National Express Coaches

Advantages: Cheap, nice scenery, friendly bus drivers
Disadvantages: Affected by traffic jams, can be hot and stuffy and very full

...National Express. What can I say? I have a love-hate relationship with our national coach service. Firstly, I use it to commute to work from Nottingham to Leicester every day. It's four times cheaper than the train but obviously a bit slower but for £51 a month, I'm not complaining. If you smile nicely at the bus drivers, they let you on a coach you're not booked for and also tell you jokes on the way (depending on how much you like jokes, this could be a good or a bad thing). I've never met a miserable coach driver yet. They do tend to run a little bit late due to traffic jams and sometimes the toilet smells, sometimes they overbook the coaches and you feel like you're being smuggled illegally into your destination. Sometimes you also wonder why there is a need to stop at every destination humanly possible and this does give...

generalmarshall 24.08.2008 · Read review
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Express around the Nation?

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

...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...

scuba_angel 24.04.2007 (15.04.2007) · Read review
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National, yes. Express, no.

Advantages: wide range of destinations; cheaper than train
Disadvantages: journey times sometimes excessively long

...When you need to get home from university for a weekend and can't get a lift from your parents, or if you're visiting someone on the other side of the country in the holidays, you need a method of transport that's cheap and reliable. After hours of looking through train times and realising that even the shortest journey would cut quite heavily into my student loan, I decided to give National Express a go, hearing that their fares were relatively cheap, and that they travelled to a wide range of destinations. BOOKING: Booking your coach tickets is easy. If you have Internet access, and are willing to submit your credit/debit card details online, then this is probably the easiest option. Tickets booked online are mailed to you free of charge if you book far enough in advance, but if your ticket is for travel soon after the tickets...

emmorticia 06.05.2003 · Read review
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Airport Express

Advantages: The service
Disadvantages: The timetable (at times)

...People who drive automatically assume that travelling by public transport is HORRID. It takes longer, it's probably more expensive, you have to sit with (get spoken at by) people you don't know and, very quickly, don't like, it's inconvenient?it has, in short, nothing to recommend it. Those of us who don't drive are intrinsically more tolerant of all of the above. We have to be. That doesn?t mean that we aren't fair-minded and capable of writing a critical review when we get rubbish service. In this instance it is fair-mindedness that inspires me to write a review about un-rubbish service. Looking up National Express coaches on the site, I discover that they are not exactly flavour of the month. My experience of them has always been pretty good ? with the exception of the one case where I was just going down with the Kathmandu...

hiker 07.03.2009 · Read review
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National Express - Fun Fare bargain

Advantages: Excellent Value for Money
Disadvantages: Longer journey

...Travelling to Manchester recently, and faced with a fare of almost £60 return on the train, I took a friend's advice and had a look at National Express. On approximately thirty services operating to and from London you can get 'Fun fares' that are exclusively available online as e-tickets. The prices are between £1-£10 per journey, thus I travelled to Manchester for the bargain price of £2 each way and there are no other restrictions and you can take the same amount of baggage. The journey time going up to Manchester was about one hour longer than the train leaving at the same time, and it was a further thirty minutes longer on the way home, so I felt that this was an excellent deal and bought my tickets. The coach has a WC on board and on the four and a half hour journey north we stopped for about 40 minutes at a service...

Essexgirl2006 27.05.2006 · Read review
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Take the National Express when...

Advantages: Cost, Gets you where you need to get to, easy to book
Disadvantages: smell, weird staff and coach drivers, seating space

...So the lyrics go... "Take the National Express, when your life's in a mess, it will make you smillleee" Based on my experience, the last thing i do when taking the national express coach journeys is smile. I think the words that comes to mind are cry, scream, wail, shout, stress, you get the idea. What is the National Express i hear you cry?! Well, the national express is a coach company based in Britain. They run many a service from many coach stations across the country. Anywhere you wanna go, is pretty much catered for. Visiting relatives from Birmingham to Devon? Theres a coach. Going up to Leeds music festival from Nottingham? Theres a coach. Travelling back to university from home? Theres a coach. The coachs run 24 hours a day. That is to say, you could travel to your destination early in the morning, mid day, late...

kittycatcookie 16.07.2006 · Read review
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who put the "express" in national express?

Advantages: not sure really...cause it ain't cheap; but the helpline staff were somewhat helpful
Disadvantages: incompetent drivers, endless delays

...; they'd been waiting for us for 90 minutes. On the way back, same story. Coach driver, not Polish, English this time, misses the allocated slot in Calais so we missed the Channel tunnel crossing. Some passengers were heading to Heathrow---they missed their flight. Again the coach driver doesn't know who to contact and disappears to have lunch until the next availbale crossing. Friends back home were busy on the phones again trying to figure out when we would finally reach London. Eventually, instead of arriving to Victoria at 16:20 we arrived at 20:20. We left Italy on Friday 16:45 and arrived in London on Sunday 20:20. And they call it the national EXPRESS. HA HA HA HA!!!...

traveller2009 30.08.2009 · Read review
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National Express get you there quicker!

Advantages: Reliable, Comfortable, Pleasant Staff, Not Always Full, Relaxing
Disadvantages: Smelly Toilet, long connection times on occassion

...Having previously traveled on trains I found the national express much cheaper, more reliable and more comfortable and with fewer stops. The coach drivers help you with your luggage and also help you if transferring coaches. I am now a coach gal and try to avoid the train wherever possible as the stress of missing your stop and getting on the wrong train is an all too familiar situation with me! It is very rare you see me using public transport as I have invested in a solid reliable form of transport in my Ford Fiesta, but as I have a friend down in Sheffield the driving does not exactly inspire me to visit so each occasion I have used the National Express and on the occasion of my first hiccup I cannot fault the service. ~~~Who are National Express~~~ You must of seen the white coaches going up and down the motorways wit...

KELLYLOUJ 09.08.2005 (10.02.2006) · Read review
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Go By Coach, But Die Trying.

Advantages: well, you get there in the end.
Disadvantages: unhelpful staff, no legroom, dingy old depots

...Readers of my other ops may have noticed I don't drive and am a bit of a seasoned rail user. Those of you who've escaped my babble before will still probably have heard news of the recent 'engineering works' on the Birmingham - London rail route (among others). Unfortunately for me, it's essential that I travel that route on a fairly regular basis if I ever want to a) see my family and b) go to University. And since I've just had to go house-hunting (don't ask) in the wake of the trainline upheaval, I decided, like the idiot I am, to use National Express coaches to 'save any messing around'. Big mistake. I decided to book the tickets for me and my mom over the internet on the National Express website, gobycoach.com. Once it loaded, all was well and good, we booked the times we wanted, clhecked the 'collect tickets at station' box...

PrincessGem 28.08.2003 · Read review
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Express Travel

Advantages: punctual, cheap and sometimes entertaining
Disadvantages: can get a little cramped when full

...headings. * Booking * Price * The Coach * The driver * The journey * Punctuality ***BOOKING*** Booking was relatively easy although the office is shared with First Devon and Cornwall Bus Company so it can get very busy at times. The staff are friendly and couldn?t do enough to help but I have found its best to know the exact bus you intend to catch. For example I often go to London via the 501 but they added a 500 service also and this was confusing when trying to deal with a transfer to Luton airport. The staff can also be very helpful when trying to go abroad. A few years ago I had to get to Slovenia for a week long event. The year before I had been taken seriously ill on the plane and had to be treated for DVT. I was very nervous about flying again and saw that National Express operated a Europe service. The staff were very...

leofluffy69 12.08.2007 · Read review
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Review of National express