I'm up in London around the Christmas break and I thought I'd venture down to the Surrey Hills for a bit of a nostalgic ride, as I haven't done any pedalling there for around seven years. We used to get the train from Waterloo to Guildford, off-road it to Dorking (by way of the Plough at Coldharbour 🙂 ) then get the train back from there.

Can you still take your bikes on the trains without booking or is it all problematic these days with no room for them and all sorts of stupid restrictions? Any current info greatly appreciated. Cheers.

As far as I know its fine. I picked someone up from Dorking the other saturday who had taken their bike on the train with no problems.

AFAIK SWT trains to Guildford have no restrictions, they have storage for bikes on all their trains, I believe Southern from Dorking can be a bit more picky, may be worth checking.

South West Trains are fine with bikes and have cycle spaces on the trains going to/from Guildford. They only bar bikes on trains that arrive in London before 09:30 or leave London after 16:30 on working days.

Southern have the same restrictions.

Considering there's only 8 bike spaces on a modern 8-car train I don't really understand the restriction. Considering there are 56 First Class seats on the same train which are rarely legitimately filled it would seem more efficient to de-classify trains during this time. But what do I know?

generally no problem at weekends (apart from intermittent 'bus replacement services'*) but try to avoid work days/rush hours etc.

* that section of track must be the best maintained in the country the number of times it gets closed off for weekend work