Transport from Stansted

[Thorben Schröder]

Hi there,

can you suggest any transport from Stansted airport to Rails Camp? Is
there a bus or train that stops near the "convention centre"? Or is it
the best way to take the shuttle from Stanford to London and then head
to Orpington?

Thanks a lot!

Thorben

[Tom Morris]

On Fri, Jul 11, 2008 at 12:49 PM, Thorben Schröder <still...@gmail.com> wrote:
> can you suggest any transport from Stansted airport to Rails Camp? Is
> there a bus or train that stops near the "convention centre"? Or is it
> the best way to take the shuttle from Stanford to London and then head
> to Orpington?
>

You can get to Orpington on Southeastern Trains, from Charing Cross,
Waterloo East, London Bridge and (on weekdays at peak times) Cannon
Street.

If you take the Stansted Express train to Liverpool Street, then get
on the Circle line, get off at Embankment, walk up Villiers Street to
Charing Cross station. The Stansted Express is £16 each way, although
it's £2 cheaper if you book online.

There are also plenty of bus services which are cheaper than the
Stansted Express, which you can find listed here:
http://urlb.at/5b9

I live fairly close and spend many hours of my life on our beloved
train network, so I may as well use this as a reason to post other
ways to get to Orpington:

- if you are coming in to the UK through HEATHROW airport, you need to
take the Picadilly line service to Leicester Square, then through to
Charing Cross Station on the Strand (see a Google Map for directions -
it's only about 500m). At Charing Cross, you can buy a ticket, and
most of the trains will go to Orpington (it's on the mainline services
to Hastings, Dover, Tunbridge Wells and most of the other services
from Charing X)

- if you are coming into the UK through GATWICK airport, you can go to
Orpington by train without going into central London. You need to take
a train to Tonbridge, then change and go to Orpington. If you do this
route, you will probably need to buy a ticket from a ticket booth at
the airport rather than from the machines.

- if you are coming into the UK on EUROSTAR trains, you can either
book your ticket to go to Ashford or London. Ashford has direct train
services to Orpington. If you end up at St. Pancras, you can either
take the Northern line or the First Capital Connect (aka. Thameslink)
train to London Bridge (or Charing Cross) and get a Southeastern train
from there. Ebbsfleet? It's possible to go from Ebbsfleet to London
and back out again, but it is probably not best advised.

If you are trying to look up UK train timetables and routes, I would
strongly advise you to use:
http://traintimes.org.uk/
It's an unofficial version of the main National Rail website, only it
is more accessible, doesn't do stupid things with tabbed browsers, and
has neat hackable, bookmarkable URIs like:
http://traintimes.org.uk/london/orpington

I apologise in advance to people visiting Britain, our train service
is comparatively crappy and expensive compared to those you find in
much of continental Europe, and the ticketing system is needlessly
complicated and designed to extract money from tourists and reward
nerdy commuters who know the system inside out. :)

You may also want to have a look at this page on the "Darwin at Downe"
website, which lists local bus routes:
http://www.bromley.org/ciswebpl/darwin2/howtoget.asp

I'm not sure if anyone is planning on ways to get people from
Orpington train station to the camp. I'm going by car, and may be able
to stop by at the station on the way to and from the event.

Yours,

--
Tom Morris
http://tommorris.org/

[Thorben Schröder]

Thanks a lot for your detailed information!

Thorben

[Pat Allan]

Tom, thanks for those extensive instructions - that's fantastic!

On 11/07/2008, at 10:54 AM, Tom Morris wrote:

> I'm not sure if anyone is planning on ways to get people from
> Orpington train station to the camp. I'm going by car, and may be able
> to stop by at the station on the way to and from the event.

Ah-hah, potential taxi. Good to know :)

Cheers

--
Pat