Let the train take the strain … for free!

Now I have probably bored you senseless with the chronicles of my much lamented commute, but because I have no choice in that I try as much as possible in “my” time not to drive. 

I have a couple of extra days leave over the Easter period and am planning a trip further up North and across country to Durham for two nights.  This is a 350 mile round trip and approximately £60 in fuel.   So armed with that information thought I would see how much it would be to take the train, regrettably the cheapest price (after searching all the discount sites and checking prices on a variety of combinations of return tickets, two single tickets, going a different route etc) was £79.90 and an extra hour and a half on my journey time (due to having to change trains twice), so I was in a quandary as to whether I would spend the extra 20 quid?  Thankfully this decision was made incredibly easy courtesy of Tesco.

I was idly making my shopping list and checking prices when I thought I would check my clubcard account and found to my glee that I could use reward vouchers if I purchased train tickets from red spotted hanky.com.  For every £10 worth of rewards I could claim a £20 voucher against train fares.  So for £40 worth of reward vouchers (half price) I have paid for my train fares for my little jaunt.  As these reward vouchers were sat there doing nothing but gathering dust, my journey cost is effectively free – Happy Days J.