A new promotion from Hull Trains – the country’s only rail company named after the city it serves – is offering cut-price tickets for a weekend break to the former UK City of Culture.
With the cost-of-living crisis hitting consumers’ pockets, visitors heading to Yorkshire’s only maritime city can now book value-for-money Friday to Monday Long Weekender tickets.
Hull already offers budget conscious travellers plenty of money-saving options, thanks to its popular Museums Quarter with free entry attractions featuring everything from coming face to face with a woolly mammoth to journeying along a 1940s high street.
Now the new Long Weekender offers a return rail journey from London King’s Cross on a Friday and back from Hull on the Monday, from £60 per person. For an extra £20, passengers can enjoy a little more luxury and travel first class. For those with railcards, such as a Young Persons, 26-30, Family & Friends, or Two Together – which all offer a third off rail fares – standard return from London to Hull could cost £40 per person.
Ever since its year under the international spotlight in 2017 as UK City of Culture, Hull has built on its reputation as a city break destination with a difference, rich in maritime heritage and with a thriving cultural scene spanning music, theatre, and street art.
Hull Trains offers a direct service between London King’s Cross and Hull Paragon Interchange in the heart of the city with a two-and-a-half-hour journey time, and its new promotion, which runs throughout 2023, aims to offer a cheaper travel option to visitors looking for weekend city breaks.
And once in the city, Visit Hull has also produced a handy visitor guide to the best free and cheap days out (). Among the top money-saving tips is a visit to the Museums Quarter. Located just off the quaint cobbled streets of Hull’s Old Town, it is home to the Hull and East Riding Museum – where visitors can journey through 235 million years of history from Ice Age mammals to stunning Roman mosaics – and the Streetlife Museum of Transport, featuring over 200 years of transport history spread across six galleries.
Plus, the city’s Ferens Art Gallery – one of the UK’s finest regional museums with an important collection of paintings and sculptures – also has free admission, while a number of free self-guided walking trails offer a chance to uncover hidden history, inclduing.one of Hull’s most popular trails, the Fish Trail, featuring 41 fish pavement etchings across the city, ().
Among paid-for attractions, Hull’s award-winning aquarium The Deep is a firm favourite, while this summer visitors will get a first glimpse of Hull’s future as a world-class ‘Maritime City’ destination when one of its top tourist attractions re-opens.
After a 14-month restoration, the Spurn Lightship is scheduled to welcome visitors back on-board at its new-look berth in Hull Marina – and for the first time offer the chance for people to climb to the top of the historic ship‘s lantern.
It will be the first of a host of new visitor attractions to open over the next three years as part of Hull Maritime, a £30.3m project funded by Hull City Council and The National Lottery Heritage Fund, to transform the city’s maritime treasures and celebrate 800 years of seafaring history.
To find out more about the Long Weekender tickets, visit www.hulltrains.co.uk/tickets-and-offers/long-weekender
For all other tourism information about Hull, see www.visithull.org.