A 24-hour commute to work costing up to £6,000 a month might seem a peculiar choice to many, but not to Jonathan, 53, from South Wales.
The airline crew director spends alternate weeks in Manila, one of the world’s most densely populated cities, and working from home in a Welsh village – almost 7,000 miles away – with just three shops.
Hybrid working has turbo-powered the growth of once-rare workers like Jonathan: The supercommuter.
These are people who travel more than an hour and a half each way to work.
Roughly 84% of supercommuters say they are able to extend their commutes on office days due to hybrid working, a Trainline survey found last year.
Latest government data shows 28% of adult staff were hybrid working in the autumn of 2024, saving 56 minutes a day when they work from home.
Clawing back this time has made longer commutes during the rest of the week more palatable to some.
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“It feels greedy almost because you kind of have two lives rather than one life,” said Jonathan, whose family lives in south Wales.
“I know my way around places like Hong Kong and Tokyo and Manila and Singapore more than I know my way around Cardiff really.”
While few hybrid workers will be willing to cross borders for work, some have stomached commutes as long as six hours within Britain so they can settle down in parts of the country previously inaccessible to them.
Take Paul Dale, 55, who swapped a 17-mile journey from Epsom to London for a 260-mile one from Kendal, in Cumbria.
He convinced his wife and two sons to move north 18 months ago and now spends approximately £8,300 each year on three commutes a week to his media job in Soho Square.
When working from home, Dale is surrounded by the mountains of the Lake District and can afford to socialise, visit restaurants and pay for family days out more than he could in London.
“It’s the best thing I’ve ever done,” says Dale.
“You’ve got to bear I mind that you’re not living in a big house that’s accumulating London prices increases, and you’re paying more money to a train company,” he admits.
“[But] when I step off the train at Oxenholme Station, that’s when I breathe the fresh air and I feel that it’s worthwhile.”
The 6.23am train costs him £60 for a return trip, working out at 23p per mile – five times cheaper than the £1.21 per mile he spent from Epsom.
Dale feels he’s “gained time” travelling almost six hours via train instead of four hours on multiple public transport types.
“That’s purely down to the quality of the commute – as opposed to four hours a day of my life which was just spent being jostled around.”
A coffee, his laptop and a seat in the morning or a glass of wine and a book in the evening has replaced standing on clammy, crowded buses and tubes.
“People think I’m insane,” says Gordon, 57, who has commuted from Shanklin in the Isle of Wight to London for 20 years.
He spends £1,000 a month getting up at 5.10am to board the ferry to Portsmouth, catch a train to Waterloo and then a tube to Bank before, a short walk later, sitting down at his desk at 8.10am in Liverpool Street.
It’s a six-hour round trip – but has sometimes lasted as long as eight and a half hours due to missed connections or cancellations.
And it’s one he did five days a week for 15 years, but has done three days a week for the last five years since the pandemic.
“I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else,” says Gordon, when asked why he does it.
“It’s a nice place to live. It really is as simple as that.
“London’s a great city, but it is hectic, it is expensive. Over here it’s a lot quieter, there’s a little more space, it’s a lot more relaxed, the family love it.”
He admits it “can be extremely frustrating sometimes” but he is “philosophical about it”.
“Yes it is tiring, yes you do end up getting up quite early in the morning to actually go to work. Yes, sometimes you can be late home. But I think it’s worth it for where you actually live.”
