One of the regular long-distance journeys that we’ve done on the train since selling our car is the trip to and from Plymouth in Devon to stay with family. By regular, I mean twice a year, although it would’ve been more without the pandemic.
Potted history of our transport to/from Devon
Tom grew up near/in Plymouth, and his parents and extended family still live there. When we lived in Cambridge before the children were born, we used to take the train for this journey every time, which involved a train to London, a tube from Kings Cross to Paddington, and then another train to Plymouth. We’d go in the evening after work and enjoy a meal together on the longer train, and I’d sometimes do some work on my laptop. I was insured on my mother-in-law’s car, so that we had use of that to get around when down there if we weren’t with them. When Andrew was born, we decided to start driving this trip, for a few reasons, including not wanting to take a baby plus luggage on the tube before I knew about decent sling options, and we would go via my parents in Coventry and stay overnight, to break up the journey; this also avoided the dreaded M25. Taking our own car meant we didn’t need another car seat down in Devon to use when we got there for days out to rural locations like the beach and moors.
We carried on with this as our family expanded from 1 to 4 children, and our car got bigger to cope. One reason to move from Cambridge to Birmingham was to be nearer to Devon (and Coventry). We owned the smallest 7-seater car that we could get away with, and used a roof box for the Devon trips as there was little extra space in the car with 4 car seats. It never really crossed our minds to take the train whilst we owned a car – long distance trips were the main reason why we owned a car. And besides, having another set of 4 car seats down there so that we could go to the beach seemed ridiculous, particularly after I learned more about the safety of extended rear facing seats which don’t come cheap.
The kids went through ages and stages, and we’d time the drive as best we could to work around naps or bedtime, in an attempt to avoid the incessant “are we nearly there yet?!” from the back seats. We tried screens attached to the headrests so that they could watch cartoons, and thankfully none of them have ever been affected by travel sickness, which is some mean feat given my continued queasiness unless I’m driving or looking forward. Often we’d plan to take the whole day and break it up with a stop at a National Trust property. That’s when we weren’t driving at night, which came with its own anxiety of whether we were going to be awake enough.
When we were toying with the idea, several times, of selling the car, it was definitely on our minds about how we’d do this particular trip. If there had been a large 7-seater car club car near us, I think we’d have taken the leap sooner, to be honest. At the time we sold our car after it broke down and needed a really expensive repair, we’d said that we were hoping to get another year or so out of it, because then the twins would be able to safely go in high back booster car seats (we used extended rear facing seats until they were 5 years old). By that point the older boys wouldn’t need car seats at all (or maybe just a simple booster for Joel), so it would be feasible to just store a couple of (relatively cheap) high back boosters at the grandparents’ house, for use in their cars on days out when staying with them. It didn’t work out that way, but with a combination of my parents coming with us, taking the twins with their rear facing seats in their car, and using cousins’ seats when they didn’t come, we worked it out. The twins are now in boosters, and we have the brilliant Trunki Boostapaks for them (secondhand bargain), which double up as rucksacks – see below for more detail.
Outward journey
So now I’ve set the scene that led up to the train journeys which we went on this week before Christmas, a trip that we’ve been doing by train since summer 2020. We hadn’t even been sure if we would go at all this time until the last minute. Rail strikes had been announced a few weeks beforehand, and we weren’t sure what to do – should we hire a car or risk trains? I’d been looking at the peer-to-peer car sharing sites and found a few large 7-seaters in Birmingham with HiyaCar. I’d also looked at just hiring one to get down and back again, from a traditional car hire place, not keeping it for the days we were there. We kept an eye on the availability of these options, but finally decided to go by train, and change the dates we planned to be away so as not to travel on strike days, but cutting it a bit finer to get back before Christmas. Neither of us like doing the driving, and overall we prefer the train even with some disruption. It’s not like we’ve never encountered disruption on the motorway either. We didn’t buy any tickets in advance; we generally don’t anyway, as we don’t want to be tied to exact trains with the unpredictability of family life (random illness/injury/incident at the worse possible time, for example). We use split-ticketing sites to get the best deal on on-the-day prices – a weird quirk of the UK rail fare system that’s worth knowing about (see more below). If it looked terrible on the day, we just wouldn’t go or we’d hire a car last minute if possible.

The day of the outward journey from home in Birmingham to the grandparents’ house in Plymouth arrived. The alarm woke us up at 6am, so we all got up and dressed, then checked trains online. There was one cancelled local train, the West Midlands Railway Cross City Line from Selly Oak, but later ones seemed to be running fine, though we knew we could get the bus into town if that changed. However, we saw that the direct Birmingham New Street to Plymouth train, run by CrossCountry, was only going as far as Bristol Temple Meads due to flooding near Plymouth, but that replacement buses were due to go from Exeter to Plymouth if it wasn’t sorted soon. So we decided that this was reasonable, and we left the house, at 7am, as planned. Overall the journey turned out to be good, better than we expected. “Let’s do this”, I said as we left, fully expecting some disruption. The journey wasn’t without incident, but as well as some things going wrong, some other things went right. It took about 6 hours door to door.
We just about made a slightly earlier train than planned from Selly Oak station, so had a bit of a wait at New Street, also because there was a bit of a delay on the train to Bristol. But once we were on that one, we had breakfast and the kids cracked out the various entertainment they’d taken – everyone was happy. It was a roomy HST rather than a cramped Voyager (I only know train types because Andrew is a train geek and points this out to me), and there were plenty of seats. One of the fantastic things about train travel is all the options for entertainment; we had Lego, colouring, board games, card games, books and the Nintendo switch (belongs to Joel, who saved up his money to buy it). Nobody got bored!

After we pulled into Bristol, everyone piled off the train. We’d been told there was a quick connection on the adjacent platform that was apparently going all the way to Penzance. And as if by magic, it appeared! It was another HST, run by GWR; it was shorter, and busy, but still there were enough seats for us as we walked right to the back of the train. It was a stopper, so very slow, but the kids were still happy with all their entertainment, and we’d had a change of scenery and a stretch of the legs when we changed trains.
When we pulled into Exeter St David’s, an announcement was made that they were waiting for replacement train crew to arrive. From what we could see online, the flood had been cleared and trains were now able to run beyond Exeter, which was the original problem when we left home. 5 minutes later, they cancelled the train and again we all had to pile off. But again, it meant we got to move and get some fresh air, to break up the journey, although of course one of the reasons we like the train is that the kids can get up and move around, stretch legs and go to the toilet on the train itself.

We honestly thought we’d just have to extend this break and hang around in Exeter for lunch, and then try to get on a later train, as we didn’t think we’d get on the next Plymouth-bound train due to the sheer number of people on the platform. After less than 5 minutes, it arrived, and again, as if by magic, it was practically empty! So we all fitted on with no problem, and we whizzed on to Plymouth in no time as it was a fast train this time, a long GWR service. The grandparents picked us up from the station in their cars and we were at their house in time for a lovely lunch. As well as breakfast, we’d taken plenty of drinks and snacks on the train, which also help to keep the kids happy. They all agreed that it was a good journey. It feels like such an adventure, especially to the children, when things go awry but no so much so that we are severely delayed. Of course predictability is good for them, but a certain amount of surprise and spontaneity can actually lead to a very memorable trip to look back on, as long as it doesn’t all end in tears.
Homeward journey
We enjoyed three full days in Plymouth, one day involving more (local) trains and buses. It was slightly concerning that on the day after we’d encountered the flooding issue on the way down, exactly the same thing happened again at the same point on the line, so we were apprehensive about that being an issue on the day we were due to leave, as more rain was forecast by then. On the morning that we left, I woke up at about 5am and couldn’t get back to sleep, thinking about trains and if they’d be running. By about 5:30am, I could see online that some services were running from Plymouth, and there didn’t appear to be any issues. Everyone else woke up around normal time (6-7:30am), and we got ourselves ready to leave around 8:30am. At that point there had been several trains in and out of Plymouth with no reported problems on the line.

If you’re reading this and thinking that something must go wrong at some point, you have an insight into what I was thinking too! However, I can happily recount that everything ran absolutely smoothly. In fact so much so, that it’s a boring story compared to the journey down, so there’s little point in writing much. It took about 5 and a quarter hours door to door. The worst that happened was that the toilets at each end of our coach were both broken, so we had to walk to the next coaches, which meant explaining this to the twins in case they did that “suddenly needing the toilet right now” thing. The train was busy, with no spare seats, but our reservations worked out fine (by which I mean no train or part-train cancellations nor scrapping of reservations!). The luggage storing capacity of the Voyager trains leaves a lot to be desired, so there were loads of bags all over the place as we walked to the toilets. But if that’s the worst that I can say, this is a good sign.
The children suddenly got very tired and some of them were near meltdown on the local train to Selly Oak, but it’s only a 10 minute journey and the train wasn’t very busy at all. I think the excitement of the past few days suddenly came crashing down. Otherwise they had kept themselves amused well on the journey, including a new game on the Nintendo Switch, which we now have two of thanks to my ineptitude in keeping track of what I’ve said to whom about what the kids would like as presents. We also had a nice picnic including some sweet treats from Grandma on the longer train.
Our tips for family train travel
Family and Friends Railcard
This is a no-brainer! You only have to do one long journey like this a year and it’s worth the cost of buying it. This then means we get one third off all fares (national and local) when we travel as a family. You can even take up to two friends with you, as we discovered when we took the grandparents with us over into Cornwall for the day.
Split tickets
Sites such as trainsplit.com use an algorithm that works out how to get the cheapest fare on long distance travel by adding together several local fares. You can buy through the site (they take a bit of commission), or we can just buy the individual tickets ourselves once we know which to get. With a railcard too, this means even on-the-day fares are reasonable, and still cheaper than the car was costing us per year when we were hardly using it except for occasional long journeys.
Pack light
We are lucky that we go to the same place every time, where we can use the washing machine, and we can also store things there. We don’t have to take as many clothes as we otherwise would, although we mainly keep adult clothes there rather than children’s ones as they grow so much! We try to keep bags to just rucksacks – we adults have a big and a medium hiking one, and the kids have smaller ones. This means we have our hands free to hold onto kids when getting through busy stations and stepping on/off trains with large gaps to the platform. We can use stairs easily and avoid the need to queue for lifts. The rucksacks tend to squish more easily into luggage racks than suitcases, usually overhead rather than fighting for the limited end-of-coach spaces. Entertainment for the train needs to be small and light, but there are so many options, particularly card games.
Trunki Boostapaks
These are rucksacks that convert into booster seats that can be used in cars, taxis and rail replacement coaches. They even have a strap that makes sure the shoulder strap of the seat belt fits correctly, making them like a high back booster. The kids can also sit on them on the train if they like, particularly if we don’t get actual seats and need to stand in vestibules, or when waiting on benches at stations that often aren’t comfortable when you have little legs. It also means that if all goes pear-shaped and we need to catch a coach, taxi or even hire a car, we have car seats for the twins with us.
All the snacks
We always take plenty of drinks and snacks, which could go against the “packing lightly” tip above, although at least the weight goes down as the journey goes on. But I always think children are harder to deal with if they’re hungry or thirsty, as am I! It’s unlikely that we would be literally stuck on a train for hours, though I know this can happen, so we could always buy something if we ended up hanging around at a station or town centre, but if we have things with us then we can be flexible with getting on the next train, whenever that might turn up.