to think it shouldn't cost a thousand just to visit family

[number5namechange]

a few hrs away on the train?

So both me and dh don't drive due to medical issues/lack of confidence.So use public transport.

We are going to visit his family in a few weeks ( monday to Wednesday) with a grand cost of one thousand pounds!!!
That includes train fare for 2 adults and 3 kids. Premier inn with breakfast. We also have to pay for our own food when there. Some spending money ( 200)

Sounds about right actually. DD is at uni 660 miles away (up north). I suffer from bad travel sickness in cars and coaches, can tolerate a train though. It costs £400+ for two of us on the train. Premier Hub for two nights including breakfast, £127 - a hub is a lot cheaper than the usual premiers and the cheapest hotel in city where we stay. Total £527+ (plus bus to station £8) - that's for two of us. You also have three children - yes, it'll cost less for them to travel, but still three spaces and then a bigger/extra room required, three extras on train. Have a good breakfast and buy a six pack crisps and bag of fruit on offer for the day. A Tesco £3 meal deal would be cheaper than eating out, can have in park or in room.

Either way, enjoy your trip

So, Thurso.

Not in "a few hrs"! Thurso is 7 or 8 hours by train from Edinburgh. Aberdeen or Aviemore are 3 hours, Inverness or Oban 4-ish, Fort William 5 hours.

It's all relative. Expensive for some, not for others. I have the same sized family as you and I would baulk at that price. I'd also be annoyed at having to go to see my dh's relatives if they couldn't be bothered to feed us at least one meal. The Premier inn breakfast is cheap, supermarket breakfasts are cheaper but then you'd need to factor in taxi fare to get there so it might not work out better for you overall. For lunch I'd be doing supermarket meal deals. It really depends on where you are going in Northern Scotland and how remote. Next time I'd tell them to come and see you in Edinburgh. I'd have also asked if they can pick you up from the station but a consideration is whether they have a car big enough. Have they not offered to have you stay over?

I'd love to see more of the Highlands but in the Scottish holidays even the premier inns are expensive.

Cost of living has gone up
so yeah
get a family rail card

or … coach

I've no idea how you're getting to £400 for train tickets unless you're going first class (which is pretty pointless on Scotrail trains). I've done Monday-Wednesday Edinburgh to various locations in the north of Scotland for travel next week and the most I can get ticket prices to with a family railcard is £160 on off-peak tickets!

Depends where you book. I've booked a 3 person room next month and it's £147, admittedly in London, but booked way in advance so that includes an advanced purchase discount.

One or two hotel rooms? I thought the Premier Inn rooms only slept for? Two rooms will make a difference, price-wise.

Why do you need so much money for food and spending?

It’s bonkers, flying is the luxury option and should be priced accordingly.

Map of Scotland

That's ridiculous! I have family visiting this week from abroad, they rented a holiday home for a week, booked return flights, airport taxis and booked a train plus premier Inn for two nights to visit family in a different part of the UK, cost them just over £500, obviously that's not including food or spending money but they went to Sainsbury's on the first day to do a shop for the week, that only cost £50.

Trains are expensive and unreliable these days.
Looking to go down to London from Edinburgh in November- train fares don't appear to be out yet and when they are you have to pounce on them to get a decent fare - but I can book a return flight to City Airport for around £100.

I agree it's a lot of money to visit family.
It would be reasonable to expect them to provide meals (lunch and dinner) for you all regardless of how much it costs you to get there.

Purchase your train tickets through trainline but go via topcashback.com that way you can ear a bit of cash back to help pay for something else whilst you are away.

Are you saying Premier Inn is £150 a night? Is this for a family room? That is a lot

but not unusual, their prices have shot up. In 2019 I paid £74 for a room just outside York. Last year I paid £160 for uni drop off weekend. We are going back to move ds next weekend and it's about £150. Admittedly both the latter were weekend rates and the 2019 price was mid-week.

If you are staying at a Premier Inn you can fill up at breakfast though and presumably the family will feed you in the evening? Then you only need a piece of cake or ice cream or something at lunch.

Agree this sounds excessive. How much are the train tickets without the cost of the taxi? Taxis are really expensive

That's a lot of money! But not having a car still saves you money if you factor in maintenance and petrol etc.

Premier Inn room rates are based on supply and demand.
Of course they're going to be expensive in the Scottish school holidays if you only book them a couple of weeks in advance.

It's a bit like people complaining that the price of holidays is prohibitive when they want to book now to go in July.

Ridiculously misleading thread title, you can’t include all other expenses in what I assume is supposed to be a grumble about transport costs. I also don’t understand the emphasis on “just to see family”. A trip surely costs what it costs, there’s no special discount or allowance for family visiting purposes so the reason for the trip is completely immaterial.

It all sounds totally legit. You can try to cut back on things like the food and spending money. But the basic costs of a holiday do add up.

I suspect the issue here is OP doesn't want to visit the family.

How far inadvance did you book your train and hotel?

Get a rail card too.

The thing that is ridiculous is that split ticketing is even a thing.

Which means that trains would be even cheaper then?

Actually not surprised we have similar - though last time I did it wasn't quite so expensive.

We can't stop with family - so we did premier inn with breakfast few years ago so possibly much cheaper then. Family didn't feed us either so we had meals on top.

Had taxi as well - there is an hour bus but for 5 when we checked cheaper by taxi.

We did get cheaper tickets booked 2 + months out but since pandemic I don't see those really cheap tickets any more - it's actually costing fair bit to get DD1 to open days just her and one of us.

We did a tourist thing by ourselves one day so it did feel more like a family trip.

We don't go often at all - and family do moan a bit about that but it is what it is.

We used to go on holiday by train - every else in area drove - it took about an hour took us 4 hours on good journey and cost then way more and was usually very stressful - but it was one of those time not driving did go against us and visiting family is now another one.

Look at split rail tickets on TrainPal- could save money through that