Will be coming up for the derby, and starting to look ahead re. travel arrangements. I shall be based in London that w/e (and there's no way round that).
Looking into it: Avanti still seem to be all over the shop. On the Trainline website, it says “tickets coming soon”. Whatever that means… If you go onto National Rail Enquiries, it just says tickets not available.
What does everybody reckon?
You can go East Midlands from St. Pancras to Sheffield, but it's cutting it very, very fine. Earliest possible train on Sunday morning only gets you into Sheffield at 12.24. Transpennine — if theyre reliable, and they don't seem to be all that reliable at present! — have a train running Sheffield to Piccadilly at 12.40. If all goes well, and everything's on schedule, you could therefore catch that connection, but it doesn't you into Piccadilly before 13.36! Now I'm a brisk walker, but I'm not Usain Bolt, and that's cutting it really fine to get out to the Etihad for k.o. Even a best-case-scenario tram at 13.45 or so wouldn't get you there for k.o. Well, it would get you to the stop, but I'm South Stand, and there's no way I'd be in my seat without missing about ten minutes. Which I truly hate (especially since we shall have scored a couple by that point).
Thoughts?