I f lew Newcastle to London (via Menorca) for £40 less than the train
FACED with paying almost £80 to take the train from Newcastle to London, Joe Furness decided it was worth going the extra mile to save some cash.
In fact the 21-year-old went an extra 1,500 miles to save £40 – flying to the capital via Menorca.
While the trainee shipping officer’s trip took almost 24 hours rather than three by rail, he says it was worth it as he got to stop off at the beach on the Spanish island too.
Mr Furness, from Newcastle, left it until the day before his trip to book a ticket and, with no cheap advance deals available, would have had to pay £78.50.
But by searching the web for cheap deals, Mr Furness – who previously went to Manchester via Switzerland to save cash – found a £15.99 flight to Menorca from Newcastle the next day, while the next leg to London Gatwick cost just £10.99.
In his stopover he hired a Fiat 500 for £7.50 and drove around the island, visiting the beach and a local festival, at which he bought a £4 cocktail.
Mr Furness then slept in his car to save money before flying into Gatwick in time to meet his friends. He said: ‘When I told my friends that I was coming via Spain they didn’t believe me.
‘It’s only when I landed in London Gatwick that they knew I was serious.’
His total cost was £38.48, a saving of £40.20 from the East Coast Main Line.
Mr Furness, who posted about the trip online in his video blog, told Metro.co.uk: ‘I’m always looking at flight websites and when I saw the price of the train I thought, “Why not?”
‘I flew to Menorca with Thomas Cook, I found a beach, I
‘Slept overnight in hired car’
hired a car, I had a cocktail and I flew to London to meet up with my friends. I slept overnight in the hired car so I didn’t pay for a hotel either.
‘There was a big Spanish festival on so it was really fun.’
Last year teenager Jordon Cox travelled from Sheffield to Brentwood, Essex, via Berlin, rather than take a train that would have cost him £47.
However his detour of 1,017 miles, which also took eight hours and ten minutes longer than travelling by train, saved just £7.72 – once Jordon had taken into account the currywurst sausage he bought for lunch in Germany.