East Midlands Rover

Having been rather too busy to do anything much at all - let alone actually go out on some trains and blog - for the last six months, I thought it high time that I rectify this situation.

This weekend (15th-18th April), I'm doing an East Midlands Rover, and in the style of my posts on the All-Line Rover - though perhaps not in quite as much detail - I will be blogging over the next few days about my travels.

The East Midlands Rover permits unlimited travel (after 0900 on weekdays, any time at weekends) with "the East Midlands", which is actually given a very generous definition. The area covered stretches from Coventry to Cleethorpes and from Stoke-on-Trent to Peterborough, including everything in between and much besides; a full map is shown here.

There are two variants of East Midlands Rover: the full seven-day pass, which is valid for seven consecutive days, costs £57.70 with a railcard (£87.40 without), while the "flexi" 3-in-7 pass, which is valid for any choice of three days in a period of seven days, costs £44.20 with a railcard (£67 without). In my case, I'm using a flexi-rover, which is valid for a week from the 15th to the 21st of April, on Friday 15th, Saturday 16th and Monday 18th.

I decided to avoid the Sunday for three reasons: firstly, I wanted a rest, and secondly, Sunday services are pretty sparse and it would have felt like "wasting" a day; most importantly, though, London Midland have had an industrial dispute recently with their drivers which has led to almost no trains on a Sunday, and although the dispute was, in fact, resolved on Wednesday 13th I decided not to change my plans.

Why an East Midlands Rover? Well, it's one of the rovers that's valid to and from Coventry (albeit only towards Nuneaton and Rugby, and not via Birmingham), where I'm now living, and I felt like a long weekend on trains. In many ways these regional rovers (of which there are quite a few, though not very many in the south-east of England) are even better value than the All-Line Rover; they allow you to explore a particular area in depth.

Stay tuned over the next few days as I blog about my travels this weekend.