(13 Jan 2014, 5:44 pm)aureolin wrote Some distance that mind Scott! What sort of fares are you looking at for that sort of trip, excluding East Coast and Megabus? If you don't mind me asking that is.
The Edinburgh-Perth by Scotrail was £5.50 advance (with a 16-25 railcard).
£5 single to Dundee as was joined by 2 mates in Perth.
Stagecoach East Fife dayrider plus £10 for the afternoon (valid across a huge area, can get to Edinburgh for example). The Dundee-Perth Citylink was £4 I think, booked through Megabus which includes your Park & Ride fare into the city (on regular service 301).
Sunday we paid about £8 via Megabus for the M8 to Dundee, though there was only 4 of us on a 15m Panther!
The Citylink Gold was £9 to Aberdeen, well worth it though with a huge (and very comfy) leather seat, 53 seats on a 15m Elite. Customer Service assistant came round with a lovely cake and a choice of soft drink during the 80 minute journey, as well as refresh kit with a knife and fork, wet wipe etc.
The return journey to Edinburgh I think was £7 from Aberdeen to Edinburgh with a connection between M9/M90 at Broxden Park & Ride where all the Megabus/Citylink services meet up (4 in the space of 10 mins!), 2 northbound and 2 southbound. The connections work perfectly but in times of disruption I can imagine it could be problematic.
I paid £14 for my return trip to Scotch Corner but the other 2 got it cheaper as they booked further in advance, I had to try and get the time off work for the Saturday. Thankfully I got my lieu day confirmed last week and got everything booked up.
The sleeper was operated by 50307, the service M20 was operated by 54208 which was sent with people for Newcastle etc on it, Parks of Hamilton Volvo B9R LSK497 was operating the duplicate M20 which had all of the passengers for London and they stuck the three of us for Scotch Corner on it, as thats where our driver came off and handed over to the 2 replacement drivers. Non stop Edinburgh to Scotch Corner was completed in under 3 hours, getting us to Scotch Corner around 45 mins earlier than planned!!
EDIT: Photo of the Gold interior and a nice pic of the 2 Gold's together.
