Charlton Athletic’s fan trust tells us the pros and cons of away travel

The Football League and Liftshare joined forces at the start of season 15/16 to start bringing cars sharing to dedicated fans across the country.

Let’s say you’re unable to get supporter coaches when going to away matches – what can you do? Well if you’re a car owner who wants to drive to a game, you can sign up to Liftshare for free and use our Offer a Lift tool to post up details of your planned trip.

You can then start speaking with other local fans and offer them your spare seats in exchange for petrol money. It’s a bit like giving your mate a fiver to cover fuel, except Liftshare puts that cash directly into your account securely, and with the backing of top UK insurers.

If you don’t have a car, you can still request lifts from fellow supporters in your area, and it always works out cheaper than train. Try searching for destinations on Liftshare.com to see how affordable car sharing can be.

How affordable is match day travel for Charlton Athletic fans?

As part of Liftshare’s ongoing mission to speak with Football League fans across the UK – and to get a feel for how they travel to games – we recently spoke with Craig Sloman, a member of the Charlton Athletic Supporters Trust. He was happy to tell us about the pros and cons of travelling to support the club.

Liftshare: Can you tell us how often you travel to away games and what options are open to you?

Craig: I travel to lots of away games, normally by train if the match is outside of London. Train fares can be relatively cheap if you make sure you book early and take advantage of any rail card discounts you might be able to get your hands on.

However trains aren’t a great option when you decide close to match day that you want to travel, by that time the prices will have increased exponentially and you’re looking at the best part of £100 to watch Charlton let you down somewhere up north !

Liftshare: What can you tell us about the cost of match travel?

Craig: Match travel can be incredibly expensive, for a typical away game outside the capital I would imagine it’s probably the greatest cost (unless you’re intent on drinking your bodyweight in booze whilst following the team) – I would imagine the average away game would cost a normal fan around £100 for tickets, travel, food & drink.

Liftshare: What about home games? Does Charlton get crazy? What about local parking?

As for most teams in London parking is fairly limited, with few passes available for the stadium car park and residents parking bays enforced across most of the immediate area supporters are forced to choose between paying around £5 for off street parking or taking their chances in the car parks of the nearby retail outlets and hoping they don’t get a ticket/clamped.

That being said public transport options are decent for Charlton, however the rail company seems to have decided they are going to dismantle the line serving Charlton station for home games this season !

Liftshare: What’s your view on coach services nearby and the concept of car sharing for those unable to use them?

Craig: The Valley Express coach service is brilliant at bringing in supporters from far and wide, however it is naturally limited in the number of stops that it can serve and the number of stops has reduced in recent years as the club has no longer been in the Premier League.

Car sharing would be a brilliant alternative for those who aren’t served by Valley Express, aren’t convenient for public transport and would reduce the number of cars trying to use the finite number of parking options around the Valley.

Thanks to Craig for his great input into Charlton Athletic match day travel. If you are a fan and would like to see how you could save by car sharing to home and away games, why not check out over 500 lifts being offered by Liftshare members right now via Charlton?