National express > Reviews > Express around the Nation?

Author's product rating:   

Quality of Rooms	Average
Customer service	very good
Frequency of bus / buses	Very frequent
Value for money	Good
Reliability	Good

Advantages:	cheaper than flying/trains at short notice
Disadvantages:	much slower than most other transport options

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

So after my happy experience travelling the other weekend I'm off on my travels again, this time risking a foray in to the world which my parents inhabit. So as Bolton has no airport, Lydd has no train station but both have bus stops it seems logical that I would consider getting the coach to Bolton. This is as far as I know the only national coach service in the UK (although in Scotland it is run under the City Link name) and is a member of the european Eurolines coach network.

I booked my travel using the nationalexpress.com website the site is mildly confusing if you don't want to use one of the their funfare or travel from one of their more popular stops. A full list of their stops is given if you click on the red text below the drop down boxes 'Cant find your destination' which gives you the option of typing your departure and destination locations or clicking to see a list of locations the sevices stop at and selecting the best one for you.

Following this page is the section where you are able to choose your travel times, generally it will give you all the options after the time you selected unless travelling on particularly popular routes where there maybe more than the four options I was shown.

After selecting your time you are asked if you are travelling with any travel pass, once this is done you click through to the payment section, here as with pretty much all sites you have to log in. Again I have been using the site awhile so am uncertain about the details they require but it is as a minimum name, address, email address and age. Obviously they need your address to post you your tickets (unless you choose one of the other three options).

So now you also have to choose what kind of ticket you want, they will post you a ticket if you are booking far enough in advance, or the online ticket they email you a reference and you print it off, or you can choose to collect you tickets at a station-main stations only eg london victoria or manchester chorlton st are the 2 ive used or finally you can get it as an M-ticket, this pretty much the same as the emailled version but its sent to your phone as a text message, and you show this to the driver/ticket collector as you board the same way you would any other type. Although the M-tickets will cost you 50p extra and you need to not delete the message from your phone inbox for obvious reasons!

Following this is the you reach the bit where you actually hand over the cash (or entre your debit/credit card details for them to raid your bank for the required amount).

After this you will receive an email with the ticket reference and booking confirmation no matter what type of ticket you have selected. The M-ticket i recieved minutes after the confirmation email.

So the journey itself, the first leg Hythe to London was on a pleasant modern coach. I had plenty of leg room and a window seat with a nice foreign student for a seat companion - he said hi then went to sleep no problems! The second much longer leg was from London to Bolton. The coach was slightly older and I felt alittle more cramped in my seat but not uncomfortably so. Unfortunatly my seat companion this time wasnt as nice, it was an older man who spoke no english stared at my chest throughout the journey and smelled bad. Not just BO I must add, whenever he breathed out his breath was turning my stomach. If there was the chance i would have changed seats but all were filled.

The coach stop at Hythe isnt easy to find from the information on the website, but the stop itself is on the one way sytem and goes have the National Express logo on the stop sign.
Victoria in London looks run down and is very busy. For those that dont know you arrive at one side of the road and depart from the other- confusing if you didnt know as I didnt took a little while to work it out.
Bolton the National Express stop on the main road next to the Great Moor St bus station a short walk from the train station so it is easy to get around from there.

The trip from London to Bolton was on the service that called at Manchester Airport but as that is popular it was split in to two coach loads, one terminating at the airport and one doing all the other stops after the airport. But I dont know if this is a regular thing on the services.

All in all the service was punctual, and cheap which was all that was required, it doesnt advertise as all singing all dancing after all you are on a bus but does exactly what it says it will. And best of all was seeing the lovely face of my man as I got off away from the odd smelly thing I was sat next to all the way.