Getting the bus is often a bit of a chore, something you do purely to get about. You don’t tend to properly take in what’s going on beyond the window, but sometimes a journey can be just as exciting as a destination. The Telegraph knows this, and so the newspaper has curated a list of Britain’s most gorgeous bus routes.
All of these are regular old buses that people take to work, to get into town, to get home; you get the gist. The point is that they aren’t tourist coaches, nor are they designed for maximised views – it’s just luck that they happen to pass by some stunning scenery. This also means that they’re all pretty affordable if you fancy a cheap UK based adventure.
The Telegraph’s choices are in no particular order, but each route has its own standout characteristic. For instance, the 477 from Berwick-Upon-Tweed to the Holy Island, Lindisfarne, is ‘dependent on the tides’, because at high tide the road is flooded over. This leads to what the Telegraph describes as a ‘stupendously complicated timetable’. Still, this half hour journey is full of views of the sea and countryside – as long as you can manage to catch the bus before it’s too late.
The northernmost bus to make the list is the post bus, the W17, from Lochboisdale pier on South Uist, to the Isle of Benbecula, which actually crosses a bridge to end up on a different Hebridean island than the one it began on. This is a very remote service, but it does boast some unparalleled Highland scenery, and if you ask nicely it will even stop at Benbecula airport for you.
Right at the other end of the country another of the most scenic bus routes can be found between Devon and Plymouth. The number 3 is described by the Telegraph’s Andrew Gilligan as running ‘along what must be the narrowest A-road in England, within inches of house walls and medieval bay-windows’. Sounds pretty unique.
The 599 through Bowness and Windermere to Grasmere in the Lake District also gets a mention for its meandering route around the lakes, as does Birmingham’s number 11, which ‘stops at Britain’s own Hobbiton’. No Northern Irish buses make the cut, but Wales does get a look in thanks to the ‘international’ number 740, which goes from Knighton, in Wales, to Ludlow, in England.
The Telegraph’s top 10 most beautiful bus routes in the UK
- Berwick-upon-Tweed to Holy Island – Number 477
- Tavistock to Dawlish – Number 112
- The Northern Dalesman across the Yorkshire Dales National Park – Number 830
- Birmingham, Outer Circle – Number 11
- Newcastle to Northumberland Coast – X18
- Lochboisdale pier, South Uist, to Isle of Benbecula – the post bus
- Bowness and Windermere to Grasmere – Lakeside 599
- Dartmouth to Plymouth – Number 3
- Knighton to Ludlow – Number 740
- Cambridgeshire Guided Busway
You can have a read of what the Telegraph has to say about each of these journeys here.
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