Won free interrail pass and can't work out how to use it!

[NewNameInterrail]

DS has been lucky enough to be awarded one of the free Discover EU interrail passes for 18 year olds.

2018 year is the only year British citizens are eligible due to Brexit....so he has been super-fortunate and we are very grateful . So, we're not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth....but we are now finding it hard to understand how to use it to get out of the UK without paying reservation fees for trains and £30 ish each way for either Eurostar or ferry to Europe first. He is just looking to head to somewhere like Amsterdam, Brussels or Cologne.

It seemed tske ages for the ticket to be issued, which ate into his travel time and we don't really have much cash to spare (it will be tight to find the money for a few hostel nights) so he is planning to make this a shorter trip of a week or so rather than the full month. Paying £60 just to get to Europe and back to be able to use the ticket seems a lot. Wondering whether it is more economical to fly, but then losing the whole rail travel adventure thing and would hardly make use of the Interrail ticket except maybe from the airport to the city centre.

We only found out he had been successful about 4 weeks ago and the interrail site says most popular trains are fully booked in July and August and should have been booked 3 months ago ( the scheme wasn't even open at that point).

Has anyone else got a DC who won one of these passes? It was all very last-minute and I imagine lots of people don't have the £ saved up to make use of them snd are now strugging a bit.. Any tips much appreciated!!

www.seat61.com/InterRail-pass-guide.htm

Thank you! I looked on there but all seems so complicated. You certainly don't seem to be able to turn up, wait for a train with space, wave your ticket and go.....which I thought was the whole idea. I also thought it covered most ferriees but seemingly not from the UK or Eurostar. I think the value of these is around £400 so it seems crazy that people in the UK are paying that plus €30 reservation fee each way for Eurostar on top of that, or only 30% discount on ferry.....just to get to Europe to be able to use the ticket.

My ds and his friend have just returned from backpacking around Italy with inter rail tickets.

They just pre-booked the tickets the morning of travel with no problems. Some trains were more expensive to book than others but it does add up.

Thanks FlissFloss, can I just ask, did they use Eurostar to get out of the UK, or a ferry?

Wondering whether it is more economical to fly, but then losing the whole rail travel adventure thing and would hardly make use of the Interrail ticket except maybe from the airport to the city centre.

He could fly to the cheapest European city on the cheapest air ticket, then use the Interrail ticket to get to somewhere that he actually wants to go. (As in, he doesn't have to fly to where he wants to go.)

They flew to Milan and then used their interrail ticket as it was just valid for Italy.

If the ticket is valid for all of Europe it would be a shame just to use it for one city.

If

DS has one of these passes and has booked flights to and from the continent. In theory you can take the Eurostar (you have to pay £30 reservation fee) but we couldn’t find any available tickets for interrail pass holders, I think Eurostar have a quota. DS ended up booking a flight to Luxembourg. Eurostar was impossible to book as I said and the ferry was too expensive and faffy. DS was determined to get to Helsinki (which must be the most difficult place to get to by train) and has booked himself quite an adventurous schedule, staying in some cool places, before flying back from Helsinki. He leaves next week. I second the recommendation upthread of seat61.com, it has loads of great information.

Don't think you can use Eurostar without paying for reservation, the website tells you which trains require you to pay extra. Still represents excellent value though, especially when free in the first place 😁

I'm not a natural easy going wanderer so booked all my trains months in advance, paying for reservations where necessary.

Does seem like a waste to not use it to travel a lot further than just one place.
When I inter railed back in the dark ages we used to get overnight trains to save money on hostels, some nights. Surely it's worth taking a tent and paying for campsites, or extending himself to some more hostel nights now he's got the ticket? Or it seems a shame it didn't go to someone who will really use it.

Just read up about these free tickets. How lucky to win one.

Was feeling peeved that ds hadn’t applied but then realised he wasn’t eighteen until after their deadline.

I totally agree with Back to good. It's always been a condition of Interrail that it's not valid in your home country. Look around for the cheapest European flights to a cheaper part of Europe - not Amsterdam, it's horribly expensive. And Brussels - how boring is that! And sleep on longer overnight trains to save on accommodation costs. Another option is sofa surfing, which is entirely free. He just needs to register and then travel on trains which will get him to wherever he gets a sofa for the night. In Greece we all slept in our sleeping bags on the roof of a cheap hotel (much cooler than in the rooms). So there are always cheap options, he just needs to think outside the box a bit. Could he join up with someone else who's traveling around the same time -that might give him a little more confidence.

Yes when I inter-railed many aeons ago we slept on the trains, or in train waiting rooms (really not comfortable), or on the beach. We also had a tent that was too small for all of us to fit in (4 of us in a 3 man tent). We had so little money we could only afford to eat or drink (or smoke), so we mainly lived on bread rolls and cheap wine. We had no phones or emergency funds. I came back thin and tanned and covered in mossie bites, one of the best months of my life! Please try and scrape together some cash (does he have a part time job?) so he can make the most of this amazing opportunity!

It is valid in your home country now but only for outward and inward journey. We used ours from north of England to London, Eurostar, France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, back on Eurostar and back to north of England. What amazing value. We had 1st class so train to London alone would have been about 30% of cost of ticket.

We are interrailing at the moment . High speed trains are where reservations are needed . Local slower trains are generally included in the pass and require no reservation fee. Therefore the flexibility can be done albeit slower !
We paid for Paris to Venice ( sleeper ) and also from Milan to Geneva and Amsterdam to Paris . The high speed trains are generally 10 euros to reServe . Depends where he wants to go ! We’ve had a brill time but booked Eurostar some months ago.

Thank you everyone. I think I've learned more from your replies than from hours on the Interrail site. The free interrail offer was a draw held by DiscoverEU and applications were open from 12th to 26th June 2018. Notification of the win came early July and the ticket arrived around 15th July...valid from 23rd July. So while he is very grateful and happy to win, it is all very last minute and while you can probably be spontaneous with bookings once you get to Europe, actually getting from England to the continent would be best booked well in advance. He would have loved to travel by train from home and use Eurostar but as IkeaMeatballs says, the quotas for Interrail users must have been booked up many months ago. This is the first year they have run the free ticket scheme so maybe this first batch had to be rushed out. We will look for super cheap flights anywhere close to the cities I mentioned but it bumps up travel costs this end and might mean he can't afford to go in the end. The reason for picking what some are calling a dull area is that it fits with his time frame and could use explore possible European university options....not actually visit the unis, just get a feel for Germany and the Netherlands...there still might be options there during the Brexit transition period. Agree this would seem a different prospect if going with friends but none of his applied. You can do a group application to DiscoverEU though the odds of getting a group ticket are probably smaller. I think there is another round planned in the Autumn for people who turned 18 from July onwards. Maybe those tickets will be for next summer so give people more time to plan (half the fun!) and book ahead. Good luck to anyone going in the next draw!