This is Britain’s cheapest train ticket – costing just 70p (or 45p with a railcard)

Britain’s cheapest rail ticket can be revealed: just 70p buys a nine-minute, six-mile journey on a Transport for Wales (TfW) train from Manchester Piccadilly to Stockport.

A standard anytime ticket covering the six miles of rail travel between Manchester Piccadilly and Stockport costs £4.90. Yet with five rail firms competing between the two stations, you could cover the same distance, nonstop for one-seventh of the price.

The final destination for the meandering journey via Shrewsbury and Hereford is South Wales. An anytime one-way ticket from Manchester to Swansea costs £98 on TfW. But for the first leg of the journey, passengers are spoilt for choice: Avanti West Coast, CrossCountry, Northern and TransPennine Express also compete for customers between Manchester Piccadilly and Stockport.

Northern typically offers Manchester-Stockport (and a wide range of other short journeys) for a flat £2 – the same as the bus fare. But TfW appears to have decided to try to capture as much of the market as possible with a fare of just 70p each way on many of its once-an-hour trains.

While it is an advance ticket, The Independent had no problem buying tickets a few hours before departure. Railcard holders can save a further 25p, taking the cost down to 45p.

The undiscounted fare per mile is just under 12 pence. The UK’s most expensive train-per-mile is also on Transport for Wales. The 0.21-mile link from Ty Glas in the northern suburbs of Cardiff to almost-adjacent Birchgrove costs £2.60. This represents a price-per-mile of £12.24, more than 100 times as much as the Manchester-Stockport trip.

Buying a cup of tea on board during the brief journey from Manchester to Stockport would more than quadruple the cost of the trip to £3.

Margaret and Harvey Locke, who live in Stockport and travel regularly to and from Manchester, were unaware of the 70p deal until The Independent revealed it.

“Unbelievable,” said Margaret Locke. “We couldn’t believe it,” echoed Harvey Locke. “How did you manage that?”

The ticket is available on all UK rail-booking sites, and can be supplied as a paper ticket or an e-ticket.

The cheap deal might stimulate a tourism boom for Stockport. Harvey Locke said: “Stockport is great for getting elsewhere. You can be in the Peak District in 20 minutes.”

When pressed for tourists lures, he said: “You’ve got the air-raid shelters, a visitor attraction. And of course Stockport is famous for making hats. The Hat Museum is very good.”

Margaret Locke added: “We’re getting a new bus station.”

Transport for Wales also offers the cheapest advance deals from Manchester to two Cheshire stations: Wilmslow for £2 and Crewe for £3.80. The latter fare for the 38-minute journey between Piccadilly station and Crewe compares with £5.30 on slower Northern trains, and the £15.50 off-peak single on Avanti West Coast – which is available with no advance purchase.

A spokesperson for Transport for Wales said: “TfW is committed to offering value for money fares for the communities we serve, which are best accessed using advance purchase tickets.

“We offer a range of advance fare price points which typically vary by service, depending on levels of demand. We are continuing to roll out advance fares outside of our Metro regions, offering value to flows of all distances.”

Transport for Wales is owned by the Welsh government. It defines its role as: “To drive forward the Welsh government’s vision of a high quality, safe, integrated, affordable and accessible transport network that the people of Wales can be proud of.”

The UK’s most expensive one-way rail ticket is a first class single from Penzance in Cornwall to Thurso on Scotland’s north coast, via London: fare £500.10. A traveller with a railcard could shuttle between Manchester and Stockport 1,111 times for the same cost.