London & Transport
Fares, airports, night services, black cabsZone matrix with peak / off-peak / super off-peak & daily cap. Works out whether contactless or a Travelcard wins.
Heathrow / Gatwick / Stansted / Luton / City / Southend — pick by your origin and final destination, not by default.
Break-even by trip count and zones. 2024 contactless £100 limit & Sunday no-cap gotchas.
Night Tube, Night Overground, Elizabeth line hours, last-tube-by-line, last-National-Rail lookup.
Tariff 1 / 2 / 3 by time of day, with luggage & booked-by-phone uplift.
Day vs weekly access vs pay-as-you-go, with realistic journey lengths.
Money & Practical
Inflation, tipping, VAT, ATM, FXAdjustable GBP inflation slider against 2023, 2024, 2025 reference prices.
UK isn't a tip culture — but restaurants, taxis and hotels have rules. Per-service verdict.
The UK Retail Export Scheme was closed in 2021. This explains what actually works in 2026.
Free-cashpoint chains, fee-charging machines, surcharge-amount-by-bank.
Where the £100 contactless ceiling still matters, where it doesn't.
Airport bureau vs city vs card vs prepaid — total cost-of-cash in 2026.
Pubs, Food & Drink
Sunday roast, real ale, tea, curryYork / London / Yorkshire / Lakes / Wales — score a roast on five dimensions.
CAMRA tier-by-pump-clip. What the gold clip / green clip / star really mean.
Plate size, fryer-hour index, regional variants, "Mushy peas or none".
Battered vs breaded, dripping vs oil, curry sauce by county.
Builder's brew, milk content, sugar, accompaniment — with pub vs home styles.
Birmingham / Bradford / Glasgow / South Wales — style matrix & spice curve.
Culture & Etiquette
Pub, queue, politeness, garden partyBuying rounds, last orders, table service — 10-question self-score.
When the line is real, when it's "please take a number" — five settings.
"Sorry" — apology, attention, empathy, or refusal. Real usage examples.
"Sorry to bother you" — when it's politeness, when it's a complaint.
Cream tea vs Afternoon tea vs High tea — what each actually is, what to book.
Dress code for a Buckingham Palace garden party vs a village fête.
Weather & Seasons
Rain, layers, heating, half-termActual averages — temperature, rain days, sun hours, by region and month.
Manchester vs London vs Edinburgh — when to pack waterproofs, when to skip.
"Four seasons in a day" planner — what to wear by forecast, season and region.
Crowd, road, and rail uplift on UK bank holidays — and the four-day-week trap.
Gas vs oil vs electric — annual heating bill by property size, post-2022 cap.
When UK schools are off and what that does to attractions.
Country Trips & Booking
Coach, rail, driving, fuel, ULEZNational Express vs LNER / Avanti / GWR — time, cost, comfort.
ScotRail vs LNER vs CrossCountry vs Avanti — who runs what, advance rules.
With car, M-way toll, ULEZ, fuel — break in millions.
Petrol vs diesel vs EV per mile — 2026 reference prices.
London ULEZ, CCZ, Dartford, M6 Toll, Clean Air Zones by city.
Where to base, rail pass value, sleeper reality.
What this site is and isn't
Britain Compass is a single-purpose toolkit. Every page is a real tool that takes inputs and returns something specific — fares, tiers, scores, recommendations. There are no autoplay videos, no newsletter pop-ups, no "AI trip planner" that hallucinates train times. If a tool can't answer the question better than reading Wikipedia, it isn't on this site.
Things we don't do: we don't sell anything, we don't collect personal data, and we don't show affiliate links dressed as facts. We may show contextual ads from Google AdSense on some pages — see the privacy policy below for how that works and how to opt out.
About Britain Compass
Britain Compass was built for the kind of trip planning that British friends and colleagues get asked about every week: "which London airport should I fly into?", "do I really need an Oyster card?", "is the Sunday roast at that Yorkshire pub any good?", "do I tip in the UK?". Most travel sites answer these with stock paragraphs that say nothing. We tried to answer them with calculators that give you an actual number or a specific verdict.
The numbers in each tool are reference values — based on published 2024–2026 tariffs, fare scales and published averages. They are intended to give you a useful order-of-magnitude estimate before you book. They are not guaranteed to be the price you'll see at the till. If a number looks wrong, tell us.
Who it's for. First-time UK visitors who want to plan with specifics. Repeat travellers who want to skip the obvious stuff. Anyone who's been asked the same six questions by their WhatsApp and wants to point to one URL.
What it doesn't do. It doesn't book anything for you, doesn't see real-time train times (TfL and National Rail are far better at that than we could be), and it doesn't cover Northern Ireland — which has its own transport rules.
Privacy Policy
What we collect. We collect nothing about you. Britain Compass does not require a login, does not ask for your name or email, and does not place cookies of its own. All tools run entirely in your browser.
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Disclaimer
The information and tools on Britain Compass are for general informational and travel-planning purposes only. They do not constitute professional advice — legal, financial, medical or otherwise — and should not be relied on as a substitute for professional consultation.
Fares, schedules, opacities, weather statistics, regional customs and rules change. We try to keep reference numbers current, but we cannot guarantee that any specific value on this site is up-to-date on the day you read it. Always confirm with the official source — TfL, National Rail, the relevant airport, the relevant council — before you spend money.
Use of this site is at your own risk. Britain Compass and its authors accept no liability for losses arising from reliance on the tools and content presented.