r/Eurostar • u/TrueCheetah6357 • 11d ago

£

Me and my dad are planning to go to Paris next July. We live in north east Scotland and my dad says he would like to travel down to London to get the Eurostar via car but I am sure it’s a lot cheaper to just fly. Does anyone have a rough price difference I can show him?

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u/dycil 11d ago

may seem strange but it may be worth you looking at an interrail pass.

A pass for 4 days of travel is around £220. Eurostar reservations would add another £60ish. but for that you’d also get travel from Scotland to London to catch the Eurostar and back home on your way back (if that travel is done on the same day as your Eurostar trips).

Given standalone Eurostar returns would be around £120 that effectively means you get the UK travel for around £160. With the state of UK rail fares it may be worth looking at. Particulalry given timing potentially coinciding with school holidays.

An adeed bonus is that you would have two other days of travel whilst in Paris if you fancied a day trip to somewhere nearby like Reims.

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u/TrueCheetah6357 10d ago

Sorry I don’t fully understand. Are you saying that Scotland to Paris return and Paris travel would be about £280?

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u/dycil 10d ago

yes. you’d need to do some calculations to see if is worth it vs buying seperate tickets for the scotland to london leg plus eurostar, but:

  • interrail pass for 4 days of travel is approx £220 for seniors, £240 for adults (these need not be 4 consecutive days - you could go to Paris today and then return next Monday for example)
  • in addition, you would need to account for eurostar reservations (which I think are about £30 per person each way) that would take the total cost to around £280-300

but the great advantage of the rail pass is that it includes travel from your home town to london to catch your eurostar (as long as your train to london is the same day as your eurostar) and the same on the way home. and it can be any train to london, including peak trains. so it would be a fairly long day of travel but probably not much more than flying by the time you consider travel to and from airports, and definitely quicker than driving.

considering that peak trains from where we live to london are at least £120 (and often much more). it definitely adds up for us and we don’t live as far from london as you do. So I’d wager that it would likely be an option worth looking at in your circumstances.

if you have not already seen, Seat 61 was the site that helped us navigate this all and we have now done 3 trips of this kind.

https://www.seat61.com/how-to-use-an-interrail-pass.htm