Travelling to other cities for wrestling - the actual cost
So, today I've put the finishing touches to the plans for the March pints piledrivers and replacement bus services trip, where I'm going to visit progress at the home of their new project "freedoms road". This involves a journey from Newcastle to London, one or two nights stay over (a good tester for if I end up trying to do the super strong style 16 later in the year) and the tickets to the two nights shows.
Sounds expensive. Relatively though it's worked out fairly cheap - digs were just shy of £50, tickets were £15 covering both shows (would have been £18 if i'd have booked both shows separately) and Newcastle to London return cost £6.50 thanks to megabus.
So here's how to do it on a budget.
1) if something of interest is coming up, book it early as possible, but make sure you check out local transport infrastructure first. If the train goes to Coventry but the event is taking place on the outskirts, check out bus services from the train station/digs to the venue and back after the finish time. ring a couple of local cab companies as well to get an idea of what the cost will be to get yourself back safely if buses fail.
2) trivago, booking.com, travelstay.co.uk, hostel world, hotels.com, laterooms.co.uk - cheap digs are usually readily available, sometimes there are special offers on there too which knock a lot off the price. Read the reviews though.
3) Have a natter with folk on Facebook who are intending to go also, see if you can share travel etc. I've seen it work on some promotions pages.
4) the main travel bit - check from all available local terminals. For London shows for instance, check virgin trains, grand central rail (goes from Sunderland, Middlesbrough, Hartlepool etc), airlines, national express and megabus. There's also a site where you can chainbook/split ticket your main journey. Google "raileasy trainsplit" for that. Booking travel early is a great money saver - 12 hours can be the difference between £14 and £50.
5) check if there's anything else on in the area or anywhere connected. Hell, if you're on the road you might as well take something else in on your way home - the Nottingham house of pain show had me hooked in with the words "lethal lottery" - I might have mentioned before, but I loved WCW back in the day. An errant finger slip on Google maps shifted the screen across to Lincoln. The train fare between the two is cheaper than it is between Newcastle and Darlington. A quick search/scroll through wrestling events the same weekend brought up a show in Lincoln for Fight factory wrestling with a very reasonable VIP package, including getting to meet Nick Aldis (Magnus) and a viewing of the royal rumble at a bar next door. (The owner/management of fight factory wrestling is absolutely fantastic to deal with by the way) anyhow the upshot of this point is, you might as well make a weekend of it. Mid February, there's a Tidal championship wrestling event in Leeds - I was 50/50 on booking up for, but there's also a show from UKW in Batley the night before, a late train home after TCW, and making a weekend of it is what finally tipped me into going.
6) have fun - give yourself a couple of hours wherever you are going to and explore it. Whether it's a pub crawl or a tourism based wander, see more of the country, find out what else is going on there.
Hopefully these tips will be useful to some of you. If you have any other suggestions, please feel free to comment - feedback is always appreciated.
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