Girl With a Suitcase

Of all the terms you could use to describe London, “affordable” is probably the least accurate, and if you are visiting the city on a budget (or, even worse, if you are moving here) it can be a really annoying problem. It is not easy to find affordable activities or food, not to mention cheap transport in London, so it looks like you have to choose between doing nothing and spend all of your savings.

When I first arrived here, with a salary so low that it could barely cover my flatshare rent, I soon realized I was going to have an hard time: the first week costed me like a month back home, and I was just moving around London to find a house.

After some months here, I can now officially say that I am able to survive in London on a very low budget. Actually, I do not only survive: I go out at night, spend most of my weekends visiting the city, and also have lunch in Oxford Street every day as I don’t have a staff canteen.

How do I do, you ask? Because I found out that there are a lot of cheap things to do in London, especially if you are happy to search out of the ordinary routes and do unconventional things. If you like to think outside the box, give a try to new things and enjoy simple pleasure, then keep reading: I will guide you to discover the affordable side of London!

 

Which are the most expensive things in London, apart from accommodation?

I would easily list these 3:

1. Transport: finding cheap transport in London sounds like a dream, as the tube is incredibly expensive and buses are not much better; moreover, it is hard to understand how much you are paying, because fares change between peak and off-peak hours.
2. Activities: if you want to follow the tourist routes and go on the London Eye, on top of the Shard or to visit the Tower of London, you are going to run out of money very soon.
3. Food: if you go to a restaurant it is very difficult to leave it without having your wallet £15 lighter.

The amazing thing is: all (or most) of these things are available also in a cheap version! Living here I am learning a lot of tricks to save money, so I am going to share this knowledge with a series of articles about the affordable side of London: Save & the City.

 

This post is going to be dedicated to how to move around the city without spending a fortune and how to find cheap transport in London!

If public transport is expensive, taxi even worse (but Uber has an incredible service here and if you share a ride it’s often cheaper than the tube!), then the best things left are walking and cycling. And they are not only good examples of cheap transport in London, they are also fun and good for your body! Clearly, if it’s raining I would suggest some alternative ways to get cheap transport in London (which you can read at the end of this article), but for any other kind of weather will do fine even in winter – if you remember to bring gloves and scarf!

You are probably thinking that I am a cheater because I promised you cheap things and I am proposing to rent a cycle, which would cost at least £10-15. And you have a point, because renting a bike is not totally free. But it will actually cost you only £2 for a whole day. This is almost free, right?

Just use the cycle sharing service sponsored by Santander!

‘Santander Cycle’ bike sharing: how does it actually work?

There are Santander docking stations everywhere in London, I would say no more than 5-10 minutes walking between each other.

All you need to have to rent one or more cycles is a credit card (not debit, as they want to be sure they can charge you if you escape with it), and you need to download the Santander Cycle app (no need to have the UK App Store, it’s international).

So, once you have the app, you can select “find nearby docking station” and it will show you all the nearby stations on a map – or the places nearby where you want to rent it, if you move the map. When you get there, follow the instructions on the screen, pay with your credit card and pull (hard!) your cycle out of the docking station.

A Santander cycle costs £2 for the whole day, which is pretty cheap right?

Almost too much. And in fact, there is a trick. This service was conceived to be used for short periods of time, in particular less than 30 minutes. If you use it for a longer time, it will charge you £2 more every half hour. Fortunately it is not a big deal, as you will not need to look long for a docking station – they are everywhere. When you rent the cycle, just set the timer on your phone to ring after 20 minutes. Enjoy the ride and when the time is passed, check on the Santander Cycle app where the nearest station is: it will NEVER take you longer than 10 minutes to go there!

Always check the docking station has enough available spaces before riding there!

If you forget and find it full, don’t worry: you can have 15 minutes “bonus time” to get to a different one by tapping the “docking station full” button on the screen. This option is available only if the docking station in completely full, so if you are with your friends and you have two or more cycles to give back, pay attention not to find yourself at a docking station with only one available space – even if you put one back, it won’t give you the bonus time for the others. Again, to avoid that just check on the app, you can see the exact number of free spaces looking at the red and grey circle around a docking station: if it’s mainly grey, it means there are many free spaces. If it’s mainly red it’s almost full, go to the next one.

Once you have given it back, you will need to wait 5 minutes before you rent another one using the same credit card to identify your profile (but no charge this time).

Just the right time to buy a bottle of water, use a toilet, or just walk to the next docking station and do it from there.

This sounds a bit complicated, I know, but it’s easier than it seems and, as I told you before, if you want to find cheap transport in London you need to be adaptable, creative and open-minded. Travelling on a budget is not easy, or everyone would do so. But it’s so rewarding after all, because it makes you feel like a local and discover new things. Give it a try!

So, now that you know how to rent a cycle in London – or that you know it’s too complicated for you and you have decided to walk – where should you go? Should you walk/cycle on the main streets in the middle of the crazy London traffic, with taxis and double-deckers speeding near you on the wrong side of the road (from the Italian perspective)? Or should you go to the most famous sightseeing spots in town, packed with tourists all year round?

Of course not!

The most amazing thing I found out about London after moving here and that makes these forms of cheap transport in London so convenient, is that you can find streets where cars have no access everywhere!

It’s very easy, you can see all of them on Google Maps if you zoom in, they are the narrow grey lines all around London! Every time you see those lines, it means you can walk or cycle forgetting about traffic, buses, taxis, etc.

 

This way, you can literally walk your way all around the city, and most of the pedestrian/cycle routes run near the city’s beautiful water courses (which are many) or inside the amazing parks (which are even more).

Here are my favorite walk and cycle routes in London:

 

• The most famous water course in London is, obviously, the Thames, and on both sides of this amazing river there is a path called Thames Path (or Riverside Walk on the South bank), that you can follow all along exploring the city from west to east and passing through all the most famous sightseeing spots: from Vauxhall to Westminster, from the London Eye to the beautiful Millennium Bridge, from The Shard to the famous Tower bridge. A classic tour that would cost you a lot of money on a hop-on hop-off bus, here for you using very cheap transport in London and just meters from the river.

 

A different water course you could follow is the Regent Canal:

• You can also walk nearby the Regent Canal, which is crossing London from West to East on it’s northern area: start in Little Venice, an amazing area where multiple canals meet, and follow the main one until Regent’s Park, not as famous or as big as Hyde Park but equally beautiful. Then continue along the canal until you get to Camden Town, one of the most interesting areas of London, alternative and crazy with its colorful buildings. Follow the water again until you can, then walk/cycle for 5 minutes on the streets and take the canal again at Angel, where you will find beautiful pubs and views of skyscrapers. Keep going until the beautiful basin of Limehouse and its harbor in the middle of the city, with a break in the amazing Victoria Park: all along the way you will see beautiful swans and ducks, squirrels, small boats, barges, etc. The barges, in particular, are spectacular: colorful, decorated with the most incredible stuff, and occupied by interesting people with great stories to tell. Some turned their barges into floating-museums or libraries, so you can also visit them inside!

Or you can explore one of the newest areas of London, Canary Wharf:

• Full of skyscrapers reflecting on the water, Canary Wharf is very beautiful to see in a sunny day but can be appreciated with every weather. When you are tired of feeling like you are in Manhattan and want to see something different about London, just head down toward the rest of Isle of Dog (check here if you are curios to know why is it so called), an amazing “peninsula” that gives the Thames its characteristic U-shape just east of London. Always using walking routes (remember to check them on Google Maps), pass by the river to see beautiful British-style houses facing the water, sailing boats in the wind, a lot of fishes and seagulls, and also pigs, cows and lamas…

“What? Lamas? Are you crazy?”

No I’m not…as you will read on the next post dedicated to cheap activities in London, there are some amazing farms just in the middle of the city where you can spend the day for free, surrounded by nature and animals!

But this is a different story, that I will tell you in the next chapter of Save & the City…….

 

These are my favorite walk and cycle routes in London and it’s probably the way I prefer to spend a day here. Using your legs and/or Santander cycles, which truly are the best cheap transport in London you could ask for, you can really visit all the city for free! You don’t need to follow these paths, you can find your own and maybe contribute to this post with your suggestions!

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If you are not feeling very active and would prefer to visit London in a more traditional way, just moving from one place to another with public transport, wait before taking the tube or buying a ticket of a hop-on hop-off bus: I have some suggestions for you as well!

The underground (tube) is the MOST expensive way to move around London. If you really want to use it, do it wisely!

The best ways to have a better value for money with the public not-so-cheap transport in London are:

 

• Avoid using the tube from 06:30 to 09:29 and from 16:00 to 18:59 Monday to Friday – these are the peak hours, it will not only be more expensive, but also very crowded!
• Get the DLR: if you are underground you won’t see much of London. The DLR instead travels in the open air and will allow you to have a look around, with incredible views from time to time. One of my favorite sections is between Canary Wharf and Bank, as the trains passes on a bridge allowing you to have a full view on the Thames.
• Get a double-decker and sit on the upper floor’s front seats. You can use it to go somewhere and then jump off when you want to visit, or “pretend” you are on a touristic bus and take a tour of the city. You will see so many things, especially if you choose a line that passes along the Thames.
• Do you want to take a boat trip on the Thames? If you go for a cruise, it will easily cost you like a night in hotel. But there is a pretty cheap transport in London that is called “bus boat”: with Thames Clippers you can pay with your Oyster as if you were on the tube, and for a long trip from the London Eye to Greenwich, for example, it will only cost you something about 6£.
• If you are in a group, it could be a good idea to use Uber, the private driver service: it’s very convenient in London, especially if you avoid peak hours it can be cheaper than the tube when shared with friends! You can also share a ride’s cost directly from your phone, so everyone pays their share and you won’t have to go crazy with cash. If you don’t have UBER yet, you can have your first ride FREE if you use this discount code:

DISCOUNT CODE FOR UBER: 8w32q

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Soon the rest of Save & the City series: I will give you some tips on how to enjoy this city most, without spending a fortune for activities and food, and also discovering something interesting and new on the way!

 

If you have any comment about these or different forms of cheap transport in London and you want to share it, please leave a comment down here!

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Thank you,

Girl With A Suitcase