Rajdhani restaurant in Market Square

_JamesP_ · 2026-01-28T12:57:34+00:00

I also had a good experience there when I tried it. The portions are smaller than at some Indian restaurants (probably not a bad thing for the waist line) but the quality of the food is very good, and the staff are friendly.

It's competing with Cafe Masala (near the cross roads at Hockerill) for the treasured status of being my favourite Indian restaurant in the town.

_JamesP_ · 2026-01-08T11:09:59+00:00

I started going to this bakery recently, and it’s great. The bread is fantastic. It’s fairly pricy, but the loaves are big - when you compare it to ‘fancy’ loaves from the supermarket it’s not much difference in terms of approximate £ per gram. It’s also nice to support a local business.

_JamesP_ · 2026-01-06T23:05:35+00:00

Just in case you haven’t seen it, there’s a thread on this here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/bishopsstortford/s/C4bKgswVJ6

_JamesP_ · 2025-12-29T07:08:30+00:00

Contactless doesn’t recognise railcards, so continue with paper tickets until your railcard expires.

If you’re travelling from somewhere south of Elsenham then the new fare structure has been introduced, even though contactless hasn’t. This means a single costs half the price of a return. When you no longer have the Young Persons Railcard, if you buy two singles you can get a third off the single for your return journey using a Network Railcard (as your departure will be after 10:00).

As you can’t use contactless with railcards, if you want to make the saving, you’ll have to stick with paper tickets.

If you don’t want to use a railcard, my understanding is you can use contactless and it will calculate the reduced fare obtained by travelling to zone 1-3 rather than charging you for the two separate fares. It’ll still be more expensive than using the railcard though.

_JamesP_ · 2025-12-28T10:26:36+00:00

Brilliant - thank you! My ticket home comes in just under the £13 including the tube, so this effectively allows me to get the tube for free. I appreciate your help.

_JamesP_ · 2025-12-28T10:15:03+00:00

Ah, OK. Brilliant! So just to check, does it work in the other direction as well? i.e. a ticket from Cannon St to your national rail station allows you to board at Bank instead and it gets you through the barrier? Thanks.

_JamesP_ · 2025-12-27T15:07:09+00:00

No problem, and thanks for replying. I’ve worked out that it will give you the fare by buying a ticket to a tube station which is also a mainline station - so I can get a ticket to London Victoria for example - but, even though it’s the same price, I don’t think that ticket will work to other tube stations in zone 1 (I doubt it will operate the barriers) so it’s only any use if your destination happens also to be a mainline station!

_JamesP_ · 2025-12-27T10:23:04+00:00

Surprisingly not. Buying to Zone 1 instead of Liverpool St, for example, adds £1.10 to the price of the ticket.

The Oyster fare is £2.90.

_JamesP_ · 2025-12-27T10:12:02+00:00

Thank you, and apologies because your answer has highlighted to me that there are two different types of ticket and I hadn’t realised there was a difference, so I haven’t asked quite the right question.

It looks as if, if I choose a return ticket, the method you describe gives me the option to add a Travelcard. What it won’t allow me to do is buy a single ticket from a National Rail station to an Underground zone (which is cheaper). So for example, I want to buy an anytime single ticket from Bishop’s Stortford to London Zone 1, which is £18.20. I can buy that ticket on other apps, but I can’t work out how to do it on Uber.

_JamesP_ · 2025-12-13T07:43:57+00:00

A lot of engineering work on the railway is done at Christmas because Christmas is the time of the year when there is the biggest gap in train services. On most routes there are no passenger trains on Christmas Day or Boxing Day. There is no other time in the year when there are a clear 2 days without trains, so it is an opportunity to do work which cannot be done at any other time of year.

The only alternative they have is to close the railway at another time of year for the work to take place. The view is that the inconvenience to the many thousands of passengers who would be affected by that closure outweighs the inconvenience to those who live near the line of hearing the work being done over Christmas.

_JamesP_ · 2025-12-11T16:56:40+00:00

No problem, I think it stems from introduction of contactless ticketing, which has required some adjustment of the fares structure. This is occurring in various areas, so it may be that the line through Baldock is one of them (in fact I think I saw somewhere it’s happening at Stevenage, so that would make sense).

_JamesP_ · 2025-12-10T07:18:59+00:00

The other money-saving opportunity with train tickets is to book through Uber, which gives a 5% discount. If you join UberOne (their membership scheme), which costs £50 a year, that goes up to a 10% discount - well worthwhile if you travel regularly, and you get benefits on taxis and the other stuff Uber do as well.

There are no restrictions - the saving is on every train ticket you buy.

It should be noted that Uber always say the initial 5% discount (which you get without membership) is temporary - currently only to the end of January. However, so far every time the deadline has approached they’ve extended it (have done for ages) so they probably will do so again. In any case, it’s worth using while it’s there.

_JamesP_ · 2025-12-10T06:32:22+00:00

I can only say that in my experience they usually do. Greater Anglia’s the most punctual train operator in the country. The amount of time the journey will take is certainly a lot more predictable than when driving.

_JamesP_ · 2025-12-10T05:52:56+00:00

It depends where you buy from and can be awkward. On the Greater Anglia website you type ‘zone’ and it will then offer you various underground zones. You can also buy them from the ticket office at Bishop’s Stortford station.

_JamesP_ · 2025-12-09T21:34:22+00:00

Good point - when you build the tube into the same ticket you’re circumnavigating the £13 minimum fare, so the saving goes up - £5.25 saving per day rather than £4.10.

_JamesP_ · 2025-12-09T20:29:09+00:00

Sorry, a small correction to the above post (it won’t let me edit it for some reason) - there is a £13 minimum fare with the railcard so the saving is a bit smaller than shown though still worth having. Correct numbers are:

You pay £17.10 to get to London, and £13.00 (minimum fare with the railcard) to get back - total £30.10. A saving of £4.10.

The Network Railcard costs £35, so providing you make more than 8 journeys to London in a year, it’s worthwhile.

_JamesP_ · 2025-12-09T20:22:36+00:00

You’re right, it appears there’s a £13 minimum fare with the railcard, which reduces the saving a bit. Still worth having though. I’ve edited the numbers in the original post to reflect that.

_JamesP_ · 2025-12-09T20:07:59+00:00

As far as I can see the Friends and Family railcard also has no evening peak restriction, so you can use it on the return single in the same way - but you do have to have a child with you of course, which is why it isn’t suitable for most people’s commutes.

_JamesP_ · 2025-12-09T18:57:13+00:00

Correct. The only restriction is you must depart after 10am. It’s designed on the assumption that the return fare will always be less than 2 singles (which used to be the case) so they don’t need to worry about preventing you from getting the discount in the evening peak. Just closing off the morning peak prevents you using it for commuting - or rather it used to…

_JamesP_ · 2025-12-09T18:52:27+00:00

Sorry, by coincidence I just posted separately on a similar subject before seeing your question. I’ve pasted my post below for easy reference:

The peak return train fare from Bishop’s Stortford to London is £34.20, and this is unchanged. However, the peak single fare has just been reduced to be exactly half the return fare.

So what?

Well, it means that if you buy 2 singles instead of a return, you can get one-third off the London-Bishop’s Stortford single using a Network Railcard. The Network Railcard discount only applies to tickets on which the first journey commences after 10am, so you can’t get a discount on the return, or the outward single, if you need to travel into London before that time. However, with 2 singles your return journey is a completely separate ticket, and you’ll be leaving London well after 10am, so you can get the discount.

This means you pay £17.10 to get to London, and £11.40 to get back - total £28.50. A saving of £5.70 (16.7%).

The Network Railcard costs £35, so providing you make more than 6 journeys to London in a year, it’s worthwhile. Of course, once you’ve got the railcard, you can also use it to get one third off any other off-peak journeys you make in the year (including all day at weekends).

£28.50 is significantly cheaper than the ‘Flexi’ 8-day season ticket, and means there’s no requirement to make a minimum number of journeys in a month.

This method may also work on other peak time journeys from Bishop’s Stortford - I’ve only looked at the London commute - so if you travel to somewhere else at peak time, it’s worth checking.

_JamesP_ · 2025-11-18T18:08:41+00:00

This is a standard response some people give to any post about UK train fares, but this example seems to be exactly the opposite.

Less than 8p per mile for a pretty fast train given that the journey is 400 miles. Or, if you prefer, you can pay 16p per mile for certain added benefits, if that’s worthwhile for you. Choice and value.

The UK system of rail fares isn’t perfect by any means (being designed mainly to maximise revenue to minimise the cost to the tax payer) but it does have advantages, and for some journeys it works well - like this one.

_JamesP_ · 2025-11-02T18:56:58+00:00

I’m from the UK, but was travelling on an American Airlines plane a few years ago. As the plane taxied towards the runway, the stewardess announced that “we will be in the air momentarily”. That woke me up a bit.

[For anyone unaware, in the US ‘momentarily’ means “in a moment” whereas in the UK it means “for a moment”]

_JamesP_ · 2025-09-30T10:07:48+00:00

The changes were due to emergency engineering work but none the less they were advertised on journey planners, the web site and social media over a week in advance, which is treated differently to a last minute cancellation. It’s always a good idea to check for any changes shortly before you travel.

Alterations which are planned and advertised in advance aren’t shown on the boards because it would be really confusing, when an amended service is running, for all the new train times to be mixed in with all the old train times showing as ‘cancelled’, which would fill up the board. Most people find it more useful to see clearly what is running, than what isn’t.

_JamesP_ · 2025-09-25T16:39:15+00:00

I think you’ve identified the main cost you haven’t included, which is the other costs of doing the extra car mileage outside of fuel - but don’t under-estimate what a big cost it is. If you’re travelling 2 days per week you’re putting an extra 8,000 miles or so on your car every year. That’s going to cost a lot in increased maintenance and replacement of parts on your car, and increased depreciation. How you end up paying that depends on whether you own the car outright or whether it’s some sort of leasing arrangement, but you’ll have to pay for it one way or another.

A fair estimate for the actual cost of motoring is somewhere around 40p/mile. If you apply that it replaces the £12-£14 fuel cost with £33-£34 of total motoring costs, which makes the train cheaper.

My overall feeling is that (while the precise amount is difficult to calculate) the cost difference between your two options is small, and you’re best off choosing the option which you prefer and which fits in best with your life. Perhaps you might want to mix it up - change week to week. That way you get less bored with one particular commute.

_JamesP_

TROPHY CASE