I travelled from Seaford in East Sussex to Gretna Green on 23 buses in 43 hours using my concessionary bus pass. A total of nearly 400 miles using partly this route. Pass of course not valid in Scotland but can be used from a start in Carlisle as far as Gretna. There was only one truly overnight stop in Preston when there were no more buses running.
Sounds like a really fun but tiring trip! Probably works better going north to south as the buses across the Lake District end pretty early. I'd rather have a good night's sleep so I'm not babbling rubbish on camera the next day!
I've done Croydon to Cardiff, Heathrow to Lincoln and Redhill to Bournemouth in one day which were all incredibly fun to do. Sometimes you have to do a massive detour to make progress. Heathrow to Edinburgh by local bus made super easy my the amount of express routes on the east coast.
Wow, those sound like super fun trips! You do unfortunately have to make a few detours. The buses up the east coast do get a little sparse between Yorkshire and Teesside which is a little annoying.
@@ItsAllAboutTheJourney York to Newcastle is reasonably easy, and you can make it very scenic by using the Coastliner, and Arriva run buses direct between Scarborough and Middlesbrough and GNE between there and Newcastle making it a good way to fast track up. Did have to go through hull to get to York though 😛
Wow! Surprised I have never come across your channel before! You seem to have made some really innovative stuff, and there is lot for me to catch up on! Especially interested in your Tokyo metro area videos as I have an interest in that system! Love how this video was narrated and edited so well. Clearly some inspiration from the Travelling Turtle series. Can’t wait for future episodes of this journey. Subscribed! PS. I’m from really near Potters Bar too, so its nice to come across a local haha
Thank you for your kind words! Travelling Turtle's videos were a big inspiration for my bus challenge videos. Tokyo's trains are a fascinating system and I can't wait to return to Japan in the future. Looking forward to sharing and editing more videos from this journey!
Currently it looks like the £2 single bus fare will be discontinued on the 31st Dec 2024. However the £2 bus fare has dramatically changed peoples' opinions and usage of buses so much, that even bosses of transport giants like Stagecoach are urging the government to keep the £2 bus fare. When private sector companies are urging the government to continue the scheme, you sure know it's profitable too. (Not sure if the same can be said about smaller, local operators though.) This is a really positive sign, I can see the £2 bus fare scheme continuing past the end of 2024 and becoming a semi-permanent thing.
313 | 06:49 New Cottage Farm - Potters Bar Station 84 | 07:30 Potters Bar Station - St Albans St Peter's Street 721 | 08:25 St Albans St Peter's Street - Luton Station Interchange X1 | 09:15 Luton Station Interchange - Milton Keynes The Point X6 | 11:00 Milton Keynes The Point - Northampton Bus Interchange
My late grandfather was a builder who worked on building Milton Keynes. I'm from Northampton originally. I miss the old Greyfriars bus station that we had until about 10 years ago
I recently did a journey from Lands End to John O’Groats on public buses - took us 5 days but what a journey it was . Insane how much more the Scottish busses cost!
Lovely video, looking forward to seeing where you head next! I personally managed to do London to Exeter on £2 bus fares in a day and that vid is on my channel, I definitely love doing these kinds of trips
@@UKTransportExplorer I'll try to get the next one out in the next couple weeks or so. I'm very busy at the moment with university so my upload schedule is likely to be patchy at best.
I live in Kent now and even though the timetables are a lot shorter than the trains, the fares are wayyyy cheaper, especially getting to and from London.. singles £2, day passes are like £7..wonder what and if the prices will change to after December.
I really hope that the £2 bus fare is retained after December, considering its popularity among passengers. Even the bosses of large transport companies like Stagecoach are calling on the government to keep the £2 fare scheme as it's drawn so many more passengers to the bus. Bus prices before the scheme were spiralling out of control - I once paid £5.50 for a single fare between Hatfield and Welwyn Garden City, which is more expensive than a peak-hour train ticket.
It Will probably be 5.99 , I was shocked to see Specsavers changed their reglazing fee from £30 to £75 in One year, everything is getting way too expensive in the UK, if I went back to Asia I could live like a millionaire
I recently did First Eastern Counties Excel route from Norwich to Peterboro and Arriva's 724 from Heathrow CBS to Harlow, both for the amazing £2 fare. An absolute bargain !!
@ItsAllAboutTheJourney I was surprised to find an airport route included but apparently there are a few bus routes around Heathrow, Gatwick, Luton & Stansted all accepting the £2 fare !!
Almost all buses around airports will accept a £2 bus fare. A lot of users of buses around airports are actually airport/airline workers themselves, airline passengers using local buses are a minority. It would be unfair to charge these people a premium just to get to work. On the other hand, some bus services (such as the Hotel Hoppa services around Heathrow, for example) are extortionately priced, though these are aimed at hotel users, who would be more or less happy paying a £10 bus fare for a £300 a night hotel around Heathrow (a reminder that travel on all official London buses around the Heathrow terminal/hotels area is free!)
Great video! Liked and subscribed. The X1 coach/bus is very cool. I rode the X6 before also Arriva between Coventry and Leicester on the same bus/coaches!
@@ItsAllAboutTheJourney have you tried the Blackpool palladium buses? The single deckers have full on smartphone cradles with wireless charging! Best buses in the UK imo along with the Transdev 36
I really enjoyed this video as I too like to make the most of the £2 journeys. I didn't know that there is a new X1 service from Luton to MK. I am planning some shopping trips now as MK is a brilliant shopping centre. I have subscribed.
Thanks for a great video, I get my senior bus pass later this year and hopefully next year I will use buses from the North East of England down to London and maybe beyond just using my bus pass, so at present I am in the planning stages, and your video has been very helpful, thank you.
I was on one of the posh stagecoach busses in northern scotland the other month for three hours and much more comfortable than a budget airline or the modern train seats. Downside was it was £18 from a small village to Aberdeen. To the nearest resonable town it was £7. We are so spoiled with these £2 fares its democratised travel without a car hugely in England
Wow - £18 is a lot for a bus in any context. I had the impression that public transport in Scotland was quite cheap, but I guess that's not the case in the far north where service is sparse. As several people have commented, in England you can travel on the 840 bus from Leeds to Whitby, almost 100 miles, for just £2. The £2 bus fare cap is definitely a big step in the right direction for attracting people to public transport. I hope it's retained after December.
@@ItsAllAboutTheJourney it was a three hour journey, but the price you'd expect for a National Express or Flixbus. Technically a rover - but no option to pay for a single.
Interesting that Sullivans do the £2 bus fare, as they weren't originally on the list! Those Temsa Safaris are lovely, I've sampled those used on the X6 from Coventry-Leicester.
Sullivan do indeed do the £2 bus fare scheme now, which surprised me a little. The last time I travelled with them between Potters Bar and St Albans the single fare was £3.95, almost double... I'm not sure how long Sullivan's commercial operations will survive having lost all their London routes. None of their commercial routes seem particularly well used. I completely agree, the Temsa Safaris were kept in fantastic condition with a very smooth ride and comfortable seats. The Temsa Safaris used on the X1 are the very same buses which were used on the X6 until July 2024. They're now living a happy life at Milton Keynes depot.
Funny enough, I did a local bus challenge from Reading to Cardiff with a budget of a one way train ticket. Reading to Oxford Oxford to Swindon Swindon to Chippenham Chippenham to Bath Bath to Bristol Bristol to Chepstow Chepstow to Newport Newport to Cardiff. Took me 2 days and 1 night. So you can technically get from London to Cardiff easily.
I think you'd be able to do London to Edinburgh in 3 days also. I just did my own journey at ua-cam.com/video/FbaUeSGlM7g/v-deo.htmlsi=4Oa2nhery19Jkt-w where I got from Leicester to Newcastle quite easily in one day so I think I'd be able to easily stretch London to Scotland. Might be an idea for my next journey!
The £2 fare is great but it’s weird how I can get from home to 2 stops away for £2. Then I can get from Plymouth to Bude, 50 miles away by road also for £2.
Interesting point you've raised there. It's very possible that since the £2 bus fare scheme was introduced, some short distance fares which originally were less than £2 have increased in price. Nevertheless, it's nice to have a unified fare system so you know that any bus you go on will cost no more than £2.
Quite a one stop journey from St Budeaux Square to Victoria Road St Budeaux was £2.40 (the hill is steepish when your knee was shot off in Bosnia-Herzegovinja) Now it's £2. Your right about the Bude thing. And Konsel Kernow (the council), Karyan rag Kernow (the devolved bus contractor) and Go~South West the operator have colluded to cut the through double deckers buses to Bude with many now turning at Callington or Launceston as they say it's no longer financially viable. If they actually started charging non disabled pensioners say under 76's and only gave FREE travel in Devon and Cornwall to council tax/ratepayers we might actually have the revenue to improve the service and cut fares for fare payers. But the selfish pensioners just want something for nothing and get the 12-65 year old to pay for it.
I do agree with your point here that more money needs to be spent on bus services like this, particularly in Cornwall where ridership is low but dependency on buses high, but I wouldn't say it's fair to call all pensioners without disabled passes selfish for getting free travel. A huge number of elderly people, whilst not being "disabled", may still experience significant difficulty walking even short distances; it will give them more peace of mind to know that they can take the bus (and also reduce financial pressure on those who may be struggling). It shouldn't be up to 60-76 year olds to keep bus services profitable in my opinion. It's up to the government to give councils enough money to fund a proper bus service.
I did London (Southgate) to Nuneaton by bus about 7-8 years ago. 610 Cockfosters to Luton, 97 Luton to MK, X7 MK to Leicester, 48 Leicester to Nuneaton, then a local bus (41) to my then home.
@@ItsAllAboutTheJourney X7 has been split at Northampton. The local bus to my old house in Nuneaton no longer runs, but there is still a service on another route so the journey would still be possible. The 97 Luton-MK no longer runs (it was subsidised by Virgin Trains) but obviously MK1, X1 and others exist to make the same connection.
Oh I admire your patience....when I was young and foolish at University, I went from Coventry to Grays in Essex via a series of buses (Northampton, Bedford, Hitchin, Harlow, Romford) - took all day! I just get in the car these days! Tempura rice? What an odd concept! As I understand it, Tempura items are coated in batter and deep fried, and I doubt that Boots' rice was like that!
The thought of deep fried rice coated in batter... That sounds like it would have been a very fun trip - guess it would have been much harder to plan a trip like that back then - with paper timetables and booklets? (I don't want to insinuate your age!) It's only very recently that bus companies have been posting timetables on the internet to a good and consistent standard; with the dawn of bus tracking only in the past 5 years or so.
Sadly one part of this route, Harlow to Romford is no longer possible and would require a lengthy detour on 4 buses via Epping, Loughton and Hainault. That direct route you took was the 575 and was cut quite a few years ago. Buses between Outer London and Essex are rare in many places now as no one seems to want to agree on the funding or subsidise them!
@@aaronsmith9209 This was the 1970s! If my fading memory is correct it I would have taken the Green Line 724, which was an orbital route Watford, St Albans, Welwyn, Hertford, Harlow, Romford. I went from Bedford to Hitchin by United Counties, then picked up a Green Line bus to Welwyn/Hatfield, then got on the 724. I have a memory that the 724 was cut back to Harlow later on, where the 575 you mention might come in - I'd moved away by then.
Sulivan buses didn't lose the contracts that's quite disingenuous, as it was Sullivan buses that was getting screwed over by TFL for years and finally went screw that and cut the services, forcing TFL to scramble operators to fill in the gaps
I am a local to Sullivan Buses' routes and their performance over the past few years has been dreadful (see my community post in August for more info). Not to mention rumours of poor company culture and management leading to reported poor employee retention. TfL has not, to my knowledge, had any difficulty funding other bus operators in London, and other small companies like Uno are thriving. Regular payments to bus companies are a pittance for huge entities such as TfL, so I wouldn't be surprised if there is a reason that TfL has been refusing money to Sullivan in recent years - perhaps as a financial penalty for their poor performance. There are many other small to medium size enterprises around the UK which receive considerably less funding that Sullivan receive, that don't have buses held together with duct tape.
I was in Milton Keynes recently. Based on a plaque on the wall IIRC that Santander office - previously an Abbey National building - dates back to the '80s.
Very nice video! I'm interested in journeys like this. I been from London Heathrow to Milton Keynes on 3 local buses £2 each. I was gonna try this challenge to Leicester on local buses that's 5 buses from Heathrow for £10 total but looked like it would be nearly an all day trip take 7 hours total journey time but then I did take a Leicester trip by coach instead on flix bus from London for timing but might do the local bus challenge if I get time for it. Milton Keynes is halfway to Leicester from London. I look forward to seeing part 2 of where your next part of the journey is. I'm guessing its X7 from Northampton straight to Leicester that would be interesting to see. Then skylink to Derbyshire or Loughborough then theres connections to Nottingham then Mansfield and Sheffield then Leeds. I think Leeds is doable in 2 days. I been interested in seeing a local bus challenge from London to Leeds as I have travelled that trip only by coach & train.
Nice vid! A couple of things would have improved it I would have liked to have seen the journey on a map progressively. I would also like each journey to be confirmed whether a freedom pass could it be used. I would also have liked to you know the duration of the journey and the normal frequency of service. Best wishes
Thanks so much for the suggestions, I really appreciate your feedback! A Freedom Pass will be valid on every single one of the buses featured on this trip. I'll definitely add in the duration of the journey, a few others have suggested this too.
Certainly feels like the middle of nowhere, particularly for London. It's a rather odd corner of London blocked off the green belt that feels very rural despite being very well connected.
I would love to try the Coastliner route - I didn't get a chance to try it this time unfortunately, but I did get to try another premium-feeling route by Transdev Blazefield later on in the trip (not revealing too much!)
That's a really interesting thought actually. A connection to Luton Airport would be fairly easy to implement, and would make travel to the airport for those living in Dunstable/Hockcliffe/Milton Keynes much easier and comfortable, particularly if you're travelling with suitcases.
Looking forward to see the rest of the challenge. Hope you didnt get stung too bad by the taxi home from Northampton. By rights the train company is liable to get you to your destination. Or was it a choice to take a taxi rather than wait for replacement buses being organised or something?
Looking forward to sharing the following episodes too - there's a lot to uncover! The Northampton incident happened late at night (about 12am-1am) after a long delay between Crewe and Rugby. We weren't supposed to stop at Northampton at all but had to so that the crew didn't work overtime. There were no replacement buses available, so Avanti paid for the cost of the taxi home for me and my family which was nice, particularly as I don't think they're legally obliged to in cases of disruption that aren't their fault.
@@ItsAllAboutTheJourney You should do that, it's got a rooftop bar so you can have a coffee and watch the sunset reflecting off the MK rail station glass. About as pretty as CMK gets!
@ItsAllAboutTheJourney it was alot of early morning/late night. Your video of this is fantastic too. We both thinking of doing John OGroats to lands end solely by bus only.
Potters Bar is one of the nicer towns surrounding London. Mount Grace school is not the good school it once used to be - it has a bit of a reputation around here - I've heard some (including the local paper) refer to it as "Mount Disgrace"...
It's a real shame that there are so few of these cheap, comfortable coach links. I'm not sure how long Arriva's X1 will last, though usage seemed high when I travelled. A few more passengers got on at Dunstable as well from as a few villages on the way, so the bus had around 25-30 people on by the time we reached Milton Keynes. I believe some local bus services in the far north of Scotland are operated by coaches, though Scottish buses are not part of the £2 fare cap (which is only in England and Wales).
You're correct, officially Sullivan buses handed the contracts back to TfL. It's purely speculation, but I think there's more going on under the surface than Sullivan published in their press release. Sullivan's press release seems quite careful in its wording. I'll copy a reply to a comment where someone asked the same question. I am a local to Sullivan Buses' routes and their performance over the past few years has been dreadful (see my community post in August for more info). Not to mention rumours of poor company culture and management leading to reported poor employee retention. TfL has not, to my knowledge, had any difficulty funding other bus operators in London, and other small companies like Uno are thriving. Regular payments to bus companies are a pittance for huge entities such as TfL, so I wouldn't be surprised if there is a reason that TfL has been refusing money to Sullivan in recent years - perhaps as a financial penalty for their poor performance. There are many other small to medium size enterprises around the UK which receive considerably less funding that Sullivan receive, that don't have buses held together with duct tape.
Great to see another £2 bus fair challenge 😊 Looking forward to seeing how far you go. Does the total spent figure mean how much you have spent before boarding the bus? The £0 for the first bus got my attention.
The total figure is the amount spent after boarding the bus - apologies if it's not clear. I get free bus travel on my Oyster card on London buses, normally it will cost you £1.75 for a single journey.
@@ItsAllAboutTheJourney so there's a few ways I can do it mate. If I train it and book it in advance it's about 3 hours and about 40 pound roughly. However I've recently discovered a train to Bedford from Wellingborough then the 905 over to Cambridge and then a direct train from there is only about 4 hours and about 20 quid in total. The two bus route is almost 5 hours. However this 2 pound bus fare has opened up so many routes now.
Hello . I am a recent disabled pass holder and live just outside London in Kent, I really would like to know a route between London and Norwich. Mmmmmm. Want to explore
Hi there! I've got a nice route for you with some personal recommendations. It's quite a detour but necessary because there are so few buses running between Cambridge and Norwich. From Central London, you could get the 113 up to Edgware. The 113 is likely one of the fastest ways to get out of London by bus as it spends a lot of time on the dual carriageway. From Edgware get the 614 up to Hatfield. Again a nice fast route whilst allowing you to see a little of countryside Hertfordshire. From Hatfield you could get the 610 or X10 up to Luton. These have just received a set of brand new buses. Then get the MK1 up to Bedford and the 28 over to Kimbolton. Kimbolton is a pretty little village but do plan to be here before 2pm as the last bus out of Kimbolton is at 2:30pm. Then get the 400 to Huntingdon Bus Station, run by the local operator Dews Coaches. This was a really friendly bus route where everyone seemed to know each other. The last bus on this route leaves Kimbolton at 2:30pm so make sure you're there before then. Then get the 904 to Peterborough Bus Station. A stylish single decker running along the course of the old Great North Road adjacent to the A1 for most of its route. Then get the "excel" bus route between Peterborough and Norwich, via Wisbech, Kings Lynn and Dereham. A frequent and pleasant bus route with one of the most comfortable interiors I've had on any bus. The stretch between Peterborough and Norwich takes almost 3 hours but is still pleasant. This is theoretically possible to do in one day (though you'd have to get up very early in the morning and arrive quite late at night.) Take a look at the first two parts of my first bus challenge which I did in 2023, where I followed quite a similar route: ua-cam.com/video/o4vVyiN0uO8/v-deo.html Alternatively, if you're running a bit late for the 400 or don't want to risk it, from Northampton there's an X4 route which will take to Peterborough in just over 2 hours via Corby. This is a larger detour but the buses on the X4 are much more frequent. Hope this helps - Norwich is a bit of an annoying place to get to by bus so a direct route is almost impossible.
@ItsAllAboutTheJourney Thank you ever so much for typing such a long lengthy reply, I really do appreciate it . I'm not sure if I can make the journey in one day but I will give it a good try . Will be in about 2 weeks time as I'm a little busy right now. Thanks again Paul.
The bus was free for me on my Oyster card/travelcard. If you do not have an Oyster travelcard, or use a contactless payment card for your journey, then it would cost £1.75. In London, you can make unlimited journeys for £1.75 within one hour of touching in on your first bus.
Sullivan didn't lose the London contracts - they gave them up overnight without notice as TFL were late paying them and were struggling to work with a small company according to their press release
Myself and a few others in the community believe that Sullivan buses aren't telling the full story in their press release. Sullivan Buses have been under poor management for many years, with poor staff retention and dreadfully maintained buses and frequencies. One theory is that TfL were withholding payments from Sullivan as a financial penalty, and that the "meeting" Sullivan had with TfL may have been called by TfL implicitly suggesting them to end their service in London. I don't want to give out incorrect information and this is all obviously speculation, but I don't think Sullivan are telling the full story in their press release.
Just wondering if you could provide links to your bus timetable sources? Earlier in the year I took a friend from Euston to Watford Junction on National Rail and took the 721 to St Albans. It cost her nothing as she had a freedom pass!
My two main sources of information were the websites traveline.info and bustimes.org . Traveline is a fantastic journey planning website, with the possibility to search for any journey between two locations in the UK using only bus. bustimes.org has detailed bus timetables and information about each route, as well as a live bus tracking map which I relied on a lot during the trip to see if buses were actually running! (It also archives data about how often buses were on time or ran in the first place, which was useful in the planning stage to make informed decisions about which bus would be best). Both websites are kept up to date with the latest timetables, and both are fantastic sources for bus timetable data in different ways.
The warehouses you passed just before mk aren't amazon warehouses. Ones huel and the rest are up to let. Amazpn warehouse is at Brogborough. The X1 is so much quicker than the F70/F77. 45 mins compared to 1hour 20. From Dunstable.
I think we came to St Albans at the wrong time to describe it as colourful! On a busy day there are buses from so many different operators (Metroline, Red Rose, Sullivan, Uno, Arriva) trundling up and down the high street.
I have used several.buses in the UK with the £2 fare even in remote parts of England. Great initiative if you consider that evsn long routes such as the Coastliner from Leeds to Whitby now costs just £2 for over 100 km
The Coastliner is a fantastic route, and a very comfortable one too. I didn't get a chance to ride it on this trip, but I'd love to ride it end to end from Leeds to Whitby - such varied scenery from the historic urban landscapes of York and Leeds to barren moorland close to Whitby. I wonder if this is the longest route you can take on the £2 single fare.
@@ItsAllAboutTheJourney it is. If you go on the Whitby-bound journey, make sure that you sit on the left side on the upper deck as there are some nice views of the village of Goathland, including its railway station, now part of the North Yorkshire Moors Heritage Railway. Goathland and its station were used as a set for the Hogsmeade scenes of the third Harry Potter movies
@thedanster2352 's comment sums this up quite well. We're making use of the £2 fare while it lasts, to see how far we can get from London using just buses :)
What's wrong with £2? That's quite reasonable in my opinion. These bus companies need to pay all their drivers and depot staff a decent rate without much funding from the government.
@@ItsAllAboutTheJourney I can remember a rural single fare - I forget the distance - costing like £7+ before the £2 single fare cap! And that was a decade ago.
I didn't realise that, it is indeed! There are plans to extend west towards Cambourne via the Colleges, and also north towards Waterbeach from Cambridge North too.
Oooh - sounds exciting! There are some fantastic bus companies in Kent/Sussex (Metrobus, Brighton and Hove etc.) so I'd love to sample them. I'm quite busy with university in the coming months, but in the future, perhaps we can see how far west we can get from London, or maybe south/east into France or Belgium...
@@ItsAllAboutTheJourney I think you should try from central london and see how far you can get via kent (arriva and stagecoach) and sussex (brightin and hove etc)
I could have done, it would have been quite a challenge! Also night buses don't really exist in cities outside of London so it become very difficult to travel in the early morning or late evening.
@@ItsAllAboutTheJourney another option is you could of just done a 24 hr challenge like this guy ua-cam.com/video/SRZCWhOpWag/v-deo.htmlsi=IXjptGySsOdjrhxz
hi mate. would be a pelasure to meet you. can you try metrobus in West sussex and Surrey please? I have always felt very silly thought i was the only one waiting for delayed buses all the time just to get cool bus journeys and £2 cheap fares. just got stuck in scotland after missing rhe train, but hooray, the stagecoach tuned up, i changed and then got on a stagecoach COACH to take me to Nairn out of Inverness. missed the first one becaus I thought it was a coach service 😂. anyway love the fact youre japanese bro because I'm british indonesian. running on all these buses feeling like a fool but theres otherw enjoying the rides like me. (i enjoy the rides on aircraft because I work on airplanes everyday as a crewmember). but I hope to see you on one of my flights. do give a shoutout to me on the planes. (my name is Durham)
Wow Durham, you have a very cool job. Maybe we'll meet one day in the sky :) I think Metrobus are a fantastic company - I've always wanted to try them someday. I agree, there's something quite magical about being stranded somewhere and letting public transport take you home.
That's quite disappointing if true - I hope they don't follow through with the plans even though the £2 fare has been highly successful. Labour have been quite mean to the elderly since their administration.
I used the X1 from Luton to Milton Keynes last year on my London Freedom Pass, but it was a double-decker hitting 60mph going up the M1. Quite exciting sitting in the front seat upstairs! Can't recall what make/model, or even the operator, it was, but memory says it was a standard local service bus.
I think you may be remembering the similarly named MK1, which also runs between Luton and Milton Keynes via the M1. This route is operated by Stagecoach and still runs today alongside the X1 (which only began in July 2024). Can imagine that would have been quite an exciting experience - there aren't many places in the UK where local buses run along the motorway! The only other instances I can think of are the X80 running over the Dartford Crossing, and the A10/102 along the M4 Spur to Heathrow.
Of course, the whole trip will cost considerably more than £2, but each individual bus fare will cost no more than £2 - I did not intend for the title to be misleading, apologies if it's come across this way.
It doesn't come across as misleading to me, but then again that's with prior knowledge that individual bus fares have that cap and the thumbnail implying there are multiple separate buses used...
I tried using UA-cam built in face blur function for the first time in a while. It's still rubbish, never using it again. Unfortunately it's now permanently burned into the video so I can't get rid of it sadly.
You could have gone from London Victoria to Luton for 755/757, I think it only cost £2 as well, but I guess you do need to start your video at Victoria and it would miss Potter's Bar and St Alban's 🤔
I know 724 is a Greenline that only costs £2 from Heathrow to Harlow..... So I'm not so sure about what you just said here🤔 But now that I see from gov.uk, 755/757 is not included in £2 fee
The 724, though advertised as a Greenline service, is actually a normal single-decker bus, not a coach like the 755/757. This might explain the large difference in fares.
London usually refers to the whole thing as you can see on road signs, the borough’s being London boroughs, transport for London, etc. the specific square mile area is ‘the city of London’ or just ‘the city’. You wouldn’t exactly say parliament isn’t in London just because it isn’t in the city of London
Are there sufficient bus services in Tory Scum land? I had the misfortune of growing up on the London Country and Alder Valley borders. Whilst some routes like Aldershot to Guildford and Guildford to Woking were frequent there were huge chunks in network back then when people used buses. Since Jeremy Hunt and his vile ilk think buses are just peasant wagons I suspect this has got worse
We’ll see how the current Labour government improve bus services. If England is able to keep the £2 bus fair cap, then there is hope. Otherwise, buses were starting to get expensive before the scheme.
By "Tory Scum land", I assume you're referring to the area southwest of London (much of which now votes Lib Dems, I wonder why!) Bus routes around this area are undoubtedly much better than they are likely to have been before with better network coverage and more frequent and pleasant services, but there's still a lot of improvement needed in my opinion. I hope we don't start to see bus route cuts around this area, as for a lot of people this will remove their only viable means of public transport.
I travelled from Seaford in East Sussex to Gretna Green on 23 buses in 43 hours using my concessionary bus pass. A total of nearly 400 miles using partly this route. Pass of course not valid in Scotland but can be used from a start in Carlisle as far as Gretna. There was only one truly overnight stop in Preston when there were no more buses running.
Sounds like a really fun but tiring trip! Probably works better going north to south as the buses across the Lake District end pretty early. I'd rather have a good night's sleep so I'm not babbling rubbish on camera the next day!
I've done Croydon to Cardiff, Heathrow to Lincoln and Redhill to Bournemouth in one day which were all incredibly fun to do. Sometimes you have to do a massive detour to make progress. Heathrow to Edinburgh by local bus made super easy my the amount of express routes on the east coast.
Wow, those sound like super fun trips! You do unfortunately have to make a few detours. The buses up the east coast do get a little sparse between Yorkshire and Teesside which is a little annoying.
@@ItsAllAboutTheJourney York to Newcastle is reasonably easy, and you can make it very scenic by using the Coastliner, and Arriva run buses direct between Scarborough and Middlesbrough and GNE between there and Newcastle making it a good way to fast track up. Did have to go through hull to get to York though 😛
@@benttwiggy5940 This is one of the only ways you can get up towards Newcastle by bus. I took a slightly different route to get north as you may see!
Loved the video, will be watching the remainder of the series. Would be nice to see the time it took for each individual journey.
Thank you! That's a good idea - I'll see if I can include this in future episodes.
Wow! Surprised I have never come across your channel before! You seem to have made some really innovative stuff, and there is lot for me to catch up on! Especially interested in your Tokyo metro area videos as I have an interest in that system!
Love how this video was narrated and edited so well. Clearly some inspiration from the Travelling Turtle series. Can’t wait for future episodes of this journey. Subscribed!
PS. I’m from really near Potters Bar too, so its nice to come across a local haha
Thank you for your kind words! Travelling Turtle's videos were a big inspiration for my bus challenge videos. Tokyo's trains are a fascinating system and I can't wait to return to Japan in the future. Looking forward to sharing and editing more videos from this journey!
I understand the £2 fare will not be extended like it has been several times in the past, so I'm glad to see you making the most of it
Currently it looks like the £2 single bus fare will be discontinued on the 31st Dec 2024. However the £2 bus fare has dramatically changed peoples' opinions and usage of buses so much, that even bosses of transport giants like Stagecoach are urging the government to keep the £2 bus fare. When private sector companies are urging the government to continue the scheme, you sure know it's profitable too. (Not sure if the same can be said about smaller, local operators though.) This is a really positive sign, I can see the £2 bus fare scheme continuing past the end of 2024 and becoming a semi-permanent thing.
@@ItsAllAboutTheJourneyseems the fare cap will be extended to £3
313 | 06:49 New Cottage Farm - Potters Bar Station
84 | 07:30 Potters Bar Station - St Albans St Peter's Street
721 | 08:25 St Albans St Peter's Street - Luton Station Interchange
X1 | 09:15 Luton Station Interchange - Milton Keynes The Point
X6 | 11:00 Milton Keynes The Point - Northampton Bus Interchange
A great video, I've subscribed.
Thank you 😊😊
Thanks for your support! Glad you enjoyed the video :)
My late grandfather was a builder who worked on building Milton Keynes. I'm from Northampton originally. I miss the old Greyfriars bus station that we had until about 10 years ago
That's really interesting! When did the new bus station in Northampton open?
@@ItsAllAboutTheJourney March 2014, they did have a bit of a problem when it first opened 😂
I recently did a journey from Lands End to John O’Groats on public buses - took us 5 days but what a journey it was . Insane how much more the Scottish busses cost!
Wow, what a trip! Would love to try that sometime. Did you use the Citylink coaches in Scotland or did you stick to local buses?
@@ItsAllAboutTheJourney not quite local, but not city link- stuck to the Stagecoach long distance buses on the basis that oap passes work on them.
Lovely video, looking forward to seeing where you head next! I personally managed to do London to Exeter on £2 bus fares in a day and that vid is on my channel, I definitely love doing these kinds of trips
Thank you! London to Exeter is amazing for one day - I'll definitely check out your video this evening. Look forward to sharing future episodes!
Excited for the next episodes
Can't wait to share them!
@@ItsAllAboutTheJourney Any ideas when next one will be ready
@@UKTransportExplorer I'll try to get the next one out in the next couple weeks or so. I'm very busy at the moment with university so my upload schedule is likely to be patchy at best.
@@ItsAllAboutTheJourney No worries mate.
I live in Kent now and even though the timetables are a lot shorter than the trains, the fares are wayyyy cheaper, especially getting to and from London.. singles £2, day passes are like £7..wonder what and if the prices will change to after December.
I really hope that the £2 bus fare is retained after December, considering its popularity among passengers. Even the bosses of large transport companies like Stagecoach are calling on the government to keep the £2 fare scheme as it's drawn so many more passengers to the bus. Bus prices before the scheme were spiralling out of control - I once paid £5.50 for a single fare between Hatfield and Welwyn Garden City, which is more expensive than a peak-hour train ticket.
It Will probably be 5.99 , I was shocked to see Specsavers changed their reglazing fee from £30 to £75 in One year, everything is getting way too expensive in the UK, if I went back to Asia I could live like a millionaire
That 15524 stagecoach bus used to belong to gloucester depot
I recently did First Eastern Counties Excel route from Norwich to Peterboro and Arriva's 724 from Heathrow CBS to Harlow, both for the amazing £2 fare. An absolute bargain !!
That's amazing - there are some really long routes you can take for just £2. A train fare from Heathrow to Harlow could be as much as £50 one way...
@ItsAllAboutTheJourney I was surprised to find an airport route included but apparently there are a few bus routes around Heathrow, Gatwick, Luton & Stansted all accepting the £2 fare !!
Almost all buses around airports will accept a £2 bus fare. A lot of users of buses around airports are actually airport/airline workers themselves, airline passengers using local buses are a minority. It would be unfair to charge these people a premium just to get to work.
On the other hand, some bus services (such as the Hotel Hoppa services around Heathrow, for example) are extortionately priced, though these are aimed at hotel users, who would be more or less happy paying a £10 bus fare for a £300 a night hotel around Heathrow (a reminder that travel on all official London buses around the Heathrow terminal/hotels area is free!)
Great video! Liked and subscribed. The X1 coach/bus is very cool. I rode the X6 before also Arriva between Coventry and Leicester on the same bus/coaches!
Thanks for the support! We need more buses like the X1 in the UK.
@@ItsAllAboutTheJourney have you tried the Blackpool palladium buses? The single deckers have full on smartphone cradles with wireless charging! Best buses in the UK imo along with the Transdev 36
@@SeanMidlandstransporthub Wow, that sounds very premium! I'm yet to try them.
I really enjoyed this video as I too like to make the most of the £2 journeys. I didn't know that there is a new X1 service from Luton to MK. I am planning some shopping trips now as MK is a brilliant shopping centre.
I have subscribed.
Thanks for your support :) With the X1 travel between Luton and MK will be faster and more comfortable.
Thanks for a great video, I get my senior bus pass later this year and hopefully next year I will use buses from the North East of England down to London and maybe beyond just using my bus pass, so at present I am in the planning stages, and your video has been very helpful, thank you.
Thank you! That sounds like a fantastic trip, glad this series has been of inspiration!
Luton is my local area! My local bus route is Z and my go2 area to go high street is Luton Interchange! Also the X1 goes through my area (Dunstable) .
You're very lucky to live in such a well connected area by buses.
@@ItsAllAboutTheJourney thanks! Yeah the busway is the best part for me.
I was on one of the posh stagecoach busses in northern scotland the other month for three hours and much more comfortable than a budget airline or the modern train seats. Downside was it was £18 from a small village to Aberdeen. To the nearest resonable town it was £7. We are so spoiled with these £2 fares its democratised travel without a car hugely in England
I really hope they extend this in to the new year, it's making bus travel so much simpler which will surely make usage higher.
Wow - £18 is a lot for a bus in any context. I had the impression that public transport in Scotland was quite cheap, but I guess that's not the case in the far north where service is sparse. As several people have commented, in England you can travel on the 840 bus from Leeds to Whitby, almost 100 miles, for just £2.
The £2 bus fare cap is definitely a big step in the right direction for attracting people to public transport. I hope it's retained after December.
@@ItsAllAboutTheJourney it was a three hour journey, but the price you'd expect for a National Express or Flixbus. Technically a rover - but no option to pay for a single.
Interesting that Sullivans do the £2 bus fare, as they weren't originally on the list!
Those Temsa Safaris are lovely, I've sampled those used on the X6 from Coventry-Leicester.
Sullivan do indeed do the £2 bus fare scheme now, which surprised me a little. The last time I travelled with them between Potters Bar and St Albans the single fare was £3.95, almost double... I'm not sure how long Sullivan's commercial operations will survive having lost all their London routes. None of their commercial routes seem particularly well used.
I completely agree, the Temsa Safaris were kept in fantastic condition with a very smooth ride and comfortable seats. The Temsa Safaris used on the X1 are the very same buses which were used on the X6 until July 2024. They're now living a happy life at Milton Keynes depot.
Funny enough, I did a local bus challenge from Reading to Cardiff with a budget of a one way train ticket.
Reading to Oxford
Oxford to Swindon
Swindon to Chippenham
Chippenham to Bath
Bath to Bristol
Bristol to Chepstow
Chepstow to Newport
Newport to Cardiff.
Took me 2 days and 1 night.
So you can technically get from London to Cardiff easily.
I think you'd be able to do London to Edinburgh in 3 days also.
I just did my own journey at ua-cam.com/video/FbaUeSGlM7g/v-deo.htmlsi=4Oa2nhery19Jkt-w where I got from Leicester to Newcastle quite easily in one day so I think I'd be able to easily stretch London to Scotland. Might be an idea for my next journey!
Wow, that sounds like an excursion! Didn't know buses ran on the bridges over the Severn Estuary.
@@ItsAllAboutTheJourney now you know. (T7 Bus route, operated by Newport Bus)
I need to try that x1 service to MK. The coaches are also used on the X6 Coventry and Leicester.
They are used on the X6 except for when they sub it for a rattly old single decker.
Definitely recommend - unlike any bus service by Arriva I've ever travelled on.
The £2 fare is great but it’s weird how I can get from home to 2 stops away for £2. Then I can get from Plymouth to Bude, 50 miles away by road also for £2.
Interesting point you've raised there. It's very possible that since the £2 bus fare scheme was introduced, some short distance fares which originally were less than £2 have increased in price. Nevertheless, it's nice to have a unified fare system so you know that any bus you go on will cost no more than £2.
Bude is a beautiful place
@@ItsAllAboutTheJourneyAfter Northampton if you got the X7 would’ve taken you into Leicester, 127 to Loughborough, then 1 into Nottingham
Quite a one stop journey from St Budeaux Square to Victoria Road St Budeaux was £2.40 (the hill is steepish when your knee was shot off in Bosnia-Herzegovinja)
Now it's £2.
Your right about the Bude thing. And Konsel Kernow (the council), Karyan rag Kernow (the devolved bus contractor) and Go~South West the operator have colluded to cut the through double deckers buses to Bude with many now turning at Callington or Launceston as they say it's no longer financially viable.
If they actually started charging non disabled pensioners say under 76's and only gave FREE travel in Devon and Cornwall to council tax/ratepayers we might actually have the revenue to improve the service and cut fares for fare payers. But the selfish pensioners just want something for nothing and get the 12-65 year old to pay for it.
I do agree with your point here that more money needs to be spent on bus services like this, particularly in Cornwall where ridership is low but dependency on buses high, but I wouldn't say it's fair to call all pensioners without disabled passes selfish for getting free travel. A huge number of elderly people, whilst not being "disabled", may still experience significant difficulty walking even short distances; it will give them more peace of mind to know that they can take the bus (and also reduce financial pressure on those who may be struggling).
It shouldn't be up to 60-76 year olds to keep bus services profitable in my opinion. It's up to the government to give councils enough money to fund a proper bus service.
I did London (Southgate) to Nuneaton by bus about 7-8 years ago. 610 Cockfosters to Luton, 97 Luton to MK, X7 MK to Leicester, 48 Leicester to Nuneaton, then a local bus (41) to my then home.
That sounds like an interesting trip! Wonder how much the network's changed since then.
@@ItsAllAboutTheJourney X7 has been split at Northampton. The local bus to my old house in Nuneaton no longer runs, but there is still a service on another route so the journey would still be possible.
The 97 Luton-MK no longer runs (it was subsidised by Virgin Trains) but obviously MK1, X1 and others exist to make the same connection.
Awesome video, and I loved the interesting facts you shared in the video, and I sub to watch more
Thanks for your support!
Oh I admire your patience....when I was young and foolish at University, I went from Coventry to Grays in Essex via a series of buses (Northampton, Bedford, Hitchin, Harlow, Romford) - took all day! I just get in the car these days! Tempura rice? What an odd concept! As I understand it, Tempura items are coated in batter and deep fried, and I doubt that Boots' rice was like that!
The thought of deep fried rice coated in batter...
That sounds like it would have been a very fun trip - guess it would have been much harder to plan a trip like that back then - with paper timetables and booklets? (I don't want to insinuate your age!) It's only very recently that bus companies have been posting timetables on the internet to a good and consistent standard; with the dawn of bus tracking only in the past 5 years or so.
Sadly one part of this route, Harlow to Romford is no longer possible and would require a lengthy detour on 4 buses via Epping, Loughton and Hainault. That direct route you took was the 575 and was cut quite a few years ago. Buses between Outer London and Essex are rare in many places now as no one seems to want to agree on the funding or subsidise them!
@@aaronsmith9209 This was the 1970s! If my fading memory is correct it I would have taken the Green Line 724, which was an orbital route Watford, St Albans, Welwyn, Hertford, Harlow, Romford. I went from Bedford to Hitchin by United Counties, then picked up a Green Line bus to Welwyn/Hatfield, then got on the 724. I have a memory that the 724 was cut back to Harlow later on, where the 575 you mention might come in - I'd moved away by then.
Sulivan buses didn't lose the contracts that's quite disingenuous, as it was Sullivan buses that was getting screwed over by TFL for years and finally went screw that and cut the services, forcing TFL to scramble operators to fill in the gaps
I am a local to Sullivan Buses' routes and their performance over the past few years has been dreadful (see my community post in August for more info). Not to mention rumours of poor company culture and management leading to reported poor employee retention. TfL has not, to my knowledge, had any difficulty funding other bus operators in London, and other small companies like Uno are thriving. Regular payments to bus companies are a pittance for huge entities such as TfL, so I wouldn't be surprised if there is a reason that TfL has been refusing money to Sullivan in recent years - perhaps as a financial penalty for their poor performance.
There are many other small to medium size enterprises around the UK which receive considerably less funding that Sullivan receive, that don't have buses held together with duct tape.
I was in Milton Keynes recently.
Based on a plaque on the wall IIRC that Santander office - previously an Abbey National building - dates back to the '80s.
Found the photo. The foundation stone was laid by the Abbey National chairman on 27 July 1983.
And another plaque says Abbey House, 201 Grafton Gate.
That's interesting - I forgot about Abbey bank! I remember them being everywhere in the late 2000s/early 2010s.
Very nice video! I'm interested in journeys like this. I been from London Heathrow to Milton Keynes on 3 local buses £2 each. I was gonna try this challenge to Leicester on local buses that's 5 buses from Heathrow for £10 total but looked like it would be nearly an all day trip take 7 hours total journey time but then I did take a Leicester trip by coach instead on flix bus from London for timing but might do the local bus challenge if I get time for it. Milton Keynes is halfway to Leicester from London. I look forward to seeing part 2 of where your next part of the journey is. I'm guessing its X7 from Northampton straight to Leicester that would be interesting to see. Then skylink to Derbyshire or Loughborough then theres connections to Nottingham then Mansfield and Sheffield then Leeds. I think Leeds is doable in 2 days. I been interested in seeing a local bus challenge from London to Leeds as I have travelled that trip only by coach & train.
Thanks for your support! You'll have to wait and see - we may have got as far as Leeds, we may not...
Nice vid!
A couple of things would have improved it
I would have liked to have seen the journey on a map progressively.
I would also like each journey to be confirmed whether a freedom pass could it be used.
I would also have liked to you know the duration of the journey and the normal frequency of service.
Best wishes
Thanks so much for the suggestions, I really appreciate your feedback! A Freedom Pass will be valid on every single one of the buses featured on this trip. I'll definitely add in the duration of the journey, a few others have suggested this too.
"Middle of nowehere" lol, just down the road is a tube station and a large town in the other direction.
Middle of Nowhere for London or within the M25
Certainly feels like the middle of nowhere, particularly for London. It's a rather odd corner of London blocked off the green belt that feels very rural despite being very well connected.
You can go from Leeds to Whitby on the coast liner bus for £2 , that's a nice journey
I would love to try the Coastliner route - I didn't get a chance to try it this time unfortunately, but I did get to try another premium-feeling route by Transdev Blazefield later on in the trip (not revealing too much!)
Yeah, the Whitby on the 840 or Scarborough on the 843. Both takes around 3-3½ hours from Leeds
considering the x1 is literally a coach with a proper luggage hold. the fact it doesn't go to the airport is madness imo
That's a really interesting thought actually. A connection to Luton Airport would be fairly easy to implement, and would make travel to the airport for those living in Dunstable/Hockcliffe/Milton Keynes much easier and comfortable, particularly if you're travelling with suitcases.
Looking forward to see the rest of the challenge.
Hope you didnt get stung too bad by the taxi home from Northampton. By rights the train company is liable to get you to your destination. Or was it a choice to take a taxi rather than wait for replacement buses being organised or something?
Looking forward to sharing the following episodes too - there's a lot to uncover!
The Northampton incident happened late at night (about 12am-1am) after a long delay between Crewe and Rugby. We weren't supposed to stop at Northampton at all but had to so that the crew didn't work overtime. There were no replacement buses available, so Avanti paid for the cost of the taxi home for me and my family which was nice, particularly as I don't think they're legally obliged to in cases of disruption that aren't their fault.
@@ItsAllAboutTheJourney glad to hear you didn't get stung with it. They absolutely do have to get you to your destination.
Just a point out the Santander building is not just a office it has restaurants other offices and stuff inside it and it’s open to the public
Wow, that's interesting! May take a visit sometime.
@@ItsAllAboutTheJourney You should do that, it's got a rooftop bar so you can have a coffee and watch the sunset reflecting off the MK rail station glass. About as pretty as CMK gets!
Me and a friend did this went from Edinburgh to London, was £5.50 on X62 but our £2 fares started from Carlisle all way to London within 2 days.
Wow, that sounds like a fantastic trip! I may have seen a video of your friend's taking this very route.
@ItsAllAboutTheJourney it was alot of early morning/late night.
Your video of this is fantastic too. We both thinking of doing John OGroats to lands end solely by bus only.
@@Senor082GVU Wow, that'll be a long trip! Good luck :)
@@ItsAllAboutTheJourneyWas indeed an epic journey and I'm curious how this journey goes
Great to see Potters Bar, a place I often go to, used to go to Mount Grace
Potters Bar is one of the nicer towns surrounding London. Mount Grace school is not the good school it once used to be - it has a bit of a reputation around here - I've heard some (including the local paper) refer to it as "Mount Disgrace"...
@@ItsAllAboutTheJourney it was going downhill when I left in 1997.
Gotta love express bus routes operated with coaches, valid with the £2 fare or day tickets; they rarely seem to last these days, don't they?
It's a real shame that there are so few of these cheap, comfortable coach links. I'm not sure how long Arriva's X1 will last, though usage seemed high when I travelled. A few more passengers got on at Dunstable as well from as a few villages on the way, so the bus had around 25-30 people on by the time we reached Milton Keynes. I believe some local bus services in the far north of Scotland are operated by coaches, though Scottish buses are not part of the £2 fare cap (which is only in England and Wales).
enjoyed this! new subs
Thank you :)
Great video! However, you made a mistake. Sullivan Buses did not lose the contracts, they handed them back to TfL.
You're correct, officially Sullivan buses handed the contracts back to TfL. It's purely speculation, but I think there's more going on under the surface than Sullivan published in their press release. Sullivan's press release seems quite careful in its wording. I'll copy a reply to a comment where someone asked the same question.
I am a local to Sullivan Buses' routes and their performance over the past few years has been dreadful (see my community post in August for more info). Not to mention rumours of poor company culture and management leading to reported poor employee retention. TfL has not, to my knowledge, had any difficulty funding other bus operators in London, and other small companies like Uno are thriving. Regular payments to bus companies are a pittance for huge entities such as TfL, so I wouldn't be surprised if there is a reason that TfL has been refusing money to Sullivan in recent years - perhaps as a financial penalty for their poor performance.
There are many other small to medium size enterprises around the UK which receive considerably less funding that Sullivan receive, that don't have buses held together with duct tape.
Great to see another £2 bus fair challenge 😊 Looking forward to seeing how far you go. Does the total spent figure mean how much you have spent before boarding the bus? The £0 for the first bus got my attention.
The total figure is the amount spent after boarding the bus - apologies if it's not clear. I get free bus travel on my Oyster card on London buses, normally it will cost you £1.75 for a single journey.
@@ItsAllAboutTheJourney No worries :) Thank you for clarifying.
My kids live in Wellingborough and I live in Norwich. Get the x4 to Peterborough then the x1 to Norwich. All
For four quid.
That's fantastic - I wonder how much it would cost for the train...probably would take a similar time via London too...
@@ItsAllAboutTheJourney so there's a few ways I can do it mate. If I train it and book it in advance it's about 3 hours and about 40 pound roughly. However I've recently discovered a train to Bedford from Wellingborough then the 905 over to Cambridge and then a direct train from there is only about 4 hours and about 20 quid in total. The two bus route is almost 5 hours. However this 2 pound bus fare has opened up so many routes now.
@@richardarmstrong6513 The bus definitely seems like the best value option here then!
Hello . I am a recent disabled pass holder and live just outside London in Kent, I really would like to know a route between London and Norwich.
Mmmmmm.
Want to explore
Hi there! I've got a nice route for you with some personal recommendations. It's quite a detour but necessary because there are so few buses running between Cambridge and Norwich.
From Central London, you could get the 113 up to Edgware. The 113 is likely one of the fastest ways to get out of London by bus as it spends a lot of time on the dual carriageway.
From Edgware get the 614 up to Hatfield. Again a nice fast route whilst allowing you to see a little of countryside Hertfordshire.
From Hatfield you could get the 610 or X10 up to Luton. These have just received a set of brand new buses.
Then get the MK1 up to Bedford and the 28 over to Kimbolton. Kimbolton is a pretty little village but do plan to be here before 2pm as the last bus out of Kimbolton is at 2:30pm.
Then get the 400 to Huntingdon Bus Station, run by the local operator Dews Coaches. This was a really friendly bus route where everyone seemed to know each other. The last bus on this route leaves Kimbolton at 2:30pm so make sure you're there before then.
Then get the 904 to Peterborough Bus Station. A stylish single decker running along the course of the old Great North Road adjacent to the A1 for most of its route.
Then get the "excel" bus route between Peterborough and Norwich, via Wisbech, Kings Lynn and Dereham. A frequent and pleasant bus route with one of the most comfortable interiors I've had on any bus. The stretch between Peterborough and Norwich takes almost 3 hours but is still pleasant.
This is theoretically possible to do in one day (though you'd have to get up very early in the morning and arrive quite late at night.) Take a look at the first two parts of my first bus challenge which I did in 2023, where I followed quite a similar route: ua-cam.com/video/o4vVyiN0uO8/v-deo.html
Alternatively, if you're running a bit late for the 400 or don't want to risk it, from Northampton there's an X4 route which will take to Peterborough in just over 2 hours via Corby. This is a larger detour but the buses on the X4 are much more frequent.
Hope this helps - Norwich is a bit of an annoying place to get to by bus so a direct route is almost impossible.
@ItsAllAboutTheJourney
Thank you ever so much for typing such a long lengthy reply, I really do appreciate it .
I'm not sure if I can make the journey in one day but I will give it a good try .
Will be in about 2 weeks time as I'm a little busy right now.
Thanks again Paul.
@ItsAllAboutTheJourney
My 2nd bus would be the 321 which will get me to new Cross.
Glad you found it helpful - hope you enjoy your trip!
@@KurnazTilki-v4s see how much a coach returning to london might be - or even the train
Was the bus from the edge of London to Potters Bar free ?
The bus was free for me on my Oyster card/travelcard. If you do not have an Oyster travelcard, or use a contactless payment card for your journey, then it would cost £1.75. In London, you can make unlimited journeys for £1.75 within one hour of touching in on your first bus.
Sullivan didn't lose the London contracts - they gave them up overnight without notice as TFL were late paying them and were struggling to work with a small company according to their press release
Myself and a few others in the community believe that Sullivan buses aren't telling the full story in their press release. Sullivan Buses have been under poor management for many years, with poor staff retention and dreadfully maintained buses and frequencies. One theory is that TfL were withholding payments from Sullivan as a financial penalty, and that the "meeting" Sullivan had with TfL may have been called by TfL implicitly suggesting them to end their service in London. I don't want to give out incorrect information and this is all obviously speculation, but I don't think Sullivan are telling the full story in their press release.
Just wondering if you could provide links to your bus timetable sources? Earlier in the year I took a friend from Euston to Watford Junction on National Rail and took the 721 to St Albans. It cost her nothing as she had a freedom pass!
My two main sources of information were the websites traveline.info and bustimes.org . Traveline is a fantastic journey planning website, with the possibility to search for any journey between two locations in the UK using only bus. bustimes.org has detailed bus timetables and information about each route, as well as a live bus tracking map which I relied on a lot during the trip to see if buses were actually running! (It also archives data about how often buses were on time or ran in the first place, which was useful in the planning stage to make informed decisions about which bus would be best).
Both websites are kept up to date with the latest timetables, and both are fantastic sources for bus timetable data in different ways.
wish you would give journey times etc
A few people have suggested this now - for future parts I'll be sure to include the journey time onboard each bus. Thank you for the suggestion!
The warehouses you passed just before mk aren't amazon warehouses. Ones huel and the rest are up to let. Amazpn warehouse is at Brogborough. The X1 is so much quicker than the F70/F77. 45 mins compared to 1hour 20. From Dunstable.
Hey, is this a comedy video, St. Albans colourful buses lol
I think we came to St Albans at the wrong time to describe it as colourful! On a busy day there are buses from so many different operators (Metroline, Red Rose, Sullivan, Uno, Arriva) trundling up and down the high street.
I have used several.buses in the UK with the £2 fare even in remote parts of England. Great initiative if you consider that evsn long routes such as the Coastliner from Leeds to Whitby now costs just £2 for over 100 km
The Coastliner is a fantastic route, and a very comfortable one too. I didn't get a chance to ride it on this trip, but I'd love to ride it end to end from Leeds to Whitby - such varied scenery from the historic urban landscapes of York and Leeds to barren moorland close to Whitby. I wonder if this is the longest route you can take on the £2 single fare.
@enricomonti156
Sounds like I just have to do this journey :-)
@@ItsAllAboutTheJourney it is. If you go on the Whitby-bound journey, make sure that you sit on the left side on the upper deck as there are some nice views of the village of Goathland, including its railway station, now part of the North Yorkshire Moors Heritage Railway. Goathland and its station were used as a set for the Hogsmeade scenes of the third Harry Potter movies
I believe that's the longest single trip you can make in the UK for a couple of quid
sorry i dont get the challenge. what is the aim please explained. £2 covers each joutney so whats the point of the challenge?
I think he's trying to just get as far away from London as he can using only buses. And doing it because of the £2 bus fare
@thedanster2352 's comment sums this up quite well. We're making use of the £2 fare while it lasts, to see how far we can get from London using just buses :)
Not the fact that paying £2 to get on a bus is absolutely disgusting
What's wrong with £2? That's quite reasonable in my opinion. These bus companies need to pay all their drivers and depot staff a decent rate without much funding from the government.
@@ItsAllAboutTheJourney I can remember a rural single fare - I forget the distance - costing like £7+ before the £2 single fare cap!
And that was a decade ago.
So local buses rather than overnight bus to Inverness
Cambridge has the longest guided busway in the world
I didn't realise that, it is indeed! There are plans to extend west towards Cambourne via the Colleges, and also north towards Waterbeach from Cambridge North too.
can you do the south via kent and sussex next?
Oooh - sounds exciting! There are some fantastic bus companies in Kent/Sussex (Metrobus, Brighton and Hove etc.) so I'd love to sample them. I'm quite busy with university in the coming months, but in the future, perhaps we can see how far west we can get from London, or maybe south/east into France or Belgium...
@@ItsAllAboutTheJourney I think you should try from central london and see how far you can get via kent (arriva and stagecoach) and sussex (brightin and hove etc)
Bus Challenge
you should have done this as a 42 hour challenge instead of staying in a hotel overnight
I could have done, it would have been quite a challenge! Also night buses don't really exist in cities outside of London so it become very difficult to travel in the early morning or late evening.
@@ItsAllAboutTheJourney another option is you could of just done a 24 hr challenge like this guy ua-cam.com/video/SRZCWhOpWag/v-deo.htmlsi=IXjptGySsOdjrhxz
Was is this only localbus challenge
Yep, just local buses. Designated coach services (which are not part of the £2 fare scheme) are not allowed!
hi mate. would be a pelasure to meet you. can you try metrobus in West sussex and Surrey please? I have always felt very silly thought i was the only one waiting for delayed buses all the time just to get cool bus journeys and £2 cheap fares. just got stuck in scotland after missing rhe train, but hooray, the stagecoach tuned up, i changed and then got on a stagecoach COACH to take me to Nairn out of Inverness. missed the first one becaus I thought it was a coach service 😂. anyway love the fact youre japanese bro because I'm british indonesian. running on all these buses feeling like a fool but theres otherw enjoying the rides like me. (i enjoy the rides on aircraft because I work on airplanes everyday as a crewmember). but I hope to see you on one of my flights. do give a shoutout to me on the planes. (my name is Durham)
Wow Durham, you have a very cool job. Maybe we'll meet one day in the sky :)
I think Metrobus are a fantastic company - I've always wanted to try them someday.
I agree, there's something quite magical about being stranded somewhere and letting public transport take you home.
One of labours plans is not just to stop the elderly bus pass but i have read that they want to get rid of the £2 bus fare....
That's quite disappointing if true - I hope they don't follow through with the plans even though the £2 fare has been highly successful. Labour have been quite mean to the elderly since their administration.
I used the X1 from Luton to Milton Keynes last year on my London Freedom Pass, but it was a double-decker hitting 60mph going up the M1. Quite exciting sitting in the front seat upstairs! Can't recall what make/model, or even the operator, it was, but memory says it was a standard local service bus.
I think you may be remembering the similarly named MK1, which also runs between Luton and Milton Keynes via the M1. This route is operated by Stagecoach and still runs today alongside the X1 (which only began in July 2024). Can imagine that would have been quite an exciting experience - there aren't many places in the UK where local buses run along the motorway! The only other instances I can think of are the X80 running over the Dartford Crossing, and the A10/102 along the M4 Spur to Heathrow.
Yes, I think you're right! How confusing having different services operating the same route with almost identical route numbers.
£2
How long will it before the labour government put up the prices
It looks like the £2 bus fare cap is currently expected to end in December of this year.
I'm really hoping for another extension, but it seems unlikely.
Hopefully, not far as the rest of Britian don't care too much for them, their Londoners, and their strange ways😂
The amount of bus journeys you’ve made for £2 each that’s going too mount up considerably, so your title of your blog is a bit misleading I’d say!
Of course, the whole trip will cost considerably more than £2, but each individual bus fare will cost no more than £2 - I did not intend for the title to be misleading, apologies if it's come across this way.
@@ItsAllAboutTheJourneyyou need to change the title it’s very very misleading !!
It doesn't come across as misleading to me, but then again that's with prior knowledge that individual bus fares have that cap and the thumbnail implying there are multiple separate buses used...
that was a pretty pointless half arsed attempt at bluring out faces
I tried using UA-cam built in face blur function for the first time in a while. It's still rubbish, never using it again. Unfortunately it's now permanently burned into the video so I can't get rid of it sadly.
You could have gone from London Victoria to Luton for 755/757, I think it only cost £2 as well, but I guess you do need to start your video at Victoria and it would miss Potter's Bar and St Alban's 🤔
The Greenline coach is unfortunately not included in the £2 bus fare scheme. A single on the Greenline will cost you over £10.
I know 724 is a Greenline that only costs £2 from Heathrow to Harlow..... So I'm not so sure about what you just said here🤔
But now that I see from gov.uk, 755/757 is not included in £2 fee
The 724, though advertised as a Greenline service, is actually a normal single-decker bus, not a coach like the 755/757. This might explain the large difference in fares.
I took the Greenline from Victoria to Luton Airport on my concessionary pass so must be a bus route which incidentally runs 24 hrs a day.
not london as thats only a square mile you mean greater london or hertfordshire for 313
My apologies, Greater London is the administrative name of the region with its 32 boroughs.
London usually refers to the whole thing as you can see on road signs, the borough’s being London boroughs, transport for London, etc. the specific square mile area is ‘the city of London’ or just ‘the city’. You wouldn’t exactly say parliament isn’t in London just because it isn’t in the city of London
@@vadosegalaxy1597 no parliament is in westminster
@@BIGV710 yes it’s in Westminster but Westminster is in London
@@vadosegalaxy1597 no it is not its in greater london get your facts right
you made a mistake you could have got a bus to peterborough from Milton Keynes
I could indeed have got towards Peterborough, but that's not exactly where I was headed for...
Are there sufficient bus services in Tory Scum land? I had the misfortune of growing up on the London Country and Alder Valley borders. Whilst some routes like Aldershot to Guildford and Guildford to Woking were frequent there were huge chunks in network back then when people used buses. Since Jeremy Hunt and his vile ilk think buses are just peasant wagons I suspect this has got worse
We’ll see how the current Labour government improve bus services. If England is able to keep the £2 bus fair cap, then there is hope. Otherwise, buses were starting to get expensive before the scheme.
By "Tory Scum land", I assume you're referring to the area southwest of London (much of which now votes Lib Dems, I wonder why!) Bus routes around this area are undoubtedly much better than they are likely to have been before with better network coverage and more frequent and pleasant services, but there's still a lot of improvement needed in my opinion. I hope we don't start to see bus route cuts around this area, as for a lot of people this will remove their only viable means of public transport.
Great
Check Bus travels in East Africa on my page
Thank you! Never thought about buses in Eastern Africa before, they look quite luxurious!