Originally Posted by
mad_rich
Ah, that explains things. It's three hours or so on the train from King's Cross, but starting from a hotel at LHR obviously skews things in favour of flying. The Heathrow Express is not a great deal of help to you.
I don't know where you want to end up in the evening, but there's nothing to stop you from flying one way and train the other. The BA price you mentioned sounds like 2 x one-way fares. If you look on
http://www.nationalexpresseastcoast.com/ you can see the various fare options for one-ways on the train. The cheapest inflexible fares start at about £10, but are more typically in the £30-£50 range.
I'm actually ending up at the Hilton London Kensington that evening (Holland Park tube stop). Coming back into LHR, I'd probably take the Heathrow Connect back to Paddington and do the tube transfers from there. I looked at one way fares-it is 11 pounds each way, but the taxes and fees drive it up to 84 pounds r/t (vs. 52 pounds one way). I'm going to have to sleep on this one...$170 is a lot of money for a few hours (and I don't get any BA EC tier points, either), although great memories are priceless.