London Buses
 

If we buy the Travelcard and we are covered for buses how can we ride buses around the city just to site see?

We've done the tour buses and they are great but what if we just want to wander through the zone 1 and 2 bus routes to take a breather every now and then? How can we do that and know we are not going outside the zones 1 & 2 that we are covered for?

Any ideas? :)

London day bus passes are good for all zones, not just 1 and 2 like central zone TravelCards are for the Tube so i do not think you have to worry about zones and if you use an Oyster Card to buy your TravelCard it will be cheaper.

No zones for buses - with a TravelCard for zones 1 and 2 you can use buses throughout greater London

i could be wrong and be assured if so i will be corrected.

If you have a paper travelcard valid (and the bus zones are not the same as the zones for the tube, they are far larger) just show it to the drivers (he or she never looks closely but there's always the chance of a spot check by London Transport police)...with an oyster card, you tap it on the yellow card reader (no need to tap out)...

Incidentally, the buses are an exceptionally good value on a PAYG oyster card....it will cap at £3 no matter how many bus trips you take in a day (once you add on any tube ride, the cap rises to the one day travelcard cap)...with each ride costing I believe 90p per ride.

BTW on one of the bendy buses as opposed to the double deckers (the routemasters, the old doubledeckers are all but extinct, I think there's still one tourist route running) you can get on in the middle and the validation machines for oyster are there...if you have a paper ticket no need to do anything but of course as noted above there are always the ticket inspectors.

Any travelcard or bus pass is valid throughout the Greater London area, zones 1 to 6. There are no zones in the bus system. You can use a bus pass to go to Heathrow, Hampton Court, or to anywhere in a huge area. If you catch a bus in central London, there is no danger of accidentally going outside the London area - none of the bus routes is that long.

Great! One more question?

If we get on a bus in central London and just stay on that bus will it evenutally get back to central London or would we have to sort out getting off and picking up another bus to get back? (HOw long might the circle route be any idea?)

If we get on a bus in central London and just stay on that bus will it evenutally get back to central London>>>

No. Most buses go from the centre out to the suburbs, and then back.

If you stay on the bus you will soon experience the delights of Catford Bus Garage, Tottenham Swan, Clapton Ponds or Bow Church (these rea the places buses terminate)

ah ha! Well we don't want to sleep with the buses so I guess we'll sort that out too.

Thank you all so much!

One week to go! Begining to worry that the airline might go broke and leave us living in London.....then we might want to sleep with the buses! LOL!!

Here is a GREAT map of London tourist attractions and bus routes that you might find helpful -- I sure did.

http://www.londonpass.com/images/sec...BusMap0706.pdf

We stayed near Victoria Station and found bus #24 to be an invaluable resource!

Thank you azzure I've printed that map out.

More and more i eschew the Tube for the bus - lots less steps to climb up and down, crowds to cope with and on the top deck of the bus i try to get the very front seats with a view from on high over the road. Buses are slower and they can be frustratingly infrequent at times

like last year in front of Harrods waiting for a bus back to Trafalgar the sign said service every 10-12 minutes but i waited at least 45 minutes and then two of the same number clambor by - Tubes comes and go every few minutes it seems

And now with the no booze policy on buses you do not have to cope with drunks on the top deck (i guess)

People didn't get drunk on the bus. They took the bus to places to get drunk and then took it home again.

They still do.

<i>like last year in front of Harrods waiting for a bus back to Trafalgar the sign said service every 10-12 minutes but i waited at least 45 minutes and then two of the same number clambor by - Tubes comes and go every few minutes it seems</i>

This happened to us a couple of weeks ago, also near Harrod's, heading toward Sloane Street (yes, I know it's only one or two stops). That was our only bus trip. We used the tube extensively, mainly because we know it better - but it seems that on every longish trip, the train stopped for some unknown reason and we had to wait 10 or 15 minutes for it to start up again (ex. stopped at Bayswater, when we were on our way to Notting Hill, so we got off and walked).