Readers of our Busabout blog will know that in 2000, literally days before Covid clamped the country down Liz and I travelled the length of the country from Southampton to Carlisle and then over the border to Gretna using our pensioner’s concessionary bus pass. Over 450 miles of free travels (and not so free hotels!). Sadly a pressing appointment meant train rather than buses back home, but a good thing perhaps with Covid just starting to become rife.
Liz has given several after-dinner talks on this trip to various local guilds nad organisations and a frequently asked question is “What’s next”?
So, one possible thought for 2026 was - could we actually circumnavigate England by bus? From Southampton along the S coast via Brighton and Dover to the North Sea Coast, around E Kent, crossing over the Dartford Crossing (there’s a convenient bus running between the Bluewater and Lakeside shopping centres), on around the Essex and East Anglia coasts, cross the Humber up along the Yorks and Northumberland coasts to Berwick -upon-Tweed. Then double back to Newcastle, get the bus over to Carlisle, around the old Westmorland coast and down through Lancs and the Wirral to Chester. Here we have to leave the coast and try and hug the Welsh border as, sadly, concessionary bus passes issued in England aren’t accepted in Wales (actually given the paucity of buses in Shropshire then the idea of hugging the boarder isn’t quite as hug-like as we’d have liked!). Anyway down through Hereford to Bristol, around the Exmoor and Cornish coasts to Lands End and then back along the South Coasts of Cornwall, Devon, Somerset, Dorset back to Southampton.
Some trip, many hundreds of miles, goodness knows how many buses and at least a month.
But, common-sense prevailed. It would be a heck of an experience, just not necessarily a particularly comfortable or pleasant one. We’d be doing the journey for it’s own sake rather for our enjoyment. There just wouldn’t be time to stop and enjoy places that we may have never visited before and might be unlikely to do so again. Sites, statues, museums, churches would go unvisited.
So the plan is shelved - however, rather than lose the planning I’ll post it here (in a separate post or two); either for our future use or as an aid to someone else.