The Great North Road Bus Trip: The End, A Summary and A Comparison

Day 7, Friday 22nd March 1991

Bus 26: Dunbar to Edinburgh

I completed my journey from London along the Great North Road from Dunbar on another Lowland Scottish double-decker, on service 106 leaving Dunbar High Street at 09.30 and arriving at St Andrew's Sq bus station in Edinburgh at 10.57, which is not, perhaps, the best introduction to that fair city.

Journey's End: 26 buses from London and the rather unlovely St. Andrews Sq. bus station

I still had to get to the Scott Monument, the notional end of the journey, but that was just a short walk away.  When I got there for the obligatory photograph (but having omitted to take one at Trafalgar Square at the start) I found it covered in scaffolding and under repair.

   The Scott Monument (under cover) and some nice Edinburgh buses in Princes Street

The fare from Dunbar added £2.05 to the total cost of the journey from London, bringing that to £45.20 although I could have reduced that by £2.50 by buying an Explorer ticket in Whitby rather than at Middlesbrough. I found later that this was roughly equivalent to the single train fare between the two capitals at that time.

Summary

I'd ridden on 26 buses: Twelve double-deckers, eight single-deckers with "coach-type" seating, three ordinary single deckers and three minibuses.  I'd travelled on the buses of the following companies:

London Buses

Welwyn Hatfield Line

United Counties

Viscount Bus & Coach

Lincolnshire Road Car

Leon Motors

Selby & District

Yorkshire Coastliner

Tees & District

Northumbria Buses and

Lowland Scottish

In 2020, f these, only Yorkshire Coastliner exists in a recognisable form, albeit in French ownership. Some of the others still exist as legal entities but with different trading names. The private contractors that run London's buses also do so in a way that requires them to adopt a common identity that would be recognisable to the traveller in 1991.

Every bus ran within five minutes of its booked time. There was some trouble with a sticking door at Grantham and a temporary loss of air pressure (for the brakes) at Newcastle but otherwise no breakdowns, no accidents and no ticket inspection (becasue one of the first things the privatised bus companies did was to sack all the imspectors and rely on better records from electronic ticket machines to protect revenue).  The buses were generally not very well used and only once did I have to share a double-seat. Parcels (once a significant traffic on rural buses) were being carried between Alnwick and Berwick and, apart from the London Routemaster, all fares were collected by the driver.

Replicating the Trip Today

What, I wondered, would it be like replicating the trip today?  For a start, the planning would be much easier. Bus timetables are now widely available on the internet and the whole trip could have been planned well before setting off, having excercised appropriate caution however, as - believe it or not - not everything on the internet is true or even up-to-date.

Having planned the buses, I could have just as easily booked the accommodation. In fact, I would have been wise (in pre-Covid times) to have done so. Because it's so easy to do, it has become the norm and consequently it has become much more difficult to just turn up somewhere and find a bed for the night. Some proprietors will even refuse a room to "walk-ups" as they feel there is something suspicious about people who have not booked in advance.

And how about the buses themselves?  Bus travel has been in steady decline for many years. How easy would it be to make the trip 29 years on.  The existance of online journey planners such as Traveline allows a comparison to be made, although during the current Covid-19 pandemic services are not running at "normal" levels and are changing more frequently. 

Entering "London to Edinburgh" into a serach engine and specifying "bus only" would probably cause it to blow a fuse and certainly wouldn't result in an answer. But by breaking the journey down into its component parts I have been able to make some interesting comparisons.

Day One.

In 1991 I left Trafalgar Square at 10.00 and travelled via North Finchley, Potters Bar, Welwyn Garden City, Hitchin and Biggleswade to arrive Bedford at 17.15 (although the Biggleswade diversion was optional).

In 2020 Traveline suggested a route via Holloway, Barnet, St. Albans and Luton getting me to Bedford much earlier at 15.24, which would probably mean that I wouldn't have opted to spend the night there.

Day Two.

This was a Sunday. In 1991 I couldn't leave Bedford until 11.40 and then went via Rushden, Corby and Peterborough to Stamford arriving at 17.46

Thanks to Sunday opening of shops, buses now run earlier on Sunday mornings and in 2020 I could have left well before 11.40, but if I had chosen to leave at 10.57 I could have stayed on the bus through Rushden to Kettering, changing there for a bus to Corby and after a short wait, getting another to Peterbrough arriving at 15.58.  My friend Janet would, however, have had to come there to pick me up as in 2020 there is no Sunday service on to Stamford.

Day Three

In 1991 I went via Grantham, Lincoln and Scunthorpe to Doncaster.

In 2020 I would have been spared Scunthorpe, but I would have had a problem in that the buses between Stamford and Grantham now run on a "dial-a-ride" basis and require at least 24-hours notice to book a seat. Assuming I had been able to get over this hurdle I could have left at 08.25 (35 minutes earlier than in 1991) and still gone via Grantham and Lincoln (which would still have been on "service 1" as it was 29 years ago) . From Lincoln, Traveline would send me via Gainsborough rather than Scunthorpe to Doncaster and consequently got me there much earlier - at 14.55 - so I would almost certainly have continued northwards. Alternatively, had I wanted to follow the Great North Road more closely, I could have left Stamford two hours later (again assuming I could have booked a seat in advance) and gone via Grantham, Newark and Retford.

Day Four

In 1991 I had a simple journey to Whitby, changing at York and Malton.

According to Traveline, in 2020 there are no longer any buses northward along the A1 from Doncater. An enquiry for "Doncaster to Whitby" results in a suggestion to take a taxi (but doesn't tell you how much that would cost), while even "Doncaster to York" results in a route via Barnsley and Leeds. At least from York the journey would be more familiar, with just the change at Malton and an arrival at 16.40. However, I suspect there is a problem with the data on the Traveline website for this section.

Day Five 

In 1991 I took a fairly complicated route via Middlesbrough, Stockton-on-Tees, Durham and Newcastle to Morpeth, stopping there because it was too late to continue.

In 2020 Traveline denied that it was possible to make this journey by bus and suggested another taxi. However, it also claimed it wasn't possible to get to Durham or even Middlesbrough from Whitby so there is defiinitely a data issue here.

Day Six

Day six was an example of where it is actually much easier to make a bus journey today than almost thirty years ago.

In 1991 I left Morpeth at 0920 and trundled around the coast to Alnwick where I waited over an hour for a connection to Berwick arriving at 12.45. 

In 2020 I could leave Morpeth five minutes earlier on a through bus to Berwick along the Great North Road and be there for 10.57. This would have meant that I'd have had time to have a good look around the town and then continue, two hours later, via Galashiels to Edinburgh where I'd have arrived at 16.57 and a day earlier than in 1991.  On the other hand, if I'd really wanted to visit Dunbar, where I stayed overnight in 1991, I could only have done so by travelling via Edinburgh anyway, so I wouldn't have bothered.

Cost?

The bus industry keeps its fares a closely-guarded secret online so it's not possible to say what the cost of such a journey would be today, although for me one of the few benefits of being 29 years older is that, apart from the section north of Berwick and the odd pre-0930 start, my bus pass means that it wouldn't cost me anything at all.

It's reassuring to know that even after 29 years of change - and unfortunately overall decline - of the bus industry in the UK that it is still possible to make journeys such as this, as long as you don't need to be in Stamford on a Sunday or go directly from Berwick to Dunbar.  Who knows, when all this pandemic business is over with I might go and do it again - this time in the other direction perhaps.