Scotrail314209
Established Member
I decided to start writing up my trips again, it was fun and I randomly stopped for some reason.
Let's begin with an interesting one:
The absolute ordeal known as Megabus.
I enjoy coach travel a lot, but my Megabus experience on Wednesday night was almost enough to put me off for life.
Last time I went down to London, which was October 2020. I took the Megabus both ways and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. It was quiet, quick and spacious.
The first alarm signals were raised when I saw a bulletin on the Megabus website, informing people that they should now expect people next to them
. In line with the restrictions, this was only between stops in England. The route in question was the M11 service from Glasgow to London, with two stops at Manchester Corporation Street and Manchester Airport.
All was generally decent until I got to Buchanan Bus Station in Glasgow. The coach was scheduled to depart at 22:45, "was" being the keyword here.
22:30: No sign of the coach, 22:35, 22:40 and still no sign. Then at 22:44 the big blue Plaxton Panorama rolled in from the depot, fashionably late. I thought to myself that there was probably congestion and that we'll get away quickly. That didn't happen.
The drivers decided to spend a few minutes having a chat to the bus station marshallers before eventually opening the doors and hold and letting us board. By the time the crowd of about 25 got their luggage on, we were already around 10 minutes late. We eventually left at 23:00, 15 minutes late. That's not much of a delay and I was optimistic that we would make it up.
I settled in and got through a few episodes of Ugly Betty, and it was a relatively uneventful journey until Manchester.
Normally, the M11 comes straight in off the M61 and through Salford. This time part of the Motorway was shut, resulting in a long diversion around the Southern part of the M60 in Manchester. We went towards the airport before coming off and turning onto the road we would be going down towards our stop at Manchester Airport. We then turned back around and went the opposite direction, all this adding on about 25 minutes to our overall journey time. A load of about 20 got on at Manchester Corporation Street, which took quite a while. We were then about 35 minutes late.
Megabus had removed seats during the pandemic, but in this case all the seats were now back in place, resulting in it being very crammed. To make it worse, the coach was about 90% full with the majority of seating occupied. The air conditioning was doing a horrific job at keeping things cool as the temperature got warmer as we went further south, as well as the heat from all of the people on the upper deck. I dodged a bullet and had nobody next to me, phew.
I managed to get about 2 hours worth of sleep, to wake up and find that it was broad daylight and that we were cruising down the M40 near Oxford. After about another hour, we hit the morning traffic coming into London. This added about an extra 40 minutes onto our journey time, resulting in us eventually arriving into Victoria about 1hr 15 minutes late.
After a while, I was beginning to get a bit desperate for fresh air since Megabus do not do comfort stops, as well as being on the coach for longer than I anticipated.
It sounds minor, but it was enough to put me off travelling on the M11 for the forseeable. At the time of writing this, I would be on the Northbound service, instead I opted for the train home. Review on that soon.
Let's begin with an interesting one:
The absolute ordeal known as Megabus.
I enjoy coach travel a lot, but my Megabus experience on Wednesday night was almost enough to put me off for life.
Last time I went down to London, which was October 2020. I took the Megabus both ways and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. It was quiet, quick and spacious.
The first alarm signals were raised when I saw a bulletin on the Megabus website, informing people that they should now expect people next to them
. In line with the restrictions, this was only between stops in England. The route in question was the M11 service from Glasgow to London, with two stops at Manchester Corporation Street and Manchester Airport.All was generally decent until I got to Buchanan Bus Station in Glasgow. The coach was scheduled to depart at 22:45, "was" being the keyword here.
22:30: No sign of the coach, 22:35, 22:40 and still no sign. Then at 22:44 the big blue Plaxton Panorama rolled in from the depot, fashionably late. I thought to myself that there was probably congestion and that we'll get away quickly. That didn't happen.
The drivers decided to spend a few minutes having a chat to the bus station marshallers before eventually opening the doors and hold and letting us board. By the time the crowd of about 25 got their luggage on, we were already around 10 minutes late. We eventually left at 23:00, 15 minutes late. That's not much of a delay and I was optimistic that we would make it up.
I settled in and got through a few episodes of Ugly Betty, and it was a relatively uneventful journey until Manchester.
Normally, the M11 comes straight in off the M61 and through Salford. This time part of the Motorway was shut, resulting in a long diversion around the Southern part of the M60 in Manchester. We went towards the airport before coming off and turning onto the road we would be going down towards our stop at Manchester Airport. We then turned back around and went the opposite direction, all this adding on about 25 minutes to our overall journey time. A load of about 20 got on at Manchester Corporation Street, which took quite a while. We were then about 35 minutes late.
Megabus had removed seats during the pandemic, but in this case all the seats were now back in place, resulting in it being very crammed. To make it worse, the coach was about 90% full with the majority of seating occupied. The air conditioning was doing a horrific job at keeping things cool as the temperature got warmer as we went further south, as well as the heat from all of the people on the upper deck. I dodged a bullet and had nobody next to me, phew.
I managed to get about 2 hours worth of sleep, to wake up and find that it was broad daylight and that we were cruising down the M40 near Oxford. After about another hour, we hit the morning traffic coming into London. This added about an extra 40 minutes onto our journey time, resulting in us eventually arriving into Victoria about 1hr 15 minutes late.
After a while, I was beginning to get a bit desperate for fresh air since Megabus do not do comfort stops, as well as being on the coach for longer than I anticipated.
It sounds minor, but it was enough to put me off travelling on the M11 for the forseeable. At the time of writing this, I would be on the Northbound service, instead I opted for the train home. Review on that soon.
