Newcastle to Edinburgh by bus: Part 1

Thursday 16th February 2023

The train journey along the East Coast Main Line between Newcastle and Edinburgh is always a treat with some wonderful coastal views to savour. Although taking the bus for the 100 mile journey obviously takes much longer it offers equally fantastic scenery including castles and market towns.

It’s been many years since I took the bus from Newcastle to Berwick-upon-Tweed while the journey onward from there to Edinburgh was virgin bus territory for me, so a couple of weeks ago, I was ready and eager for the northbound journey to Scotland’s capital at Newcastle Upon Tyne’s Haymarket bus station.

Arriva runs a comprehensive network of inter-urban routes linking Newcastle with the Northumberland hinterland north of the city.

All numbered in an X series they were part of the MAX and Sapphire initiative in the days when Arriva saw the benefits of route branding. Now they’re a complete dog’s breakfast of mixed branding with an endemic of wrong buses on the wrong routes which will no doubt continue until the company’s all over light blue standard livery reigns supreme.

Longest of these bus routes are the X15 and X18 which both link Newcastle and Berwick-upon-Tweed with the latter taking the crown of being by far the longest with a journey time of just under four hours while the former takes a more spritely 2 hours and 22 minutes.

That’s because the X18 follows a more leisurely trajectory getting much closer to the Northumberland coast with its landmark castles while the X15 takes a more direct path.

The former was at one time marketed with an “Explore Coast & Castles” message on the sides of buses.

I saw one (but inevitably not on the X18) but I guess this idea has also been dropped too, although most of the bus stops along much of the route north of Morpeth carry this branding.

These bus stops look good but sadly quite a few plates are missing ….

… and there are a few timetable cases which need updating as they’re not giving a very helpful message if passengers are to be won back.

I found the same “don’t give a damn” attitude on Arriva’s website where there’s no map to explain which route goes where – how is a first timer supposed to know? – and the pdf timetable presentation is completely misleading showing through journeys as four separate entries across eight columns.

Obviously this reflects the split registrations for this long service but how is a passenger supposed to know that?

Bearing in mind the common sections over which both the X15 and X18 operate you’d think a joint timetable would be helpful too. I was initially fooled into thinking there were only three journeys to and from Berwick-upon-Tweed but there’s another seven on route X15.

I travelled on the 10:08 departure on route X18 from Newcastle’s Haymarket bus station. Arriva’s Travel Shop here has long been closed and now just provides facilities for drivers as well as a nostalgic reminder of the days when face coverings were a thing.

Nexus provide departure information including a helpful poster advising which bay to use for your destination with the X15 and X18 using bay Q which sadly had lost all its seating making for an uncomfortable wait. Still, I’d be sitting down for four hours on the bus, so standing to wait for it wasn’t too much of a hardship. Not so good for those unsteady on their feet.

The bus arrived into the bus station from its previous journey a little late at 10:03 with a good number alighting while 30 of us waiting got on board smartly and we left just a minute late at 10:09.

The X18 is a route in four quarters with the busy section to Morpeth coming first taking 40 minutes. There used to be a coordinated 15 minute frequency with routes X14, X15 and X16 but now, as far as I can tell, the X16 is no more so there’s a 15-15-30 frequency but as there’s no consolidated timetable I’m not absolutely sure. We picked up five more passengers as we passed through Gosforth and the Regent Centre Metro station. No one alighted until the outskirts of Morpeth.

At the bus station in Morpeth around 30 passengers alighted making only five travelling beyond. The timetable includes a five minute layover here.

The next section of route to Alnwick takes 75 minutes and serves the communities of Pegswood, Longhirst, Widdrington, Acklington, Bromhill, Amble, Warkwotth and Alnmouth picking up and/or dropping off ones and twos in each with Amble being the most popular losing four and gaining seven.

The X18 does a longish dog leg westward to serve Alnwick.

I timed it and it took half an hour from Lesbury to get to Alnwick and back again to Lesbury.

But it was worth doing as, aside from myself, all the other passengers alighted – and even I got off for a quick toilet stop (there’s another five minute layover here) while drivers changed over – and six new passengers got on board before we left with two more at the next stop.

Alnwick is a busy interchange every hour with buses on both the X15 and X18 in both directions all due at the same time.

And there’s the customary Arriva closed Travel Shop but now with driver facilities.

We headed back to Lesbury to continue north along the coast and where the views and scenery become very attractive heading towards Craster, Seahouses and Bamburgh and its renowned castle.

Craster is another dog leg on the route, this one taking around 20 minutes and enabled us to drop two passengers off and pick one up.

The bus uses a ‘reverse-in’ bus stop to turn round in Craster but there was a car parked in the way when we arrived and the motorist reversed out of the way in a very cackhanded way.

It’s two hours between Alnwick and Berwick with Seahouses marking the exact half way point between the two as well as the third quarter of our journey and where the destination blind can finally be set with a display showing Berwick.

From here to Berwick is by far the quietest section with just five passengers boarding – and five alighting. Most alighted in the commercial retail centre of Berwick before the bus continued up the hill to terminate at the railway station where it was just me left on board.

It’s a lovely route to ride if you’ve ever got four hours to spare in Northumberland. You’ll enjoy glimpses of the coastline as well as plenty of castles. The route has so much potential, but it needs proper marketing which sadly seems to be woefully lacking.

Here are a few photographs from the journey with apologies for the dirty windscreen impacting the quality on some of them.

I decided to pause my journey to Edinburgh in Berwick so I could travel on one of Britain’s quirkiest bus routes – the 477 to Holy Island which only runs on Wednesdays and Saturdays and then only when the tide is out, as it crosses a tidal causeway to reach the island. I’ll tell you more about that and the second instalment of my journey on to Edinburgh in Part 2 in a future blog sometime soon.

Roger French

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