Here is an in depth video I made about the whole ordeal, but if you prefer the written version… I will outline that below!

To start off, we did not intend on going to London on this trip, because accommodation and food can be so expensive!! We originally booked a round trip flight in and out of Dublin, Ireland with Airtransit, but about a month before the trip, Airtransit cancelled the return flight and said that there were no longer flights leaving Dublin for the entire year! SO I had to do some research (thanks for the help Airtransit). I realized that Airtransit had return flights from both Glasgow and London. I called Airtransit back, and requested that our return flight leave from Glasgow or London. Airtransit told me it would cost an ADDITIONAL $400 each to fly home from Glasgow or $300 total to fly from London. There you go, the reason we ended up on this predicament.

The second hiccup we faced was that we had to make the journey from Conwy Wales all the way to London to catch our new flight. AND we would have to make the journey from Conwy to London on a Sunday (which seriously limited our options).

Background story over.

So I looked into our two options for making this journey; train or bus.

Option 1- Train

The total cost of the train would be about $170 each (Canadian) and would get us from Conwy (Llandudno Station) in about 3 hours, with one transfer along the way. We had good luck booking trains with Trainline, so you could try booked here if you’d like to try that option.

Option 2- Bus

The total cost of the bus would be about $30 each (Canadian) and would end up taking us about 12.5 hours, with many many stops and one transfer along the way. We booked with Aircoach and it worked out perfectly fine.

We chose the bus option because we are not rich by any stretch of the imagination, and an additional $340 was not an option for us.

We boarded the bus at a stop across from Llandudno train station, at about 8:30am. The bus drove all along the northern Welsh coast line, and stopped at various towns before stopping in Liverpool (the opposite direction from London). We then drove all the way down to Birmingham. This portion of the trip took about 6 hours.

In Birmingham we got off the bus and had 45 minutes to find a quick snack to buy, before queuing up to get on one of the two crowded buses heading to London. The bus was so crowded that the driver told us to hold our luggage on our laps for the entire trip, another 6.5 hours!!

In total, because of traffic heading into London, the trip from Conwy to London took 12 and 1/2 hours!

From here we had to take two different metros in order to arrive at our hostel accommodation in Swiss Cottage.

Was it worth it to take the bus and save money? For us, yes. We certainly couldn’t shell out the money to take the train. However, if you are making a similar trip on a different day of the week, you may have more options than we did on a Sunday.