The validity of Great Western Railway’s Bristol pay-as-you-go touch smartcard has been extended to include Swindon and the Golden Valley line from Swindon to Gloucester via Stroud and Stonehouse.

To promote the inclusion of the wider area, a troupe of tap dancers from the world-renowned performance company, “Tap Attack” put on a performance at Swindon station yesterday morning, Wednesday, 24 April.

The founder of Tap Attack, Jo Scanlan, led the troupe in their tapping performance.

She works closely with Wilkes Dance Company from Swindon, which set a Guinness World Record of 784 tap beats in one minute in 2009.

At Swindon station, Tap Attack transformed an outsize pay-as-you-go card into a dance floor to show how easy it is to ‘tap in’ and ‘tap out’ at stations.

By extending the Bristol pay-as-you-go touch smartcard to include stations between Bristol and Swindon, and along the Golden Valley from Swindon to Gloucester, travelling on those lines can now benefit from a guarantee of the best daily fares and combining their payments and tickets into one.

The smartcard is valid on GWR and CrossCountry services and provides customers with the best value walk-up fares on the day of travel, as well as price capping applied on Weekly Season tickets for end-to-end journeys between two stations over a Monday to Sunday seven-day week.

To find out more about the Swindon pay-as-you-go card, go to https://www.gwr.com/your-tickets/smart-tickets/payg/bristol

Similar pay-as-you-go touch smartcards have recently been introduced in Manchester, the West Midlands, and Cornwall.

We’re really grateful to Tap Attack for helping to promote our new Swindon pay-as-you-go card. The smartcard allows you to ‘tap in’ and ‘tap out’ at stations towards Bristol and across the Stroud Valley, calculating the best value fare on the day of travel.

We launched the scheme around Bristol in 2022 and are excited about taking this next step, extending it to Swindon and encouraging modal shift and sustainable travel.

Ruth Busby, People and Transformation Director at GWR and Network Rail Western