L is for Lynx

Saturday 3rd June 2023

It’s only been operating in north west Norfolk for eight years but its owner directors have a wealth of bus industry experience, making Lynx one of Britain’s top quality independently owned bus companies and always a pleasure to travel with.

The company is run by Julian Patterson who, together with Andy Warnes, are the main owner/directors of Lynx and with Steve Challis also established Konnectbus back in 1999 before selling it to the Go-Ahead Group in 2010. Julian’s a veteran of Eastern Counties and knows this part of Norfolk like the back of his hand so when he left Go-Ahead it came as no surprise to hear he was working once again in his own company having taken the opportunity when the former Norfolk Green operation lost its way under Stagecoach ownership, to exploit a gap in the market between Kings Lynn and Hunstanton. That’s where Lynx began operating in January 2015 having also picked up a school contract earlier that month in Downham Market.

More tendered routes followed in 2017 but it was Stagecoach’s withdrawal from the former Norfolk Green base in Kings Lynn in 2018 that saw Lynx really come into its own, as Julian knew exactly which routes to take over including that part of the well established Coasthopper service west of Wells-next-the-Sea.

A busy bus in Wells-net-the-sea in May 2018 on the Coasthopper route Stagecoach gave up earlier that year.

The newly branded Coastliner route was extended hourly inland to Fakenham and linked to one of the four buses an hour between Hunstanton and Kings Lynn to create a Fakenham – Wells-next-the-Sea – Hunstanton – Kings Lynn service, numbered 36. This takes the quickest route between the latter two towns whereas two buses per hour (numbered 34) serve a different part of Hunstanton and the Queen Elizabeth Hospital on the outskirts of Kings Lynn while the fourth bus per hour (numbered 35) operates via Sandringham. It’s a very neat timetable and a very busy and well used route.

A bus on route 35 at the Visitor Centre on the Sandringham Estate.

And it’s all the better for having double decks on many of the journeys on route 36, and very impressive buses they are too. Lynx has typically purchased second hand single deck buses from operators such as TrentBarton and Transdev (it’s got 24 Optare Tempos in the fleet) but in 2021 it bought two brand new Alexander Dennis Enviro400 MMC double decks which were delivered wearing smart route branding for the 36.

These have been followed by three more (with two more due at the end of this month) enabling the 36 to be fully operated by double decks with one spare.

Lynx’s fleet of 35 also includes five DAF Wright Gemini bodied double decks acquired from Reading Buses (see above) and three of these have yet to receive the smart Lynx livery and branding (see below).

Two other former Reading Buses double decks in the fleet are ADL Enviro400s which had been used on Green Line routes 702 and 703. One of these has already been refurbished and painted into Lynx livery and the other has just been completed …

…. and looks magnificent outside and inside.

As you’d expect from a quality bus operator run by a passionate and dedicated team, there’s a printed timetable book containing a lovely clear coloured network map, full timetables, ticket details and places of interest to visit.

And of course these are not only available in the Travel and Visitor Information outlet in Kings Lynn bus station…

… but on every bus too.

The company’s website has all this information clearly laid out too, together with vehicle tracking and news and service updates which are all pertinent rather than the out of date items you usually find on some much better resourced Group companies.

There’s also an easy to use app containing all this information as well as the company’s extensive range of tickets including day, weekly, 10-trip and monthly passes for Kings Lynn, a similar range (except not the 10-trip) on all routes but excluding the 36 between Hunstanton and Wells-next-the-Sea and another range including a 3-day version across all services as well as all Sanders Coaches’ routes in north and north east Norfolk – which is quite a bargain for £12 for a day, or £25 for 3-days and I am sure is popular with tourists. Tickets can be purchased for adults, aged 5-19 and a group of up to five travelling together with two over 19.

Route 49 in Fakenham

In addition to routes 34/35/36 heading north from Kings Lynn, the company operates hourly routes east to Fakenham (49), south to Downham Market (37) and two hourly westwards to Wisbech (46).

Journeys on the 37 continue south to Ten Mile Bank or Southbery.

A Kings Lynn local route running every 20 minutes is the 42 to Fairstead …

… and hourly route 48 runs to Grimston providing a half hourly frequency with the 49 as far as Gayton.

Tendered routes include the 33 between KIngs Lynn and Hunstanton via Great Bircham and Docking (four journeys – and recently picked up from the community bus operator GoToTown) …

A former Konnectbus Tempo comes back to its original owners on new tendered route 33 for Lynx.

… and the 54 to Walpole St Peter and Walpole St Andrew (five journeys).

Aside from the Covid years I’ve visited Kings Lynn to travel with Lynx each year its been in operation and have always come away highly impressed with the consistently high quality of service provided – with great drivers, smart and clean buses, excellent timekeeping and an easy to understand network well marketed with a nod back to National Bus Company days with posters on the panel behind the driver.

Most times during these visits I’ve met up with Julian for a catch up and it’s always interesting to hear his thoughts about the industry especially coming from someone who is so hands-on running his company – he oversees the run out every morning and knows everything about each bus working you could possibly want to know.

It was interesting to hear why he wasn’t participating in the £2 fare initiative, nor did he take any Bus Recovery Grant, preferring to run the company without ceding any control over what he knows is best for the market he’s serving. And it’s no surprise he does it extremely well.

I’ve travelled on the 34/35/36 routes many times so on my most recent visit one day last month I took the opportunity to take a lunch time journey on tendered route 54 out to the Walpole villages. Julian warned me I’d stick out as a stranger among the regulars and that was certainly the case as I followed Audrey on board …

… and very soon the five passengers on board were all chatting away. Coincidentally the driver had worked at Brighton & Hove in the 1990s (small world) so it turned out to be a very friendly trip and through some very pleasant north west Norfolk countryside and villages as well as using a section of bus only road on the western side of Kings Lynn.

I also took a ride on the 37 south to Downham Market which turned out to be a very busy journey with over 20 on board.

Julian tells me after a lot of uncertainty the local authority has now decided to retain the small bus station in Hunstanton which was under threat of development into houses which is certainly good news and I am sure will be appreciated by passengers.

Kings Lynn is blessed with a very nice bus station …

… and although it’s a little bit open to the elements, it works from a practical point of view with most stands under cover and sufficient layover spaces for buses out of service as well as having the very useful Travel and Visitor Information office and toilets which are always clean and well looked after. As well as GoToTown – the community bus company which runs most of the town routes, Stagecoach use the bus station for its route 505 to Spalding and First Eastern Counties’ Excel branded route from Peterborough to Norwich passes through.

If you want an example of bus industry best practice, then look no further than Lynx. It really is an exemplar of how to do it. It’s success, as was Ben Colson’s Norfolk Green, comes where First Bus and Stagecoach both failed. There’s a moral there.

Roger French

Previous AtoZ blogs: Avanti West Coast, Blackpool Transport, Chiltern Railways, Delaine Buses, Ensignbus, Faresaver, Grand Central, Hull Trains, Ipswich Buses, JMB Travel, Kirkby Lonsdale Coach Hire.

Blogging timetable: 06:00 TThS with the occasional Summer Su including tomorrow.

27 thoughts on “L is for Lynx”

  1. Thanks for all the bus/rail updates ….lots of useful info. Will try Lynx when in the area next. Nice to see an locally based independent providing a much loved service to the local community….remember travelling on Norfolk Green a few years back doing exactly that, now sadly missed. But now Lynx has taken up the reins i wish them well. Keep up the good work….look forward to your regular emails.
    Best Wishes….Geoff [Oxfordshire[

    Liked by 1 person

  2. Indeed, Lynx never disappoints. I could never understand why Norfolk Green and even the then mighty Stagecoach were so wary of using double-decks on Coastliner beyond Hunstanton. Even in Eastern Counties days, long before anyone had ever got around to “marketing” the tourist potential of the route, and it was just another infrequent rural service, I recall travelling by double-deck VRs, although usually empty!.

    However, more astonishing and seemingly against the national trend, Lynx appears to be running the same level of service post-Covid as Pre, and at normal fare scales. Long may they continue.

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  3. I do wonder whether not participating in the government £2 fare scheme won’t naturally push leisure travellers in King’s Lynn towards the First Excel route (which also uses very nicely presented vehicles) or the Stagecoach 505 where cheap fares are available? Maybe demand on services where users have no choice is enough for Lynx to cope with well without wanting to grow their market share.

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    1. I don’t think the draws are the same for the £2 market; the 505 doesn’t go anywhere worth visiting (sorry Spalding, but you know it’s true!) and the XL serves a different market with the big city draws of Peterborough and Norwich (mostly, in fairness, Norwich).

      Lynx’s leisure draw is the coast and with fares being a little lower than I would expect (Kings Lynn – Hunstanton return “two trip” is £6.30, for example) and the Norfolk Fusion ticket being reasonably priced at £12 for an all-operator day ticket, I doubt there’s much of an issue with them not being in the £2 scheme.
      I note that that the Lynx “Coast Day” ticket is priced the same as the Fusion all-operator day so I’d be intrigued to see if the drivers issue the Fusion ticket rather than the Coast Day to give the passengers more choice of onward options.

      I’m not in all honesty sure that the £2 scheme has made much difference to travel patterns, with people using it being those with a tendency to use the bus anyway and the car-addicted staying car-bound.

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    2. During the first three months, I would have thought it would have made a marginal difference. Much of the time there wasn’t the weather for leisure trips but they might have lost out as the coast wasn’t necessarily the place to be, except for hardy souls, probably true for April too but from now on is where they will want to make their money, the period tickets, as Roger points out, are a good deal and if you are on holiday, old or young, you will want to be by the coast.

      One problem will be when the current price cap comes to an end. I hope there will be plenty of advertising for the new cap. The problem with what we currently experience is that people are getting used to the £2, and may not be so pleased when the fare goes up.

      I do not, however, that Sanders are participating in the scheme. It is also a shame that neither company provides an obvious link to the other on their website or a map showing where the Coast ticket is valid (doesn’t need to be sophisticated, an outline map would do). If you are holidaying in Hunstanton, you may never have heard of Sanders

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  4. It does show that good service can be delivered in rural areas when they are properly run and planned. It also shows the importance of a good central bus station something most councils seem to think are surplus to requirements
    One benefit i the area is most of the services are in the hands of one local community bus operator and the services are not fragmented amongst a multitude of competing companies who come and go on a frequent basis

    Kings Lynn is a modest size rural town with a population of less than 50.000 yet has good local services. Many other similar size towns though have almost no local services. Why can it work in Kings Lynn but not in most of the rest of England ?. Is it because it is a local operator and not a major operator trying to operate services from a garage remote from the area it is trying to serve?
    This sort of thing has even happened around London with Arriva trying to operate bus services in Watford from a remote garage and failing and there are many similar examples of this

    Bus services in an area need to be operated as a single integrated network but in general they are not

    So far the Bus Back Better has been a singular abysmal failure

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  5. I’ve also found Lynx services to be very good …. their habit (instruction?) of pulling onto the stand at Kings Lynn bus station around 5 minutes before departure sends a good message to waiting passengers.

    I do wonder if their willingness NOT to grow outside their home area is a factor in their excellence (similarly to The Delaine). Sometimes staying small and local is just as good as growing too large.
    It’s the personal touch, isn’t it … both for drivers and for passengers.

    A “super-garage” may be over-head efficient, but that’s not the be-all and end-all …. I’ve worked as an Supervisor in both, and knowing your drivers well is half the battle … if they are just numbers to you, they won’t respond when you need help sometime.

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  6. Thanks Roger. It seems that Lynx are a very tidy operation that many others could do well to emulate.

    Interesting that the company don’t participate in the £2 fare cap. It’s all very well a company wanting to be in control of its destiny (though no doubt BSOG is claimed to help keep fares down), but the whole point of the fare cap is to help residents in a cost of living crisis. Any benefit to the bus industry is incidental. Not participating in a scheme leaves Lynx (and others) open to accusations that the company doesn’t feel their customers need or deserve help, which is surely incorrect (and how can a bus company be expected to make that judgement in any case?) but nevertheless results in inequality. It’s not so bad where passengers have a choice of participating or non-participating operators (such as on some corridors in Herts), but one suspects that for many, a Lynx bus is the only option. Maybe the whole thing should have been made compulsory?

    Views are my own etc etc.

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    1. Perhaps they consider their fares are very reasonable to start with especially noting the discounts offered on Two Trip tickets (return tickets in historic parlance), particularly for under 19s.

      I have an issue with the £2 single fare cap as it doesn’t do anything to help promote the much better value often offered by day tickets, either operator specific or local network multi-operator. The Lynx Coast Day ticket at £12 looks like a bargain to me. All I need now is a couple of days in Kings Lynn.

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      1. That’s a fair point, but Lynx fares appear to be around the norm these days. Their m-ticket Explorer day ticket at £8 apparently excludes the 36 which suggests some premium fares.

        No doubt the £12 does represent good value compared with separate fares but would it really be a saving if fares were £2? Six bus journeys in a day is a tall-order even for the most intrepid of Explorers!

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      2. “The Lynx Coast Day ticket at £12 looks like a bargain to me.”
        It’s not _quite_ as good as it seems because it’s operator specific yet the all-operator Norfolk Fusion ticket covering the whole county and beyond is also £12…

        The real beauty of the Norfolk Fusion ticket is that it’s valid (and sold) on routes operating into the county, so for example on Stagecoach East Midland’s 505 from Spalding or the First XL from Peterborough, meaning your £12 can really get you some distance.
        It’s not that long ago that First’s Eastern Counties network day ticket was £15, so it really is a great value ticket. And the barcode/QR code on the ticket scans on multiple operators too, which surprised me a little when I used it!

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      1. Do journalists even exist any more? I get the impression that most local journalism nowadays is little more than trolling Twitter for outrage, regurgitating press releases and grabbing the first royalty-free photo they can find by Googling.

        A few years ago my local online news site, which brags about their award-winning ‘quality’ journalism, were happily illustrating stories about a small local operator being dragged before the TCs with pictures of Stagecoach buses.
        When they were quietly approached with a suggestion that they wouldn’t illustrate a story about a dodgy corner shop with pictures of Tesco superstores because of the potential legal issues and maybe they should be a bit careful in this case too, their response was along the lines of “it’s just a bus, innit”.

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  9. I too have found Lynx services to be of high quality, but it’s disappointing that they are not participating in the £2 scheme. It is taxpayer funded so it seems unfair that it should be a “postcode lottery” as to whether you benefit.

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  10. But if the reimbursement offer made to Lynx for participating in the £2 cap was judged by them to be less than they would earn from normal fares – particularly with an expanding leisure market – why would they? They’re not a charity – they have staff to look after and new E400’s aren’t cheap……..

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    1. That of course is the calculation which operators have to make: is it worth it?

      I notice that Rotala Group, who were vocal in their opposition to the initial scheme, have now signed up to it so I don’t know if the DfT have moved on the funding rules or if their calculation has shifted in favour of the caps.

      I suspect that for Rotala, running in areas where there are other operators who are taking part in the scheme and also with the conurbation “PTE” schemes applying to some of their services, it may have been more hassle than it was worth to stay out if the financial side was 50/50.

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  11. I wish that Lynx would work with Greater Anglia to create an onward semi-express connection from Sheringham through to Holt, Fakenham and beyond (and offer this as plusbus rail ticket extension). Lynx probably could do a semi-express Sheringham to Fakenham hourly with one bus, lined up to train times, and Fakenham is regionally important for shopping and banking. Too often the alternative for Sheringham-Holt is a £20+ taxi ride.

    Even having the Coastliner quickly dip into Holt en route (via the Kelling and Cley roads) would create more journey opportunities for onwards travel from Sheringham to Holt for tourists and residents.

    I was hoping the Norfolk BSIP would have improved onward travel from Sheringham but seemingly not a priority

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  12. The old coast hopper service built up by Norfolk Green with the great support of Norfolk CC worked its way up to half hourly frequency even on Sunday. Even the winter timetable was pretty strong. It’s a great shame it all went to pot with Stagecoach.

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  13. My one gripe with the otherwise excellent coastal services is that it’s impossible to get beyond Hunstanton if leaving London by train after about 2pm, meaning weekend breaks including a Friday night are out. In my view this could be solved by basing one driver and vehicle in an out-station (eg Burnham Market) and running a couple of evening trips out from Hunstanton.

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    1. Where are you trying to get to (exactly)?

      I assume via King’s Lynn, and also assuming that coming the “other” way (Sheringham and then Coastliner) wouldn’t work.

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      1. In my case Burnham Deepdale where there’s a great campsite and hostel etc.

        And yes it doesn’t work via Sheringham either.

        As it happens I’m more flexible these days but I’m thinking of the London weekender market which I think is substantial.

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  14. Just so, and suspected as much, but useful to confirm

    And the Norfolk BSIP was a fail for tourists and intermodal transport

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    1. Interestingly I’ve seen that there is an early morning trip which starts at Wells, going to Fakenham, suggesting a Wells outstation, which would be ideal to add an evening journey or two along the coast from Hunstanton (driver hours permitting), but there’s no equivalent afternoon/evening working which suggests some dead running early morning. Does anyone know where that bus originates?

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  15. Travelling into Lynn on Lynx last year, as dusk fell one of the headlights failed to light up.

    I was worried for my train connection, but within ten minutes Julian himself turned up (in a Porsche!) with a replacement bulb. Three minutes after that we were flat out down the A149, arriving barely five minutes behind schedule.

    It was very impressive, being used to Stagecoach’s “have fun walking home from here” attitude to vehicle faults.

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  16. I also recently got a lynx bus guide dated 17th of April 2023. As i collect bus timetables this one has what i like. All the routes with an excellent network map! Great entertaining bus guide.

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