Great Western Coffee Shop

The thought came to me on reading another thread.

1. What is the longest journey you have made on a bus because a train was not running?

2. What is the longest diverted rail journey you have made to avoid going on a bus?

Let me give you a starter ....

1. Wick to Inverness by bus - on Wednesday this week

2. Newport to Swansea, change at Craven Arms by train to avoid a bus from Cardiff

Not me personally, but two years ago, during one of the festivals at Newquay, GWR ran some coaches from Newquay to Plymouth/Newton Abbot and Exeter as cover for overcrowded rail services on the branch.

1. The last many Sundays on (guess the line)  :D
2. Gloucester to Oxford.. change at  Birmingham.

1 - Kalmar to Alvesta in Sweden (about 80 miles) in 2007.

It happens overseas too!

Have done Plymouth to Truro, as a crew member on a 2330 replacement to keep my mate company who was driving the bus. The crew seats are so uncomfortable!
With the double back from Bodmin Parkway to the Lostwithiel road, and into Par its around 70 miles each way.

As a passenger I've done Plymouth to Tivvy Parkway. That's got to be 50-60 miles I'd think.

Tiverton Parkway to Plymouth in the early days of privatisation.

On a Southern National Bristol VR decker.

Inverness to Edinburgh due to the HST set on the Highland Chieftain failing at Inverness.

Though I confess to cheating as I bailed out at Pitlochry to get the next train as I hate buses. I even tried to bribe the coach driver with £20 to stop the bus at Pitlochry as he wasn’t stopping. He saw a layby and duly dropped me off and I walk into the town; no money changed hands.

Lesson learned that I will never get the provided bus to replace a cancelled long distance train and do what a lot of others did that day and wait for the next train and make arrangements to change my ticket.

When I got to Edinburgh, customer services were great in reissuing me with a new ticket to get to Kings Cross and then my onward journey between Paddington and Bath.

I've done that one in reverse! (in the Plymouth - Tiverton sense, not travelling backwards down the M5!)  :)

Often, people who get travel sickness feel that the train doesn’t actually make them feel or be sick, where as a coach would. I know a family of 5 who bought a family and friends railcard last summer as they rarely felt travel sick on their way to their holidays/ days out.

I've never suffered from train sickness. Buses and coaches however are much more three dimensionally bumpy and can induce in me what NASA euphemistically refers to as 'stomach awareness '.

Longest bustitution: Exeter to Tiverton Parkway, years back nursing a slightly sore head.

Köln - Bruxelles (130 miles aka 209 km). Don't get me started about the incompetence of DB.

Yes, I've done that too, in the other direction.  There was a Belgian rail strike.  I was going to Aachen - the bus stopped at a service station outside Aachen (which was no good to me), so I ended up going into Koln and getting a train back!

In the UK, the longest for me is Plymouth to Bristol, a few years ago now.

How about Exeter to Great Yarmouth - with a change at Victoria Coach Station - due to an NUR national rail strike around 1980.

And there was me thinking it was a thread about Dame Barbara, or for those of a certain age, Jayne Mansfield ! :o

I wonder if you could do a journey from Ogle in Northumberland to Busta (off the A970) in Shetland without the Thought Police getting after you !

Pamela Anderson !!!!

Newcastle to Edinburgh which is about 120 miles. I was travelling on to Stirling but apparently dumping us in Edinburgh late at night was seen as sufficient. The train's final destination was Inverness and there was a coach laid on but to save time skipped all the stops before Kingussie.

Are you following me around as a sort of reverse doppelganger? Our Köln - Bruxelles journey was also due to a Belgian rail strike, in 2014, which DB should have told us about. Ended up with a night in Bruxelles.

But I have also done Bristol - Plymouth by bus.

For diversions, I've done Glasgow - Birmingham via Newcastle to avoid a coach to Carlisle, provided because the wires were down over Beattock.

Due to financial circumstances of my parents in 1953 the family, 2 Adults and 3 Children (1 Under 3) travelled Bristol to Doncaster by bus/coach and return for less than the cost of a single adult rail ticket between the two. Bristol to Cheltenham on Black and White Motorways then by luck, Cheltenham to Doncaster on a vehicle from the operator Yorkshire Woollen Mills. By luck because the family had already transferred to a Yorkshire Traction vehicle at Cheltenham when dad noticed the Yorkshire Woollen Mills vehicle and enquired of the driver who was going through to Doncaster whereas had we stayed on the Yorkshire Traction vehicle we would have had to change again at Sheffield, this was in the days when the national coach network went under the name of Associated Motorways. That was a hell of a journey, no motorways then and about 8 stops en-route. Took from 08:30 am arriving in Doncaster at 6:00 pm. We had the return journey to make two weeks later.

When I was a student commuting backwards and forwards to Worcester Training College by coach in the early 70s,one of the features of the trip was the 2.30 departure of ALL the coaches from Cheltenham coach station. As they all revved up in turn, the blue cloud of exhaust fumes was enough to make any potential GCHQ employees think World war 3 had begun !. I dread to think what sort of nasties we were breathing in, back in those days!

Not a bustitution but I did have a taxi provided from Shrewsbury to Pwllheli following a missed connection. (Guard gave "right way" without authority from station dispatcher) Got in 45 minutes before the train

Wise under most circumstances.   There's an issue with the rail companies just saying "sorry - wait for the next train" if it's over an hour away in that the public think they (rail companies) are not looking out for the passengers - but sometimes the sourcing and running of alternative transport via a slower route means the next train will overtake it, or passengers will have the (and this is personal) discomfort of a bus only to get to final destination a few minutes ahead of the next train.