HS2 - not so fast ride to Banbury - Sat. 6th April

[Kim]

Naive question; when booking on line how do you reserve bike slot?

Only some operators' websites allow you to do this.  Eastcoast is one.  Southern sounds like another.

Beyond that, the ticket has to be on an operator that allows cycle reservations.  The back-end will often fail ungracefully claiming that "there are no bike spaces available on your chosen service" when in fact the operator doesn't require reservations at all.  More frustratingly, this will often happen when a journey includes multiple operators, some of whom don't - eg. for Brighton to Birmingham, it'll fail because Southern don't do reservations, and not allow you to book one for the Virgin segment.   

[Canardly]

So in real terms does this mean you just turn up with your bike and try to get there/home?

[Wowbagger]

So in real terms does this mean you just turn up with your bike and try to get there/home?

It's a good idea to buy the ticket in advance as otherwise you'll be stung for a walk-on fare. But yes, as long as it's the train for which you have a reservation then that's exactly right.

I can get back to London via Charlbury and Oxford for £10-odd on tickets bookable at the moment, but I'll wait a bit longer to see if the Chiltern trains' prices come down. Having breakfast on my own was a bit of a come-down after the good company the night before, in spite of the fact that it was Chipping Norton.