For DjangoCon Europe this past week I flew into London, stayed a few days being touristy, went to the conference in Cardiff, then came back to London and am flying out (home to the US) in a few hours.

I took a train to and from Cardiff. It was £22 each direction, roughly 2.5 hour trip from London Paddington to Cardiff Central, and the same in the opposite direction.

I doubt very much I'd have been able to hire a car for that trip for £22 each way. In fact, I probably couldn't even have gotten out of London for £22.

In Britain, you pay a lot for peak-time travel, or last-minute travel.

London to Cardiff and back is £218 at peak times(!) on a fully-flexible ticket, £74 with a flexible off-peak ticket, and as low as £40-ish (which you paid) if booked well in advance for particular trains.

It would have cost about £50 in petrol (return) to drive, plus £40/day for a small rental car.

How "last-minute" are we talking here? I booked the ticket on May 24, for the trip to Cardiff on May 30.

In the US, where intercity trips above a couple hundred miles are typically by air, six days out would be "last-minute" for most people, so that's my frame of reference.

Also, the return to London corresponded with the hordes of One Direction fans (whose suddenly-announced concert in Cardiff forced a shuffling of the conference schedule since every hotel in town sold out instantly).

In Germany I usually buy my ticket on my phone on the way to the station (I do have a BahnCard 50, i.e. 50% off all journeys). I could typically save a few quid if I booked non-flexible tickets a few days in advance (3-7 days). For longer distances (>400km) the savings become more noticeable and my trips less spontaneous, so I do tend to book those in advance as far as possible.

In the UK (I had a Railcard), I booked everything as far as possible in advance (quite often on the day advance tickets became available), as prices for advance tickets do vary quite a lot when you get close (weeks instead of months) to the day of travel. If you don't care which train you take, then you'll usually find affordable tickets a week in advance, but when meeting people at a fixed time, booking close to the day can yield unwelcome surprises.

I'd like to buy the ticket shortly before the train leaves and not feel I've been ripped off, or have more flexibility in the return journey when booking in advance.

For most trips the train is competing with a car, which has no penalty for spontaneity other than journey time.

Having spent a couple of years commuting from West Wales to Cardiff daily, at peak, I have to say that there is no way that I could have hired a car for the £18 return.

SE England is ridiculous, I'll give you that, and never a seat.

I once got a lift from a friend from the South West of England to the South East, as the ticket price was £150 PP return (2 of us), and he needed to head up that way anyway. Ultimately the lift ended up only being one way, the price of a single train ticket back.. £149 PP.

Over the course of my trip in the UK, I traveled short-distance last-minute dozens of times, and trains were practically as cheap as coach about half the time, so long as you picked the correct departure time. This simply is not the case at all in mainland Europe. Dunno anything about car hiring, but the coach prices were certainly cheaper than the price of gas.