Britain’s Top 10 Quirky Bus Routes: 9 Borders Buses route 477

Saturday 15th March 2025

This year’s monthly blog series is counting down Britain’s quirky bus routes. Following last month’s wander through Windsor Great Park using roads out-of-bounds to ordinary traffic on White Bus route 01, this month we’re heading north for a ride on a route where the bus timetable is determined by the tide timetable.

It is of course, the Borders Buses operated route 477 which connects Holy Island with Berwick-upon-Tweed.

I blogged about a ride on the route a couple of years ago in March 2023 so apologies to regular readers for some duplication of that blog, but I couldn’t not include this route in the Top 10 due to its abundance of quirkiness thanks to the unique timetable arrangement.

This comprises two return journeys between Berwick-upon-Tweed and Holy Island running just on Wednesdays and Saturdays with the route including a causeway which becomes out of bounds at high tide.

Depending on the tides you get to enjoy between four and eight hours on the Island, or if travelling the other way from Holy Island to Berwick-upon-Tweed, you’ll enjoy between an hour and 50 minutes and six hours and 15 minutes in the town but don’t forget Holy Island residents wanting to shop in Berwick-upon-Tweed need to factor in a 10 minute walk from the station to the town centre and back again with the latter involving a fairly steep hill.

On first glance the timetable looks quite extensive…

… but then you realise each journey has a lettered code at the top which signifies the dates when it runs according to the tide times.

Information on tide times and which journeys run is currently displayed for periods of three months and at the time of writing, information is available for the first quarter of 2025 so there’s only a couple more dates to go and strangely, today’s date, Saturday 15th March, is missed off the list. It looks as though there is no service today.

Looking more closely at the above schedule I see other dates are missed off including Saturdays 25 January, 8th February and 1st March as well as Wednesdays 15th January, 12th February and 26th March.

Presumably this is because there are no “safe tide times” when it makes sense to run buses on those days, but not being an expert on tide times I can’t confirm this is the explanation.

I’ve travelled on the route a couple of times in the last few years. Two years ago the journey was a mid morning departure in March and we only carried one passenger making a local journey in Berwick-upon-Tweed with only me to the Island and one on the return once back on the mainland. It wasn’t surprising there were no day visitors to the Island as the afternoon journey back wasn’t until after dark at 18:00.

Way back in 2013 a visit in late summer found the Island to be very busy with tourists enjoying the quaintness it offers including Lindisfarne Priory.

There’s a small community who live on the Island…

… but facilities are limited, although there is a Post Office.

There are a few bus routes which include a ferry crossing on their route: more bus 50 Sandbanks Ferry; Go Cornwall 70/70A/70B Torpoint Ferry; West Coast Motors 477 Colintraive/Rhubodach Ferry; ZetTrans 24/28 Yell Sound and Belmont/Gutcher on Yell and Unst in Shetland Islands (there may be others?) but Borders Buses’ route 477 is unique in having a combined tide and bus timetable due to traversing a tidal causeway. That’s what makes it quirky.

Roger French

Did you catch Top 10 Quirky Bus Routes 10: White Bus route 01.

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