Reply to Help Planning Trip to Manchester UK for PL Soccer Game

Forum Index » Travel Discussion

Reply to "Help Planning Trip to Manchester UK for PL Soccer Game"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My DC is also a Man City fan so I'm following this post with interest. I have a question for the collective wisdom on this board--we will be staying in London. Would it be feasible to train to Manchester and back to attend a game or should we plan on staying over? (I see that it is a 2 hr train ride). [/quote]

In theory entirely feasible, as long as it's not a night game.  Trains on that route are cheap and run frequently.  Two things to keep in mind:

1.  There have been A LOT of rail strikes in the UK the last few years.  Yes they are normally announced in advance, and some schedule is usually run, but many services are cut entirely, or severely underserved- like running 1 out of every 4 trains, etc.  It's a massive hassle and could really mess up your plans if you are planning on a pretty tight schedule.  And more than a month out you really can't know if one will be going on.

2.  That line in particular (the West Coast Main Line with services mostly by Avanti) has had major major reliability issues the last few years as well, yay!  So you might have some schedule hiccups there as well, but probably not as disruptive.

Accept that uncertainty and try to give some cushion to plan for it, and you should be fine.[/quote]

Thanks so much for this information!

One other consideration... when we travelled to Anfield in in Nov. 22, I was surprised to learn that there were no high speed trains from London to/from Manchester/Liverpool on weekends.  Trip took longer than expected, we had to change trains, and we had to stand no for last 40 mins into Liverpool when hundreds of City fans got on the train in Manchester.  [/quote]

Yeah that was at the peak of Avanti's reliability issues, that was one of their "solutions", to cut weekend trains to do line and train repairs.  Thankfully it has improved considerably since then, but still a consideration.  Right now the strikes are a bigger issue.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/aug/15/labour-demands-action-over-avanti-west-coast-reduced-train-service

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/sep/19/avanti-west-coast-contract-train-delays-rmt-arriva-crosscountry[/quote][/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics