Britain’s Top 10 Quirky Bus Routes: 4 Stephensons 14

Saturday 16th August 2025

Regular readers may recall I blogged about this quirky bus route three years ago. It’s the one where security personnel remove you from the bus six miles before it reaches the advertised terminus because it’s out of bounds other than for a few residents who live there.

It’s this unique characteristic which makes it worthy of a coveted fourth place in my Top Ten countdown of Britain’s Quirkiest Bus Routes.

Funded by Essex County Council, route 14 is operated by Stephensons of Essex and on Mondays to Fridays provides a service between Southend-on-Sea and Shoeburyness East Beach via the villages of Bournes Green, Stonebridge, Baring, Little and Great Wakering.

However what makes it quirky is the small number of journeys which, on reaching Great Wakering, instead of heading south to Shoeburyness, turn northeastwards and on to Foulness Island to the small communities of Churchend and Courtsend and it’s this section of route (shown in red on the maps above and below) which requires permission from the MOD to travel along or passengers face being evicted from the bus.

No permission or permit and you’re asked by security personnel to leave the bus at the checkpoint before the bus proceeds over the bridge which connects the mainland with the Island. Your journey comes to an abrupt end, as I found when taking a ride on the route one Saturday afternoon a few weeks ago .

It had to be a Saturday as that’s the only day there’s a choice of reasonably timed daytime journeys. Four departures leave the out-of-bounds terminus on the Island at Courtsend Road on Saturdays at 07:28, 11:15, 14:17 and 18:45 with comparable eastbound journeys from Southend’s Travel Centre at 06:43, 10:33, 13:33 and 18:00.

As you can see from the above timetable there’s just one journey on Mondays to Fridays leaving Foulness at 07:23 returning from Southend at 17:50 (positioning journeys leave Southend at 06:37 and back from Foulness at 18:35).

For the purpose of research for this blog I caught the 13:33 from Southend a few weeks ago, deliberately choosing that journey with the thought other legitimate passengers might be returning home having come into Southend for some shopping on the 11:15 from Churchend on the Island where around 100 residents live in houses rented from the MOD.

In the event 11 passengers boarded with me in Southend and I thought this is good, I’ll melt into the background with them, but by the time we reached Great Wakering they’d all departed leaving just me on the bus looking somewhat prominent. But then a woman boarded at Great Wakering Church with a shopping bag and was obviously heading home on the Island.

But as we approached the security gate out comes security man Steve to check the bus over giving a knowing nod and wave to the woman and mouths to me through the side window “have you got a permit?” to which I obviously had to reply in the negative leading to a firm signal from Steve I needed to get off the bus.

As he went back inside his office to lift the barrier for the bus to continue on its way, he was very apologetic he couldn’t let me ride to the terminus even though I promised I’d return straight away, but rules are rules.

The bus headed off on the six miles to the terminus, an 11 minute journey, and the barrier came back down.

I had a brief chat with Steve wondering if he had many stowaways like me on a Saturday afternoon and while he wasn’t specific I got the impression ‘bus and train blog writers about quirky bus routes’ who get kicked off are quite a rarity.

I wandered back to the nearby bus stop called Landwick Cottages and waited for the 14 to return but noticed the stop is quite well served…

… including Arriva’s half hourly route 9A via North Shoebury and Thorpe Bay with a bus appearing and using the roundabout in front of the security gate to turn round…

… but I decided to wait for the Stephensons bus to reappear and see if anyone was on it. 25 minutes after heading off to the forbidden land, the bus was back…

… and unsurprisingly no passengers were on board although we did pick up a couple of passengers making a short journey as we got close to the terminus in Southend.

Looking at Stephensons timetable you wouldn’t know Foulness is out of bounds but I did notice the departure displays at both Southend and Landwick Cottages were annotated to point out…

… an “MOD Permit Required for travel on Foulness Island”.

Three years ago I explained how my friend Ray and I were able to take the bus right to the forbidden terminus having made special arrangements in advance to do so.

There isn’t much there. An abandoned church, an abandoned pub, village shop and Post Office…

… and a few houses belonging to the MOD which are rented out.

The bus turns round a bit further on at Courtsend Road by a farm, where there’s even a bus shelter and a litter bin as well as a timetable on display for what I would imagine are never any passengers..

It’s all a but Imber-like but with real life residents still living there who enjoy their very own quirky bus route, albeit a very limited one.

As I also mentioned three years ago the public can visit Foulness Island when the MOD open it up for visitors on the first Sunday of the month between April and October from 11:45 to 16:30. It’s well worth a visit as Ray and I found on another occasion when we visited (even including a guided tour on a tractor and trailer)…

…but sadly no bus services run on a Sunday, so its car or cycle only. Or a long walk.

Roger French

Did you catch the previously featured Top 10 Quirky Bus Routes? 10: White Bus route 01, 9: Borders Buses route 477, 8: TfL/Transport UK route 969, 7: Tavistock Country Bus route 112, 6: Royal Parks RP1, 5: Cumbria Classic Coaches 572

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