In Autumn 2023 I moved to the Netherlands for a permanent academic job. After setting up my house and unpacking my boxes the final remaining tasks were to bring my bike over from its summer holiday in Edinburgh and return my laptop to my old workplace in Oxford. I handily had a work trip to Edinburgh planned for September, so I decided to combine these tasks in a very ludicrous and often stressful trip.
ITINERARY:
Saturday: 12.52 – 17.01 Avanti Edinburgh to Birmingham New Street
18.01 – 19.13 Cross Country Birmingham New Street to Oxford (total £67.05 advance)
Monday: 17.01 – 17.56 GWR Oxford to Paddington (£20)
18.56 – 19.05 Elizabeth Line to London Liverpool Street
19.30 – 20.28 Liverpool Street to Manningtree (£12.60)
21.01 – 21.13 Manningtree to Harwich International (£3.65)
21.30 – 8.00 (CEST) Stena line from Harwich to Hoek van Holland (£99 with single cabin)
8.30 – 9.01 Metro line B to Schiedam Centrum (~€5 at peak time)
9.13 – 9.18 Schiedam Centrum to Rotterdam Centraal
9.44 – 10.46 Rotterdam Centraal – Eindhoven
Final local train to my new hometown
(€22.50 + €7.50 ticket for my bicycle for all the NS trains)
Total time travelling: 25 hours over 4 days
Total money spent: £202.30 + €35
I’m going to write a separate post about the Harwich – Hoek van Holland Stena line ferry (tl;dr I am a big fan). This whole journey was quite an adventure and not one I am planning to repeat! I’m going to summarise some of the main irritations/things I had to consider when taking this journey.
Cycle storage on the trains:
This is a complete crapshoot and often you don’t know what you are getting before you arrive. I find this an especially stressful/annoying part of taking the train with a bike, but it’s even worse when your bike is laden with baggage that has to keep coming on and off.
Avanti (not shown): roll on storage in a separate part of the carriage. Bikes are clipped in with a seatbelt and there are 2 perma reserved seats in carriage A (next to the storage) for cyclists. Bags have to be unloaded from bikes. Crew member welcomed me and escorted me to the bike storage. 8/10
Cross country (bottom middle): overhead hanging storage near to oversized luggage racks. Why couldn’t this be roll on with racks over the top for luggage? No information about where bike storage would be located in relation to the platform pre arrival. 2/10
GWR (top left): overhead hanging storage but it is also officially a luggage store (key area of conflict between passengers). Location of bike carriage announced on screens and over tannoy before the train arrived 1/10
Greater anglia (top middle/right): roll on in the main carriage with seat belts. Fold down seats so you can sit near your bike. Possible to leave luggage on bikes. Level boarding to train 9/10
NS intercity (bottom right): 2 large steps up to every carriage which are difficult to board with heavy bikes. Cycle storage is a roll in pen with seat belts that is shared with wheelchair users/buggy parking. Unclear which carriages had bike storage pre arrival which added to the stressful boarding experience. 1/10.
NS local/Rotterdam metro (bottom left): level boarding, official storage areas a bit hard to navigate with an unwieldy bike 7/10.
Booking the journey:
UK trains:
– Hahaha. We begin with the fact that I wanted to travel to NL on Sunday (this would have avoided much of my issues with avoiding the evening peak below). However, rail replacement bus services between London and Harwich made this impossible and I had to delay the second leg of my journey until Monday evening.
– Most non-local services require bike reservations and making these is a non-trivial operation. If you are booking with a single provider your best bet is to book direct with them, as often you can book the cycle space as you book the ticket. If you are booking a connection with multiple operators then courage. I looked at both journeys separately on Avanti/Cross Country to check that there were vacant bike spaces and then booked with Avanti. Miraculously this made reservations for me on both legs! I didn’t actually believe this, so I DM’d Avanti on Twitter to check.
– Another irritation with booking bike reservations is that they require printed tickets that need to be collected at a ticket machine. As this is annoying with a bike that wants to throw itself on the floor at every opportunity, I attempted to collect all of my tickets ahead of travel.
– Finally, I realised I had been overly optimistic with my transfer time in London, and wanted to book onto an earlier service. I couldn’t book a standalone bike reservation online, but decided to risk it anyway. There was one other cyclist between Oxford and Didcot and noone else for the whole train. I certainly wasn’t able to cancel my reservation for a later service. Given there are so few slots encouraging people to book and not cancel is a pretty poor idea imho.
Elizabeth line: The evening peak is pretty long (4-7pm) and non folding bikes are not allowed on the tube during this time. There was a connection at 7:01 – thankfully the pretty stern employee on the ticket line let me through at 6.50pm. As it takes longer to go and get the lift this helped me board the service I wanted (although you do pay a peak time fare for entering the station “early”).
Ferry: Stena offer a sailrail ticket which allows you to travel from any station on the Greater Anglia network to Harwich at any time on the day of arrival/departure. Unfortunately, due to the issues with bike reservations discussed above, it is not possible to take advantage of this offer when travelling with a bike. Additionally the sailrail service direct from London Liverpool Street to Harwich International leaves at 18.50, making it challenging to get to with a bike due to peak time bans on nonfolding bikes on the tube network. The route suggested by trainline involved a 6 minute connection, which I didn’t think was sufficient in the case that I needed to change platform. I therefore booked via Manningtree, which left ample time to change. I don’t think I could have travelled any later and getting the 7.30 departure was cutting it fine for transiting London. This was probably the most stressful connection of the trip.
Dutch trains: you don’t need to book onto a specific service (I think! ) but there is a risk that the bike storage would be full. On all 3 NS trains the only other bikes were all folding, so i had no issues with this. You need to purchase a ticket for your bike (which is expensive compared to human tickets) but this wasn’t checked at any point.
OTHER THOUGHTS
I flew from Edinburgh to Eindhoven because there is a direct flight with Ryanair that costs £23 and jsut the ferry to Newcastle was over £200 (because you have to book a cabin and there are no single berth cabins unlike Stena). I try to take public transport where possible, but 10x more expensive before adding the connecting trains and 10x longer/less convenient and I have to draw the line somewhere (especially when it is being paid for as work travel!).
Adding up all the bits and bobs and I am surprised by how expensive this was! Everywhere possible I bought advance tickets (apart from Oxford-London where I had to rebuy a ticket to change trains), and because I had to split my travel over several days this was possibly more expensive than a direct UK train journey (if doing it in a single day were even possible). UK rail prices are using a 26-30 railcard. For this trip all my travel was covered by grants (the Edinburgh trip was for work) and relocation allowance, but I still wanted to get the best value for money!
To be honest I wouldn’t recommend doing this entire journey with a bike/lots of luggage, especially with the second half on a day with peak hours. I got very lucky that everything ran to time, but changing trains was still very stressful due to unknown bike/luggage storage. Twice I encountered lifts that were out of action and had to carry my stuff upstairs (once at Liverpool Street *after* checking with staff and once in NL). However, I am glad to have done it, and it was somehow the least ludicrous option to get myself and my bike to my new home via a clear out in Oxford (a niche use case I know). Tune in next time for a more positive guide to the ferry as a cyclist and how to have many adventures in Western Canada without a car.
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