Flying for flyings sake

So Bng’s getting married soon. And of course there is the obligatory stag do, ‘the staggering’ as I have termed it, that happens a few weekends beforehand. The staggering is being held in somewhere called Blackpool. This apparently is a fair trek from my south eastern-centric domain along the London-Maidenhead parallax as it appears that this Blackpool is located on the north west coast above somewhere called Wales.

I am not relishing the idea of driving up to Blackpool especially seeing as I recon it will take about 4-5 hours I estimate given that I will be going up on a Friday and having to battle through the M42 round Birmingham and returning on Sunday, after invariable excesses, driving is probably going to be about the last thing I am going to want to do. So I thinks to myself, what are my alternatives.

Fly was my first thought. Blackpool apparently has an airport (not sure quite why mind). I am about a 30 minute train journey from Heathrow so if flights run from there to Blackpool that would be spot on. Sadly, Heathrow is far too important to fly to anywhere as yocal as Blackpool. Oh well, but I can fly from Stanstead. However despite being touted as ‘London’ Stanstead it is actually more like Chelmsford airport being stuck in the middle of Essex so thats hardly convinient. In any case it only has two flights a day, one way early in the morning (0700ish) and the other way late at night (2200ish) in both directions which doesn’t fit with my schedule.

So I thought about the train instead. As I have to go through London and invariably being there already (at work) can shave 30 minutes off my journey time. However querying the fares reveals its going to cost between £65 and £345 return (ok so that last one is a first class open return) which is totally beyond the pail given that its like £20 to fly from Stanstead.

So I started playing about with flights again. I could fly from London Gatwick to Dublin, connect at Dublin to a flight to Blackpool. Cost £33 there, £23 back (+taxes) for both flights. The connection times stack up too (just barely). This is ridiculous. I could fly to Blackpool, via Dublin for less than the cost of the train. It’s faster too, although this does not factor in check-in time and getting from Maidenhead to Gatwick. Even so this is somewhat crazy. I am almost tempted to do it just because the whole thing is so delightfully daft.

Can you imagine; ‘so Nick what did do you at the weekend?’ Well I flew out to Dublin and then got on another plane and flew back to the UK into Blackpool. It looks like I might also be able to do this via Amsterdam too.

Ok, so in fairness when you add airport taxes, travel costs to and from the airport and factor in check in time and actually getting to the airport it is more expensive and takes longer but even so I think this a somewhat damning expose on the state of the country’s rail network.

Or I could just charter a turbo-prop aircraft from Biggin Hill to Blackpool for the sum of circa two grand.

Back in the real world, it looks like I am driving then.