Let's Just Go

Stuck for some inspiration, or want some ideas planning a trip?
These sites and apps may help you find useful information to help with your next journey!

Planning Flights

Google Flights
A great resource for pricing up trips and seeing the cheapest times of the month/year to travel. You can also set alerts to receive an email when prices or availability of flights change. Also really goof for evaluating different airline prices. Filter out any airlines you don’t want to travel with, airports you don’t want to connect at, or times of the day you don’t want to depart/arrive. Incredibly useful!

Skyscanner
If you’re looking for a bargain and have specific dates in mind, search cheap flights to “everywhere” and be surprised at where you could go!

Planning UK travel

It’s worth saying first – that it’s cheaper to buy a UK rail ticket with the rail company that you are travelling on than it is to use SOME ticket engines such as National Rail or TheTrainLine. I don’t recommend using either of these sites to purchase tickets as they will be more expensive than the train operating company’s website.

If you are looking to travel with more than one TOC, I would recommend buying the tickets with the starting TOC, or use a service like TrainSplit if you are confident in doing so (and the journey doesn’t require seat reservations!) – this is explained below.

Traveline
A really detailed UK travel planner – using train, bus, coach, ferry and tram timetables to get you to your destination.

TrainSplit
A really useful website to save money by splitting tickets along the route. This can be great for long distance journeys as the website will try and find the cheapest way to get you to your destination and will issue multiple tickets for one journey as this is often cheaper than buying a direct A-B ticket.

HOWEVER. If you are travelling on a UK Train Operating Company that requires a reserved seat (eg LNER, Avanti, etc) you may be given a different reserved seat for part of your journey and may have to go and sit in that seat for that part of the journey. You also usually can only travel on the journey you have booked, and can’t break journey. Also, if there are delays or cancellations your split ticket journey may no longer work, as your train must stop at all of the stations that tickets are split at.

It is worth doing some research to see if this would be useful to you – the inflexibility of the rules can sometimes outweigh the savings!

Planning International rail travel

InterRail
Often used by backpackers, young people and the budget-conscious traveller, InterRail offers pre-paid passes to travel around the EU for a number of days. Some trains may need reservations which cost extra on top of the pass price. The website itself is also really good for planning multi-day routes around Europe – or working out how to get from London to Narvik!
You don’t need an account with them to plan a journey if this is all you’re looking to do.

Deutschlandticket
Germany is a wonderful country to explore – after the pandemic it offers a subscription service to something called the Deutschlandticket – a ticket which you buy for one month, giving you access to all public transport (just not high speed trains) across the entirety of Germany. Initially it was to encourage people to travel again, but the idea is so popular and it is so cheap, it is wonderful for visitors too.
The ticket includes all journeys on S and U bahn trains in cities, local trains across the country as long as they are not ICE, trams, buses, trolleybuses, and even the Wuppertal suspension railway, the Schwebebahn or “Danglebahn”. If you enjoy transport and will be travelling in Germany it will save you money on your transportation! UK Residents can buy the ticket subscription for 1 month and then cancel any time, using the Mo.Pla website and app, linked above.

Planning Places to Stay

Avios Hotels – or Your preferred chain of hotels
As well as having a Points strategy for airline points, it helps to have a “Frequent Customer” account with a preferred chain of hotels. You will get discounts and free nights, and used in conjuction with a credit card for the hotel chain, there will be bonuses and treats available too!

I use Avios Hotels – this is another way of spending money to gain Avios, as I am trying to earn as much as possible within the Avios ecosystem. Y

ou may prefer other hotel families – such as Mariott, Wyndham, Accor or Hilton. Some of these also have their own credit cards, with loyalty schemes and payment for stays with points, so it is worth investigating the loyalty schemes available and picking something that suits your budget and travel patterns.

At the Airport

FlightRadar24 website and app
Download this to your phone, and you can track flights coming and going, see what are the most tracked flights, and if a flight passes over you, you can stalk it! You can also track your own journey to the runway whilst on the plane, as long as there is cellular data. This is helpful if you’re waiting to take off and wondering how long it will be, or where in the queue you are.

Flighty (app for iOS)
Flight tracker and organiser app! Keep all your bookings organised in one place. You can also add friends and watch their flight journeys. It updates you when the plane status changes, the airframe changes, and keeps track of the inbound aircraft journeys before yours to keep an eye on timekeeping.
If you are on a flight with “messaging only wi-fi” it will also show you where you are in the world as well – so useful!

Turbli
Forecasts the turbulence for your flight, based on weather, wind speed and direction. This can help if you’re a nervous flier, to prepare for some turbulent times if you know when they are coming. The website also predicts flight time based on wind speed and direction, and likelihood of storms/weather on the flight path.

On the way

Video Player
If you’re on a long-haul flight (or enjoy watching something that isn’t looking out of the window!) – be sure to download something to watch. Most channels or companies have their own app or player, or you can download something like VLC player and download your own video files to a phone, tablet or laptop. Even if you have a longhaul flight with an entertainment system, it may not work, or may not have items you want to watch on it.

Downloaded Music and Podcasts
I can’t make a journey without listening to a good podcast or two, and also a playlist – full of albums and songs I would like to listen to at some point soon. Everyone has a favourite music or playlist service so no links here. I feel a journey is always better if accompanied by a wonderful and ponderous soundtrack.

A book or e-reader
Flight time or Journey time gives us all a chance to pause and immerse ourselves in another liminal world, whilst hurtling through space at speed. An ideal opportunity to get entranced by a book or story!

At your Destination

Citymapper
An excellent app to download – it makes public transport or walking around a new city so much easier. It’s available in many places, and gives step by step directions to get to places. Directions can be read out loud or into headphones, and also appear on the lock screen of your device so you know where you are and when to get off at the right stop.

Hope you found some of these useful – and use them on your next trip!