I'm gonna sound like a broken record on this one, but as I've said many times before here, when you've gotta submit a form, first check lwpcook, which tells you to use HTTP::Request::Common.

In your case, the code will look like:

use LWP;
use HTTP::Request::Common;

my $start_town = "Guildford"; 
my $destination_town = "Portsmouth"; 

my $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new;
# alter ua here if needed
my $response = $ua->simple_request(POST
  "http://212.87.65.227/bin/query.exe/en",
  [ to => $start_town, from => $destination_town ]
);

if ($response->is_success) {
  print $response->content;
} else {
  print "ERROR: ", $response->status_line;
}
[download]

One advantage is that your form values will be properly URI escaped, something you hadn't coded yet. {grin}

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker