semiramis

Rather than rent a car DH and I are considering getting a coach pass and travelling around that way on our next U.K. Trip

Big planning problem - I have not had any luck finding any good maps indicating inter-city bus connections or even a comprehensive list of places served by National Express. (I find their website utterly useless at this stage of planning - since I don't KNOW yet specifically where I want to go on specific dates). I want to get an idea of how well several different areas are served before I get specific. For example we want to select several towns (based on service) as hubs and then head out on day trips from them.

Does anyone know a website or even a good book on the subject of travel by bus in Britain? I would love something that has maps or even good usable lists.
Or has anyone done this and what did you use to plan your itinerary?

Thx for any help.

Palenque

The British Bus System: Timetables, Bus Rates and Passes and More ...
Sep 17, 2007 ... British buses serve remote, rural communities, often providing a lifeline to young children or teenagers not yet old enough to drive and ...
http://www.associatedcontent.com/......ables_bus.html

Find UK Bus Schedules and Bus Routes - Bus and Coach Travel ...
Find bus schedules, cheap tickets, bus routes throughout the UK. Get on the Buses to save money. UK buses and coaches are the cheapest way to get around for ...
gouk.about.com/od/gettingaroundtheuk/ss/bustravel.htm

semiramis

Thx Palenque
1st link didn't work but the 2nd link was useful.

I also discovered the Arriva website and found it useful for local travel info - at least they believe in maps and schedules.

rogerdodger

Traveline public transportation information is your friend.

scotlib

http://www.associatedcontent.com/art...us.html?cat=16

Palenque's first suggestion looked like a web search result without actually clicking the link. It came up first search result and I click the link to get the complete URL.

Good thread .. I'm hoping to do the same sometime.

janisj

re rogerdodger's suggestion . . . http://www.traveline.org.uk/index.htm

IMO one of the most useful transport sites.

ron

There is no question that there is excellent information on bus schedules once you know where you want to go, and Traveline is the best, though it wouldn't win any prizes for user friendliness.

But it doesn't help the OP, who doesn't know where to go and wants a resource to help him decide. And there is nothing for coach services (National Express states in its FAQ that it has tried and failed to design a map for its network of over 1000 destinations - put in all the detail, it is unreadable, make it readable and it is useless).

The OP'S problem is that he has chosen an inferior mode of transportation. For all but a few destinations, trains are far superior, faster with more frequent service. And there are excellent network maps on the National Rail website.

flanneruk

"DH and I are considering getting a coach pass"

Is there such a thing?

National Express operates a perfectly reasonable, if slow and sometimes inconvenient, network between most (BUT NOT ALL) English cities: Citylink provides something similar in Scotland. But NE is simply useless at linking elsewhere: to get from a town it serves to somewhere 5 or 10 miles away you invariably have to use a local bus.

If someone on the web IS offering an "unlimited" travel pass, it's almost certainly for NE only, and possibly for the handful of other people's services (like one of the Oxford-London operations) it includes on its website. It WON'T include Scotland - and it won't include the thousands of local buses that might take you on to where you want to go.

So, unlike America, a bus pass - if there is such a thing - would cover substantially less of Britain than a train pass, and - though buses go to more places than trains - the rail maps at www.nationalrail.co.uk are the ONLY maps I'm aware of that show a transport system's entire coverage.

Some posters on this site have an extraordinarily touching loyalty to travelling round Britain by one mode of transport (usually trains). The only half-logical explanation I can think of for this is that trains are a novelty for them. With this bizarre brand loyalty comes an even less comprehensible faith in the virtues of "all you can eat" passes.

Neither make any sense in Britain, unless you're writing a book about something apparently improbable can be shoehorned into practicality under certain circumstances.

It rarely makes sense to rely on cars only for trips round Britain: for the overwhelming majority, trains (booking point to point tickets 12 weeks or so in advance), topped up locally by buses, and using planes if you want one long trip (like London-Inverness), are the quickest, most frequent, cheapest and least painful option.

The most sensible planning strategy, BTW, is to develop a rough itinerary, then use the limitless resources of posters here to suggest ways of doing it cheapest and with least hassle.

semiramis

If I knew exactly where I was going Traveline would be really useful - but at this stage in planning less so - however I have saved the link. I guess the hope of a really useful Coach pass is just wishful thinking..

The trouble with developing a "rough itinerary" is that I was going to BASE my rough itinerary on finding a well-served easy to get around region with interesting easily accessible (by bus) things to see.

I have been to Britain many times before but we always used a car - my poor DH (always the designated driver) would love to get a break from driving for once. AND just to make things harder we did NOT want to have our travel plans carved in stone - so booking every journey well in advance is just NOT what we do. (Our most fun travelling has always been side trips we decided to do at the last minute.) Hence we REALLY wanted the flexibility of some sort of system wide pass - but it appears that that is just not in the cards. I hate to admit defeat but it looks like poor DH will be doing at least some driving again.

Thx for all the advice though - at least it's helped me to decide that I probably CAN'T do exactly what I would like to do.

Now I am toying with a couple of possibilities:
1. car again - sigh - poor DH - I guess he will have to decide whether he values his flexibility or escaping driving duties more.
2. deciding on a relatively compact area and looking at train to there and then local bus passes
3. biting the bullet and paying more than I should to travel by a combination of services including train

Once again though - thx for everyone for taking the time to reply.

CharlotteK

When I have traveled by bus in Britain I have found the Let's Go guides, aimed at independent travelers, to be quite useful because they indicate if buses are a good option to any given location, including lines serving, and frequency to various nearby points.

I quite liked finding the local buses and buying a ticket just like anybody else, and it's been reasonably priced. I had a particularly lovely trip from Campbeltown to Carradale on a bus with all the school children; and a trip thru blooming fields & hedgerows from Wells to Bath with an elderly lady who showed me all the sites of her childhood. If you like that sort of travel it's a great way to go. TICs in Britain a great help too.

I would suggest flexibility and familiarizing yourself generally with the vagaries of timetables, online or printed, if you don't already feel comfortable with them.

flanneruk

"deciding on a relatively compact area and looking at train to there and then local bus passes"

Still doesn't work.

Apart from a few consortia (generally in gte larger cities and valid only within city limits), bus passes are issued by individual businesses. Since, outside London, buses are operated by competing businesses, any given pass will cover less than half the bus services in the area you've chosen - meaning there'll be lots of places the pass won't take you to.

It's rare, BTW, for inter-city buses to be significantly cheaper than advance-booked trains: in almost every case where they look cheaper at first, the train companies will offer some deal allowing comparable fares if you somehow limit your choice in booking. Inter-city buses aren't, as a previous poster claimed, for people too old, young or remote to use a train: they're the way to get low costs without having to commit yourself a long time in advance.

The real strategies for low-cost travel in Britain have little to do with "all you can eat" passes (except of course in individual cities, especially London): they rely on a judicious mixture of:
- planes for long journeys
- advance booking for trains, at least outside 100 mile radius of London
- proper understanding of Senior, Friends & Family and Network railcards
- familiarisation with Megabus and Megatrain.

alanRow

You also need knowledge of National Express and City Link coaches

semiramis

>>meaning there'll be lots of places the pass won't take you to.
>>

arrrgh! The car is looking better and better - poor DH.

Cost isn't so much the main issue as DH not wanting to drive again (although on our last trip he did fine) but still wanting flexibility.

I am now leaning towards deciding on either a "less busy" driving area (say northern Scotland) OR a compact area (where only short drives would be required most of the time - say - Dorset or Yorkshire). Oh well I have LOTS of time to decide but I am glad that I investigated the feasibility of my initial idea with this board - so all the comments have been very userful.

Cholmondley_Warner

BTW The words bus and coach mean different things over here. A bus is a frequently stopping local service whereas a coach is a longer distance, more comfortable, vehicle that doesn’t stop very often, if at all.

ron

In spite of all the answers here, the OP still seems stuck on the idea that if one can't buy a near universal transportation pass, the only other option is to drive.

As has been said, advance rail tickets can be really cheap for intercity travel, local buses are not expensive and often offer day or mulit-day rover-type passes.

If you could get this universal pass idea out of your head, a few hours on the Internet researching tickets will save your husband many hours of driving misery.

semiramis

The "advance" part is the difficulty with advance railway tickets - if we do that we are tied into a set schedule (which my DH also loathes). I am still considering "rover" type bus passes as an alternative to some sort of universal pass IF DH is willing to advance schedule the longer trips.

Essentially DH will have to decide between some advance scheduling or driving again - his call.

flanneruk

How old are you?

I probably travel round Britain more than you plan to. I rarely use a car. Being over 59, a Senior Railcard (price: £22 or so) means I never bother booking in advance. I'd save more if I did - but life's too short for nickle and diming.

texasbookworm

Maybe you have explored the idea of a BritRailPass already and found it much more costly than you anticipate spending, but we LOVED the flexibility when we used it. We stayed in London for 14 nights and used the 4dayflex option (any 4 days in a month) so we could hope any train any day for the 4 days trips we took (to Dover, Salisbury, Silverstone Raceway, and Chatsworth). There are other options for how many days, class, etc. If I'm repeating info you already gathered, sorry, just ignore; if you haven't considered this sort of pass, you might price it out. The total flexibility is what attracted us ( we still had to use local buses on 2 of our day trips but the trains got us to a town from which to get a bus and got us there faster and with less stops than (most or all?) buses/coaches might have.) I haven't done a thorough price comparison so maybe this pass wouldn't meet your requirements.

semiramis

Going to to look at 4dayflex option for rail pass - this might work.