Every route 99. 7 of 25.

Tuesday 21st April 2026

Time for another bus route 99 exploration in the south west with this one being the most south westerly of all Britain’s 25 routes numbered 99. It’s a local route providing a relatively frequent service to a large residential area in the lovely coastal Devon town of Exmouth.

Operated by Stagecoach, this route 99 is another fairly short duration route taking 40 minutes for a bus to do a full rounder of the route from the centre of Exmouth to the suburbs of Withycombe Raleigh and Brixington and back to the route’s starting point in Exmouth town centre.

The route’s daytime frequency of every 20 minutes can therefore be achieved with Stagecoach utilising just two buses.

The timetable offers an attractive 05:06 to 00:07 span of the day (from 07:40 on Sundays) with the frequency dropping hourly in the evenings and an all day Sunday freqency of half hourly.

The pick up point in the town centre is outside the Savoy Cinema in Rolle Street where there’s a large bus shelter…

…with an electronic departure screen as well as printed timetables.

The route then continues south along Rolle Road before turning eastwards along Salterton Road before then heading north up Bradham Lane towards the residential area of Brixington where the bus does a clockwise loop…

… including serving Brixington Primary Academy and Broadmead shops which looks as though at one time it acted as a terminal point for a bus route to the area.

It looks to be a very worthwhile residential area for a 20 minute bus service…

…and although there was evidence of plenty of car ownership there was also evidence of a well used bus route.

I did a rounder on the 12:41 from Rolle Street with 21 fellow passengers boarding at the Cinema bus stop and alighted all around the route – we stopped 16 times – and at the same time we picked up 13 passengers to come back into town.

Passing the other bus on the circuit and seeing it later on a following journey, these numbers seemed pretty typical and indicate a successful service.

Both buses on the route when I travelled were double decks but as I was heading off for more scenic bus riding on the 157 to Sidmouth, I noticed a bus and driver swap brought a single deck on to the route, and the double decker I’d travelled on the 99 was my carriage over to Sidmouth so there seems to be some inter-working with route 157.

So, that all seemed very straight forward but as I travelled around the route I’d also noticed a reference to a 99E on bus stop plates…

… and in some timetable cases.

And, Stagecoach’s website produced a timetable…

… showing an hourly service in the evenings and all day Sundays linking Brixington with Exmouth’s Greggs and then continuing to Littleham with Sunday daytime journeys terminating at Rodney Close and evening journeys every day of the week extended to the nearby World of Country Life.

This was all a bit puzzling but after some careful research I realised the 99E follows the opposite routing of the 99 in Brixington by going anti-clockwise around the circuit and goes to and from Exmouth via St Johns Road and Withycombe, as used by route 98 during Mondays to Saturdays daytimes, and then continues cross the town centre over to Littleham.

Quite why journeys go to the World of Country Life in the evenings which is an …. “all-weather family day out attraction with an eclectic mix of museums, animals, play areas and entertainment, both outdoors and undercover, making it an excellent day out for the whole family, whatever the age, whatever the weather!” …. and closes at 17:00 remains a mystery to me. Perhaps a reader can offer an explanation in the comments?

Roger French

Did you catch the previous six blogs in this series? 1 of 25 Eastbourne-Hastings, 2 of 25 Petworth-Chichester, 3 of 25 Woolwich-Bexleyheath, 4 of 25 Tilbury Town-Tilbury Ferry Terminal, 5 of 25 Chippenham-Swindon, 6 of 25 Ubley-Chew Valley.

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