Walking. Gossip. Travel.

Category: Coaches

  • Ljubljana – Day Four (Flixbus from Ljubljana to Trueste)

    Ljubljana – Day Four (Flixbus from Ljubljana to Trueste)

    It was the morning of my birthday, so what better plan could I have than to travel on a bloody Flixbus? Four of us were taking the ninety minute journey to Trieste where we spending the evening before all flying back the following day.

    I’ve used Flixbus many times and I always dread it, as their policies seem odd to me. I boarded and then tried to take the seat they told me to sit in, which annoyed the lady next to me I think as it soon became apparent that the coach was nearly entirely empty. Steve, Susanna, Bev and I were scattered around the coach, their whole reservation strategy is just a nuisance. I don’t understand why it can’t be an optional thing like many other coach companies such as National Express.

    Bev and Susanna just boarded the coach without showing their tickets, as they’re like that. Steve and I thought we’d board properly, but Bev and Susanna soon rushed off to the ticket collector when they realised.

    There are USB power outlets on the back of some seats, but they didn’t work.

    Safely in Trieste where it was wet and rainy. The staff members on the Flixbus were polite, the driving seemed entirely acceptable and the coach was sort of clean. It was only a ninety minute journey, but for as long as Flixbus keep forcing seat reservations on people, I’m going to try and avoid travelling with them.

  • Flixbus – Wrocław to Munich

    Flixbus – Wrocław to Munich

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    As I’m meeting up with Richard in Munich later today, I needed to get from Wrocław last night and the most efficient way of doing that was the direct Flixbus between the two cities. I’ve had mixed experiences with Flixbus, but I thought that it would be worth the risk as the timings worked out well to save me getting a hotel for the evening. Here’s the rather glamorous bus station in Wrocław, although it’s more a shopping centre than a bus station. It’s relatively new and it apparently replaced a ramshackle and disorganised bus station that was previously on the site.

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    And here’s the grand central area of the shopping centre element, which was rather nicer than the bus station. Ridiculously, the bus station toilets are chargeable and the shopping malls ones are free, so I walked the extra 50 metres to go to the latter.

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    The coach stops are in the downstairs of the building, but everything was clearly signed. I was pleased that it seemed logical, it’s not always the case.

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    There we go, stand 7 and I discovered something that I didn’t know, which is that Monachium is the Polish name for Munich.

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    The coach comes sweeping into stand 6, but that’s near enough. There were two drivers (well, one driver and one helping) and they were friendly and personable.

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    On board and I had a compulsory free seat reservation which I sometimes think are more hassle than they’re worth. Some people were put next to others despite the coach being nearly empty, but I was fortunate to have no-one next to me for the entire journey so there was plenty of space. There were only two stops which were Dresden and Nuremberg (well, and to fill the thing up with diesel and for the police check).

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    It was clean on board, but the tray was sticky.

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    The charging point being down there was a bit of a hassle as neither of my cables were long enough to even tuck my phone into the seat pocket. Instead, I charged my power bank and then charged my phone from the power bank.

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    Leaving Wrocław I tried to take a photo of the sunset, but, having thought about it, the foreground doesn’t look very decadent.

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    The police board at the German border, which I’m not sure is entirely commonplace, but it’s why Flixbus has to check passports and ID documents before anyone boards a cross-border route. The policeman was particularly interested in my passport with all its stamps, but not concerned enough to hold the coach up. There was a stop for diesel just before we crossed the Polish/German border and there must have been some sort of issue as there was lots of shouting about and moving the coach about the place. Someone wanted to get off for a cigarette, but this was refused in the middle of a petrol station.

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    And safely in Munich after the stops at Dresden and Nuremberg. The coach was always on time, or within a couple of minutes, and it was clean and comfortable. The free wi-fi was a bit limited in terms of the amount of data, but I had free roaming so it didn’t matter. The drivers were friendly, there was plenty of space and it was a reasonable experience for the £45 I paid. This was I accept a little bit expensive for a coach trip, but it saved a hotel and didn’t seem unreasonable. I got a sufficient amount of sleep on board and it was a generally very quiet coach which made that easier. Based on this experience, I’m becoming a little more confident to use Flixbus a little more often rather than just as an operator of last resort. Oh, and the coach station at Munich wasn’t as new and shiny as the one in Wrocław and it did look a bit like it might fall down soon.

  • Norwich – Flixbus

    Norwich – Flixbus

    In news that comes as no great surprise, Flixbus have now arrived in Norwich. The above photo is from the US as I don’t have one from Norwich yet, but they’ll be going to destinations such as London and also, the pearl of the west country, Swindon, so start packing your tiaras for that decadent treat. I’ve travelled with them many times and it’s all a bit erratic as they franchise out their operations so the quality of service is highly variable. I try to stick to trains as coaches are just more stressful and less comfortable, but their prices are generally very low so I’m sure I’ll end up on one at some stage but I’m it’s always something of a local dip of travelling going with them.

  • Sort of the End of Megabus UK….

    Sort of the End of Megabus UK….

    Having travelled a lot with Megabus in the UK and the US over the years, it’s a little sad to hear today that they’re ditching most of their routes in the UK. I hadn’t realised that they’ve got a useful cross-country coach service from Norwich, although that information is now too late for me to use it. I had thought they’d left Norwich, so perhaps their marketing went a bit awry as I’m not sure how they’ve lost so many customers over the years. I imagine Flixbus hasn’t helped and maybe they’ll be moving to take over some of the Norwich routes soon enough.

  • Belgrade Trip – Getting Back from Luton Airport

    Belgrade Trip – Getting Back from Luton Airport

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    I had a slightly (very) sub-optimal arrangement to get back to Newmarket from London Luton Airport, although I’ve realised if I can get slightly earlier flights back then I can get a National Express bus straight back. Unfortunately, the final leg of that service isn’t operated a night, so I had a few hours wait at the Pret landside with a 99p filter coffee. They have power and seating, that’s all I really required. I was suitably productive though, so the time wasn’t wasted.

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    The coach can arrive at any of these gates it seems.

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    As a slight side issue, why are they being that precise that a coach will be leaving one minute late? And I accept there are more important things to worry about in the world, but when you’re meandering around outside an airport at 04:30 these things provide at least a modicum of amusement.

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    Here it comes.

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    Four of us boarded. This route just flits between Luton Airport and Cambridge, obviously much busier later in the day taking passengers from the airport. They need more legroom on these coaches, that’s my summary of the service.

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    Morning Cambridge!

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    Then a 20 minute walk to the railway station.

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    It’s all happening now.

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    There’s the Ipswich Rocket at platform 5 that took me back to Newmarket.

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    After a quick sausage roll at Greggs waiting for Wetherspoons to open, I then had the £3 breakfast and £1 unlimited coffees. I quite a few coffees to stay awake, but as Tony Blair said, “that is that, the end”. Well, for the Belgrade trip anyway. I’m conscious I’ve skipped great chunks of the history, food and culture that I thought I’d write about, but there we go, maybe I’ll get back to it another time. Oh, I didn’t mention, that was one of the better Wetherspoons breakfasts so all was well with the world.

  • £2 Bus Cap Extended – How Very Lovely

    £2 Bus Cap Extended – How Very Lovely

    Apologies for a little interruption to my ‘riveting’ write-up of the group trip to Gdansk.

    It’s just been announced that the Government is extending the £2 bus fare policy until 31 October 2023 and then it’ll be increased until £2.50 until November 2024. This was always inevitable given the popularity of the scheme, as was their increase in cost, with a longer extension also almost being certain as it’ll be hard to row back from this now. Personally, this will be of significant benefit to me over the course of the year, one small piece of good news for public transport at least. The scheme also seems to have been a much wider success, encouraging people onto public transport with fares having been just too high before.

  • Flixbus – Częstochowa to Warsaw

    Flixbus – Częstochowa to Warsaw

    Let’s just start this was the succinct phrase ‘bloody Flixbus’. I’ve been on many Flixbus trips and in recent years my experiences were getting better after many annoying journeys. That meant I was hopeful that the service might be comfortable and easy.

    I arrived at the bus station 45 minutes early (I feel the need to always be early to recce the situation), pleased that it clearly stated that I should board at gate 13. I thought that this was marvellous, until I realised that there were only five platforms. Brilliant, just the confusion that I didn’t need. I roped in a young Polish guy who I guessed correctly might speak English and he had missed his bus, but he said that Flixbus could depart from one of the three places due to changes at the bus station. It could be from either end of the bus station, or it would be from outside the front.

    I will say that Flixbus support is very good and they responded to my Facebook message quickly and we soon discovered that they didn’t know where their coach went from either. I have to credit them with replying so promptly and politely though.

    This is the dilemma. Flixbus say to wait outside the bus station, which is the bit just above ‘parking’ in the above map. However, I was aware that was a stupid place to stand as coaches weren’t using the bus station, they were either going off near to the Jamaican Shop (very decadent), outside the front, or right down the bottom of the map on that little turning circle.

    Flixbus do have coach tracking, which saved the day here. If I had waited where Flixbus customer support said to wait then I would have missed it, the coach parked up right at the bottom of the above map. That’s actually quite a distance away and it isn’t visible from the bus station, so very easy to miss. To me, this is completely hopeless, it’s like a railway station not having any platform numbers and expecting customers to just work it out.

    The driver was friendly enough, although there were no checks of my documents. For unknown reasons Flixbus give a reserved seat, but it’s visible only on the app and not on the ticket they send. I didn’t much care where I sat, but there was someone in the seat that I had been allocated. I have no idea why Flixbus need to give out seat numbers to those who don’t want them, they’re pretty much entirely ignored by customers and it creates confusion when none was needed. The bus departed seven minutes early, so I assume that I was the only customer being picked up in Częstochowa.

    I don’t know the safety rules in Poland, but there no announcements, no customers wearing seatbelts and the like. Without being rude, the interior of the coach was also quite Hogatharian. We had some customers passed out drunk over seats, some just drunk and some who were standing whilst the coach was in motion and they promptly fell over. It wasn’t a problem for me, but it wasn’t really an ideal set-up and it was clear that the sole driver, who wasn’t wearing anything that might suggest he was the driver, wasn’t going to burden himself by dealing with anything.

    The coach was generally clean, but it was a slightly rickety thing and the seats reclined so far as to be a complete nuisance for the customer behind. That didn’t impact me as the coach was very quiet and I had no-one in front, but it seemed a cheap vehicle and not at all decadent.

    The coach arrived on time and in one piece into Warsaw West. The fare was £10, similar to the train, and I decided to go by coach to see how it compared. The whole Flixbus outfit worries me though, there are what I consider to be customer safety issues that the company isn’t worrying about, let alone the problems that customers have getting any joy after complaining. One customer on a review said that the driver on their service hid an illegal immigrant on the coach into the UK and got caught, with Flixbus doing nothing to get customers to their final destination. The detail provided suggests that it might be true, but if not, there are hundreds of other complaints logged on-line.

    So, that’s it for me, I’m not going to risk another Flixbus service, I don’t think they’re safe enough or have a robust enough procedure to know what is going on. They have now launched in the UK, but I think I’ll stick to National Express and Megabus. It’s probably a better experience for those departing from major termini, as it’ll be clearer where they’re going from and it’d be possible to get a seat. But, I think I’ll stick to th Polish railway network in future.

  • National Express : Hull to London Victoria Coach Station

    National Express : Hull to London Victoria Coach Station

    I left the hotel before 07:00 to get back to London which wasn’t ideal, but a nice sunrise.

    The beginning of the near six hour coach journey, the moderately beautiful Hull Interchange bus and railway station.

    The signage in the bus station was bloody dreadful and it was no surprise there were passengers seeking help from others. It seems to me completely idiotic for this to be the only sign for National Express, which doesn’t even have the correct bus number for the journey I was taking anyway. The overheard screens were displaying incorrect information, just to add to the confusion. If anyone misses the coach, they’d be within their rights to complain to National Express for this in my (rather random) view….

    Having had years of practice at finding the right place to wait for coaches/trains/buses/ferries/planes/etc, I was sitting in the right place for the coach.

    I was able to get my favourite emergency exit row seat. I accept it’s not as exciting as getting the exit row on an aircraft, but it still offers more leg room so I was happy. I was slightly humoured at the elderly couple who were determined to get on first and were edging their luggage closer to the door in the coach station. They then realised that their luggage was setting off the automatic doors so they were getting cold, with the husband then moving it all about again, but carefully blocking anyone else for daring to get in front of them. I’m unsure why they did that, since they sat in a random place midway down the coach, but whatever makes them happy.

    The USB charger on my side didn’t work, but fortunately the coach was never that busy and so there was no-one next to me. The bus stopped at Lincoln and Nottingham and I had expected it to get busy at the latter stop, but the coach wasn’t ever more than half-full.

    I tried to take a photo going over the Humber Bridge, but I don’t think I’ll be entering it into any artistic or photographic competitions.

    And there’s the coach having arrived into London Victoria coach station, around ten minutes ahead of schedule. This was another efficient service and a bargain at £7.60 compared to how much a rail journey would have been. There were no issues en route, other than for what appeared to be a drugged up passenger shouting and swearing down the phone to someone, but all that adds to the excitement for me, so that was handy.

    Anyway, other than for the usual poor signage from National Express, all very efficient and the drivers were polite and helpful.

  • National Express : London Victoria Coach Station to Hull

    National Express : London Victoria Coach Station to Hull

    After the delights of a weekend in London, there was then the thought of the slightly less delightful six hour coach journey to Hull. The waiting area at Victoria Coach Station was packed when I got there, which wasn’t entirely ideal as I noted to myself just how hot it was.

    Fortunately, a seat became available soon enough and that fan at the back (only one, the other was broken) helped slightly. This coach station facility is hopelessly inadequate for the number of passengers, but there’s no obvious way that they can improve the situation. There has been talk about moving it to a new location, but its site near London Victoria is quite handy. That section off the left was once the Megabus customer service desk, but they’ve moved to a slightly bigger bit at the rear of this photo and I note that more Flixbus services are emerging here now. I suspect that the coach market will become quite a competitive one in the years ahead.

    The service before mine was going to Norwich and the driver came over to do a final check to see if there were any more passengers for his coach, but there weren’t. The driver said to a member of customer service staff that “I doubt that anyone here has even heard of Thetford”, but I decided not to get involved with that…

    I was the first to board the National Express Thunderbolt service to Hull, which was stopping off at Nottingham and Lincoln en route.

    The lovely clean coach. Everything seems to be pretty much in order, although the power points weren’t working.

    I got my usual emergency exit row seat, slightly desirable as it has more legroom. The coach was nearly full to Nottingham, but nearly empty after it. The passenger next to me had been to Chelsea Flower Show for the day, spending £85 to get in. I had no idea that there was so much cost to see flowers….. I didn’t envy her getting up at 2am to get the morning service into London, just to go back in the afternoon. She mentioned to me that the driver had run a couple of red lights, but I hadn’t been paying attention (and it wouldn’t matter if I had, there’s a limited amount that can be seen from the back of the coach) and so that might not have been true.

    And a few minutes early, here we are into Hull. The driver was friendly and the service was efficient and very keenly priced, costing me £9 which was entirely reasonable as far as I was concerned. Odd little quirks aside, the National Express service is definitely improving and I like that they’ve scrapped the £1 ticketing charge for those who have signed up to a free account with them. I’d rather get the train as it’s quicker, but in terms of the cost, this was an excellent service.

  • National Express : Bradford to London Victoria Coach Station

    National Express : Bradford to London Victoria Coach Station

    Time to return to London and although I would have preferred to get the train, the National Express fare was only £5 from Bradford into the centre of London, so I went with that for a journey that was estimated to take 5 hours 20 minutes. Above is the bus section of Bradford Interchange and the signage is, if I’m being honest, organised by an idiot. The data sent to Google Maps is wrong on where National Express coaches depart from and the signage is terrible. However, National Express have put on their web-site that their coaches depart from Stands T, U and V, although not on the tickets themselves.

    For those who didn’t search the National Express web-site, here’s the ultra clear signage stuck on a window. Anyway, my muttering about the lack of signage aside, the coach turned up ten minutes early and at Stand T, so I was ready and waiting for it. Until 2019, there was a National Express ticket office at the bus station, but that and the National Express customer service staff have now gone.

    The coach did get much busier, although not until Leeds which is when more customers got on.

    I had the emergency exit seat, with the luxury of having both seats to myself for the entire journey.

    The only real excitement during the journey was when the driver said on the tannoy that the National Express control room had contacted him and said that the company had accidentally left someone at a service station on the M1. There must be a very interesting back story to that which unfortunately we weren’t told, but it meant that we had to stop off Tibshelf Services to pick her up and drop her off in Milton Keynes. It delay the coach, but not badly.

    The driver also said that he intended to miss out the stops of Golders Green and Marble Arch in London so that the coach could arrive on time. He urged anyone who needed to get off at those stops to go and talk to him. There was then a little procession of customers tripping down the aisle of a fast moving coach going to tell the driver that they had planned to get off at those stops. The conclusion of that was that we stopped at Golders Green and Marble Arch…..

    This is really nicely written signage, I liked it.

    As for the coach, it was easy to make my seat area nice and cold, with the seats being clean and well presented. The cleaners hadn’t cleaned the seat trays, so I decided against using those, but the toilet was clean. There were USB connections which worked well, so my phone remained fully charged.

    And safely into Victoria Coach Station in London, only twenty minutes late.

    For the fare charged, this really was excellent value for money, a clean and comfortable coach which arrived sort of on time and with a friendly and engaging driver. All very nice, even though it’s not a train.