I want to go to Leicester (from London) on 28th November and return on 29th. The cheapest train fare for this appears to be 48 quid, going by nationalrail.co.uk and thetrainline.com.
Is that really going to be the best I can get, or do cheaper advance tickets come out closer to the time? I note that I can get TO Leicester for nine quid, so why do they want to charge me so much more to come back?
(Don't actually know much of anything about Leicester, beyond that my father was born there.)
Do you mind a slow return journey? If not, the way around the problem is to go via Birmingham, as there are plenty of advance tickets for the Birmingham-London route even on a Sunday (and it's travelling on a Sunday that's causing your original problem).
For example:
Leicester to Birmingham New Street:
£5.00 Advance Single: dep 12:52, arr 14:06 (or 13:52/15:07)
Birmingham New Street to London Euston:
£7.00 Advance Single: dep 14:30, arr 15:59 (or 15:30/16:59)
With your £9 outward fare, that's a total of £21, plus anything you might have to spend to get home from Euston.
Edit: If you need to travel back later, I think the Leicester-Birmingham £5 tickets are available all day. There are also some £7 Birmingham-London tickets available in the late evening, from about 19:30. (In between they're £17.50)
Edited at 2009-10-02 09:01 pm (UTC)
Knowing what a horrorshow Victoria is, I won't suggest you look at travelling by coach.
The other alternative is to try to split the journey to make it cheaper. Due to the opacity of the ticketing system, it's possible that (say) four singles London - Luton, Luton - Leicester, Leicester - Luton, Luton - London may work out cheaper than a proper return. See http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/travel/cheap-train-tickets for more details.