website was hosted on a server clearly carrying my employer's name!

robin1234

My sense is that there are two factors at play for many journeys. There's an automatic trigger point to raise the price, (say) 48 hours before the time of travel. Then there's another price rise triggered when a certain proportion of the tickets are sold for that journey....

And, in your example, are you certain you were looking at exactly the same trip? Because different journeys can be wildly different prices - London to Norwich at 11am, £9 but at 12 noon, £35 for instance.

Have you looked at coaches? They have pretty good prices. National Express are often much cheaper than the train, and Megabus is often even cheaper. Supposedly the cheapest prices, Norwich to London, are £3 on National Express and £1 on Megabus.

The buses are very comfortable but getting in & out of towns (especially London) can make them excruciatingly long journeys.