I’m more than happy getting to places in a fast and efficient manner if time is short or when treading a familiar path. That said, I generally prefer to see the back lanes, the winding estates and the obscure landmarks which you just can’t see from a train or a coach.
Fantastic towns and villages that non-drivers can’t reach by any other means: Leek, Dartmouth, Kirkby Lonsdale, Aldeburgh, Banff, Bawtry, Beer, Tideswell, Tenby, Tadcaster, Ullapool, Porthcurno, they’re all accessible by bus alone, even if there aren’t too many of them.
I’ll fully concede that hopping on a few buses isn’t going to be for everyone, but it’s not about the bus itself. It’s about the out-of-the-way, the overheard snippets of conversation, the weird and unfamiliar place names, the people you’re with, the unexpected.
This website will tell you about ace bus routes, give you ideas for days out to explore new places, and maybe even nudge you into planning some slow travel adventures of your own.
Click on the About section to learn more about how I got into all this shenanigans, and if you’d like to drop me a line, then head over to the Contact page. I will be forever indebted to Bustimes.org, which has made planning these journeys as simple as possible.
A fortnight after our visit, she finds a man staggering in the beer garden at 3am with a cardboard box on his head. ‘He didn’t even cut eye holes in it,’ she told the local paper. ‘I was howling.’
It’s a deconstructed, flatpack breakfast on a rectangular plate. All the ingredients are there, just not together. What a calamity.
Bagpipes are an incredible invention. I’d never think in a million years to gut a sheep, attach pipes to the holes where its neck and legs once were, and squeeze out a tune.
I don’t care what happens to my remains, but I promise to do everything in my spectral powers to haunt anyone who puts me in an Irn-Bru coffin.
Nana Meg's joy turned to contempt when she realised her telegram from the Queen was instead from Iain Duncan Smith, and spent the rest of her big day getting razzed on brandy.
She wears false eyelashes which would frighten a tarantula, and a t-shirt with the slogan ‘Too Glam to Give a Damn’ across the bust. Her seething response when the driver dares to beep a warning suggests that, if anything, she somehow needs to become more glam.
Nobody swears like a Scouser, and for the next half an hour, the girls treat us to an f-word masterclass, with crackling white noise lobbed out whenever they broach a letter ‘k’.
Spike Island hasn’t hosted another gig since, but a 30th anniversary show will happen in May, headlined by The Clone Roses. A host of other Manchester tribute acts are opening up, playing other people’s tunes to middle-aged men in bucket hats.
You might be desperate to escape, but the local authorities are determined to trick you into staying, as the timetables on the walls of the bus station are all for Gobowen, a village a few miles away.