London Midland's "Great Escape"

It's usual for anyone with children or anyone to work in education to complain about the way in which prices for holidays, etc., go up in school holidays. All attempts to explain to them that they don't go "up" in holiday time, they go "down" in term time fall on the deaf ears of those who do not wish to hear. It's also called demand-pull inflation.

So it's unusual to hear of something whereby a special, heavily discounted offer in only available during school holidays.

I'm talking about London Midland's "£10 Great Escape" offer. You download a voucher from their website, present it at the station and can get a full day's travel on their network for £10. bearing in mind that that stretches from London to Liverpool, that can be a very good deal indeed.

The only downside (for us childless ones) is that it causes trains to be packed out with families! :-) Now that can plainly be a Good Thing.......but I do wonder how many of those journeys would have happened anyway (maybe not many, I don't know?) but why don't they try the (occasional) offer in term time, when presumably there are many more empty off-peak seats to fill?

Just a thought.

And overall it really is a good idea. I've now availed myself of it a couple of times and - apart from tiring myself out - can pronounce myself very happy with it!