In praise of … local buses

Have you ever considered going on a journey, car less, in the UK and found that the rail network forces you to go on a detour? I have and many times I took the expensive detour or hired a car.  A possible solution is available and I tried it.

Since I discovered the Travelling Turtle and BackPack Travels youtube channels, I found its possible to use the local bus to go on these longish journeys which require a rail detour.  Yes, it only works if time isn’t a factor and if Sundays could be a problem, but it’s cheap, thanks to the bus fare cap, now set to £3 at time of writing.

For instance on Wednesday this week I travelled from Reading to Leighton Buzzard, since I was going somewhere else later that day, I would have had to buy a single rail ticket ticket, which would cost me more than £50, even with a network rail card.  This was because I would have needed to travel into and out of London at peak times. 

Thankfully in nearby Oxford, there’s a bus to Milton Keynes, just north of Leighton Buzzard. I could have taken the train to Oxford quite cheaply but instead I took the bus from Reading to Oxford and once there, it was a short walk to another bus station to take the onward bus to MK.

When the second bus arrived at MK Central station, I got off to take the train to LB, with a single ticket price of £8, which was more than the two bus journey’s combined. 

In all, the whole journey door to door took over four hours compared to just over two if I took the train.  Of course this is not applicable for all journeys but it’s well worth investigating if you ever find yourself in my situation.