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Just how far can you travel by bus from London in 24 hours?

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Re: Just how far can you travel by bus from London in 24 hours?

#121

Post by Symbiote »

bogomipz wrote: post #84
laumars wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Megabus will take you from London Victoria to Prague in 19hrs https://bustickets.distribusion.com/connections/results?depa...

Interesting that the Prague journey is 7 hours less than Berlin which is closer. Is this just because the number of stops is greater on the Berlin route or something else?

It could be that Berlin is the "end" of a trip around Germany, but Prague is the beginning of a trip to Czechia/Slovakia/Hungary/wherever-it-ends-up.

I had a friend who took the bus from London to Poland after each term at university. It was about 20 hours to the first stop in Poland, then another 12 or so going around Poland until it got to his city. (This was decades ago.)

Re: Just how far can you travel by bus from London in 24 hours?

#122

Post by mintplant »

School-Cotton wrote: post #42
thriftwy wrote: post #21

In Russia it was at some point possible to go from St. Petersburg (Atlantic coast) to Vladivostok (Pacific coast) using only regional trains ('electrichkas'). With some skill, paying for the ride could be avoided entirely, but it would take ~28 days. Whereas a proper sleeper train does that in "just" 7 days.

That’s impressive. AFAIK in the US, the only two major cities you can get between on regional trains (i.e., without using the national train operator Amtrak) is New York and Philadelphia (New Jersey Transit from NY to Trenton, then SEPTA from Trenton to Philly). NYC and Philly are so close that they could almost be considered the same metropolitan area, so it’s not very impressive! Edit: also Baltimore and Washington…

Caltrain from San Jose to San Francisco? Or does that not count?

Re: Just how far can you travel by bus from London in 24 hours?

#123

Post by Symbiote »

JackFr wrote: post #53
IAmEveryone wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Europe, trains are far more comfortable, usually faster, and with better networks in most places. They are more expensive, but if you are in your early 20s (up to 25 or 27) the Interrail ticket is an all-summer (or several weeks, as you chose) pass to travel as much as you want, over most of Europe.

> In Europe, trains are far more comfortable, usually faster, and with better networks in most places. Hah! That’s what I thought until I wanted to go to Liechtenstein. You would think Vaduz as capital would have a rail station, but I had to take a bus.

With a population of only about 5,000, and with mountains around, it's not especially surprising.

The neighbouring settlement, Schaan, is larger, has all the industry, and has the railway and two stations.

Re: Just how far can you travel by bus from London in 24 hours?

#124

Post by Symbiote »

Epenthesis wrote: post #99
louthy wrote: post #48

I felt ‘seen’ as I went through the tweets… - Starts is London, where I lived for 18 years. - Goes through Kibworth Beauchamp which is about a mile from where I live now (Beauchamp is pronounced like ‘Beecham’ btw) - Then to Derby, where I was born and grew up - Then through Belper, where my first job was Felt slightly surreal!

Is Derby pronounced with the first syllable rhyming with "car" or "her" (/dɑ:bi/ or /dɜ:bi/)?

Also being familiar with the East Midlands, I would have expected the pronunciation enquiry to be for Loughborough (/lʌfbərə/).

Re: Just how far can you travel by bus from London in 24 hours?

#125

Post by Symbiote »

wincy wrote: post #85
reedf1 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arbitrary in the exact same sense as seeing how far you can go in any form of transport?

I think the confusion arises because in the US we call anything that is a bus that takes you somewhere else “traveling by bus” which apparently long haul trips are called traveling by coach in the UK. So as an American my first thought was “heck I could probably get to LA from Kansas on a 24 hour bus trip” and to see this person traveled only a few hundred KM was confusing until that was clarified for me. I thought m…

Europe includes a lot more water than the USA (North Sea, Baltic Sea, half the Mediterranean Sea), which is obviously a barrier to a land journey, and makes a direct comparison difficult.

But otherwise, something like Lisbon to Moscow is very similar to the distance of LA to NYC.

Google's driving directions for these are 45 and 41 hours, respectively.

Re: Just how far can you travel by bus from London in 24 hours?

#126

Post by megameter »

version_five wrote: post #47

There is something very romantic about this - obviously there are other ways to make the trips, but somehow is feels more free and a bit furtive, like if you had to sneak out of town for some reason it's a good thing to know. I'm in Canada and I can't think of any meaningful distance you could cover in this way. Maybe Toronto-Barrie. Our cities are all so far apart, they are mostly isolated hubs and spokes. Curious i…

The SF Bay Area allows this possiblity, though it would be most feasible by including local rail; a walk-on north-south trip between Santa Rosa and Monterey could be done by going SMART->ferry->BART->Caltrain->Hwy 17 Express->SC Metro bus. If you were very patient there are bus routes that would cover the SF-Peninsula leg.

I would have to check to see if Sacramento is possible without resorting to rail or coach.

Edit: actually, going to Big Sur looks to be possible with the MSC bus system. It's been a while since I rode in that region and Monterey isn't part of the SC Metro system anymore. From Big Sur I could imagine it's possible to get even further down the coast.

Re: Just how far can you travel by bus from London in 24 hours?

#127

Post by lostlogin »

Symbiote wrote: post #120
lostlogin wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> long-distance bus service The National Express! I was too poor to afford the train so would use the busses. Often the bus was faster than the trains for London - Edinburgh, usually for weather related outages. The train is way nicer.

The train (London King's Cross to Edinburgh) is about 4½ hours, but the fastest National Express coach is over 9 hours. You were incredibly unlucky if the time you took the train had a 5 hour delay.

It wasn’t once it was delayed, it was several times. ‘Leaves on the track’ and ‘flooding’ were the common issues.

This was a few years ago though, so maybe things are better now?

Re: Just how far can you travel by bus from London in 24 hours?

#128

Post by zimpenfish »

chrisseaton wrote: post #35
zimpenfish wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You know coaches can go straight through the Channel Tunnel? They board a special train. a) That's a coach, not a bus, and b) that's using a train to go through the tunnel and not strictly (by my definition at least) on a bus (or coach.)

> That's a coach, not a bus You said: > or coach

My mistake, I shouldn't have included a parenthetical coach in a discussion which was about buses.

Re: Just how far can you travel by bus from London in 24 hours?

#129

Post by signal11 »

Symbiote wrote: post #119
signal11 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s actually a pretty good explanation. My Concise Oxford dictionary app has this: coach(1) /kəʊtʃ / ▸ n. 1 Brit. a comfortably equipped single-decker bus used for longer journeys. 2 a railway carriage. 3 (also coach class) N. Amer. economy-class seating in an aircraft or train. 4 a closed horse-drawn carriage. ▸ v. travel or convey by coach. – DERIVATIVES coachload n. – ORIGIN C16: from Fr. coche, from Hungarian…

Single-decker seems unnecessarily restrictive. This certainly counts as a coach in the UK: https://greysofely.co.uk/85-seat-luxury-double-decker -- it's the kind of thing you see bands use when touring.

You’re right. Your post inspired me to look up oed.com, which is the “full” OED and available through many British public libraries.

The quality of that definition seems to be rather terse and restrictive as well. It’s got a lot of references to obscure and historic meanings of “coach”, but sense (e) is quite simply “a single-decker bus” with some references.

And even good old Megabus (a budget coach company) has double-decker coaches[1].

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=megabus+double+decker&prmd=i...

Re: Just how far can you travel by bus from London in 24 hours?

#130

Post by School-Cotton »

mintplant wrote: post #122
School-Cotton wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s impressive. AFAIK in the US, the only two major cities you can get between on regional trains (i.e., without using the national train operator Amtrak) is New York and Philadelphia (New Jersey Transit from NY to Trenton, then SEPTA from Trenton to Philly). NYC and Philly are so close that they could almost be considered the same metropolitan area, so it’s not very impressive! Edit: also Baltimore and Washington…

Caltrain from San Jose to San Francisco? Or does that not count?

Maybe, but I suppose I don’t really consider SJ its own major city independent of the SF metro area. Which is totally subjective, of course.
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