Booking rail trips in Spain.

Can anybody help with trying to book a journey in Spain. I am trying to book tickets online for a return journey, Murcia to Madrid on the RENFE website. I can get my dates & times selected alright but when I get to the payment section and it wants my personal details I can't find UK, England, Great Britain in the list of countries to select my place of residence. Does anyone know how to navigate past this bit and actually book and pay for the tickets.

Regards,

Try looking for "Reino Unido" - Spanish for the United Kingdom.

Using Google Chrome, which translates for you, UK comes just after Qatar way down the list. Although the list is alphabetic, it is in Spanish alphabetic order so the US (Estados Unidos) comes quite high up but UK (Reino Unido) comes after the Q.

Thanks Pitby,

Managed to book them when I found Reino Uniido although it would not take my post code and I ended up just putting in 2 random numbers in. Funny that that list of countries seemed to be mainly in English language ? Selected the promo + ticket which cost a few euros more than the basic ticket. Anyone know the difference ?

Regards,

Billbo

When selecting your train there are a few icons after the price. If you hover your pointer over each one it states what you get!

Very simply it is :-

P = promo, no choice/selection of seat (you take what you are given) no change of seat or route, no refunds

P+= choose your seat, cost of change of route 20%, cost of refund on cancellation 30%

F= flexible, no charge for change route, refund on cancellation 5%

Have a good trip

I  have booked seats with renfe previously and always pay a few

euros more so I can pick my seat number

my laptop automatically translates the webpage into english so was easy to book

Thanks for that folks. Guess I missed the part where the seat selection was as my printed tickets have a coach and seat number on them. Is there anywhere on the site where you 'manage your bookings' like on flights ?

I have coach 9 - seat4C & coach8 - seat5D allocated. I am assuming 4 seats across a row ? I like a forward facing window seat, particularly as I will not have seen this part of the countryside before, so assume 4C will be that ?

Regards,

hi billbo

when you have paid for your seats if you have paid to select

your seat it will go to a page that shows the train carriage and

the direction it is travelling in, you pick a seat number for each passenger

so when you print out the tickets you will have an A4 size ticket for each passenger.

each ticket will have a different number on.for instance 1C 2C 3C and 4C for 4 people.

hi billbo

should have said you will also have a ticket each for the return fare 

OK.

Looks like the promo+ ticket pre-allocates your seat then. Looks like I have a window seat (D) on one leg and I suppose you can move in the carriage if another seat is unocupied.

Cheers.

The prices are amazingly cheap for the distance, a fraction of UK costs.  We tend to go "preferente" as it's only a few euros more and you get to use the lounge at the stations, like an airport lounge with food and drinks, plus you get a reasonable meal plus drinks on the train.  You also get a film - of course it's in Spanish, but often seems to have English sub titles which helps the learning process.  All rather good.

Been looking at alternative methods of transport from Granada to London (again)... one would have thought that with the recently introduced RENFE / SNCF Barcelona -Paris AVE/ TGV routing that it might make it viable but no... Granada to London is just about do-able but very expensive at around 450-500 Euros one way, and time consuming (27 hours) ... the cheapest part of the route is the overnight Trenhotel from Granada to Barcelona with fares from as little as 50 Euros. Barca- Paris typically 250 Euros one way... No overnight Eurostar services and their ridiculously high fares mean that in terms of costs per route mile they are about four times more expensive than RENFE...

In any case, its impossible to make the return trip from London to Granada without an overnight stay in either Paris or Barcelona because the return working of the Trenhotel from Barcelona to Granada leaves two hours before the arrival of the last train from Paris...

Given the b*ggeration factor and a total return fare of around 1000 euros its just not economically viable. The same applies to the Seville or Malaga routings to London, both of which include additional changes in Madrid. The old service from Madrid to Paris has been all but abandoned in favour of the AVE Madrid- Barcelona-Paris route... Crazy, I thought Madrid was the capital of Spain not Barcelona!

There is always Eurolines Coach service to London Victoria of course; at around 250 Euros return (and thats door to door) it is definitely do-able but its a long bum numbing trip of 36 hours each way plus any UK travel time... but given that the return leg of the TGV / AVE train service includes an overnight stop its actually quicker by bus! The Eurolines service too has built in b*ggeration factor, having to check in twice; once at the point of departure and then again in Paris is a real PITA because the French check-in staff, despite dealing with international passengers of all ages refuse to speak anything except French. When I last used the service all passengers from Spain were bumped from their allocated Paris to London service and put on a coach leaving three hours later... they werent interested in their clients onward connections in the UK.

Flybe are pulling the sun routes from Malaga and Alicante to Southampton as from September and it doesnt look likely that any other operator is going to fill these slots. To justify their service withdrawal Flybe are as usual blaming the punters for falling revenues when in fact over the alst two years they have virtually doubled their fares and p*ssed around with the timetable no end. This is exactly what Monarch did to justify the withdrawal of their very successful Granada- Gatwick service back in 2007. The real reason that Monarch abandoned the route was a case of them 'chucking their toys out of the pram' when Granada Council wouldn't or couldn't pay them the same subsidies that they gave to Ryanair. And Ryan true to form abandoned Granada as a destination when their subsidies were withdrawn. I flatly refuse to have anything to do with Ryanair... they exist to service no-one but Ryanair, certainly not the punters...

BA have the much vaunted London City to Granada service running three or four times a week but who (other than those who live in East London or Essex) wants to have to treck across London with baggage and multiple tube changes in the rush hour..?

So it looks like the same old, same old... bus from Granada to Malaga, Monarch from Malaga to the human zoo known as Gatwick, then bus from Gatwick to Pompey...

Just some points:

On Talgo trains (and I think others too), the seat number denotes the row and the letter the actual seat.

Thus 4A, 4B and 4C are in the same row. 4A, 5A and 6A are not.

The RENFE webiste is a bit cumbersome (understatement) as it quickly gives up when too many changes of train

are involved and it doesn't integrate the local / commuter trains into the same tool but you have to go to a different

part of the website for them. On routes where the two run parallel or fill in gaps in one another's schedules this

can be a real pain.

Alternatives are to use RENFE trravel agencies. Also worth worth checking out are international raill webistes

such as the man in seat 61

Yes, I found that to be the case myself. Wanted to start and end journey from Alahma de Murcia but system would not give that station as an option. I will just find train times for the local train when I go to Spain in a week or so's time and get everything lined up for my trip in July for my mates batchelor weekend . Got to agree the fares are really good value though.

Regards,