Competing coaches for Ullapool

Tuesday 26th May 2026

The Scottish express coach market has become a hotbed of competition as the ever expansionist ember coach company adds more and more routes to its portfolio, all of which duplicate the long established presence of Citylink and Stagecoach, on top of which we now have FlixBus making its presence felt north of the border.

A few weeks ago I reported on ember’s competitive incursion between Inverness and Thurso giving passengers a much greater choice of journeys to and from the Far North as well as competing with ScotRail’s heavily subsidised Far North Line. Coaches have the advantage of being both quicker as well as ridiculously cheaper thanks to Transport Scotland’s generous free travel concessionary scheme for ‘under 22s’ and ’60 and overs’ and in particular the year long £2 fare cap in the Highlands (and Islands) for everyone else.

But now the latest network expansion from the end of last month has seen ember go head to head against Citylink between Inverness and Ullapool with exact duplication of the incumbent’s journey times and, as both destinations are in the Highlands, the subsidised fare cap of just £2 applies for the 60 mile journey.

Ember’s coaches leave Inverness twice a day at 08:11 and 15:09, returning from Ullapool at 10:01 and 17:01…

… which are a blatant copycat replica of Citylink’s departures at 08:10 and 15:10 from Inverness and 10:00 and 17:00 return from Ullapool.

There is of course a valid reason for what on the face of it is an otherwise ridiculous situation, and that is the connection to and from CalMac’s twice a day ferry across to Stornoway on Lewis with departures from Ullapool to Stronoway at 10:30 and 17:30 and arrivals from Stornaway into Ullapool at 09:40 and 17:00 (on Mondays to Fridays) with amended times at the weekends.

Both Citylink and CalMac show the coach connections on their timetables with, so far, no mention of the ember alternative on the latter.

Although Flixbus coaches use the Stagecoach run bus and coach station in Inverness, ember’s coaches arrive and depart from a dedicated bus stop in nearby Union Street…

… but in Ullapool both coaches depart from immediately outside the Ferry Terminal Building thus presenting passengers with a clear choice of which operator to travel with.

I made a return journey from Inverness to Ullapool last Wednesday to see how the new incumbent was doing, three weeks after the launch of its new route which it numbers E18. The coach arrived at the Union Street bus stop a couple of minutes after the 08:10 scheduled departure and picked just one other passenger and myself up.

Peak time traffic in Inverness delayed our exit from the city even further and by the time we were heading out along the A9 we were seven minutes down.

You might have spotted ember’s end-to-end journey time is 92 minutes compared to CityLink’s 70 which is because the E18 takes a longer route to serve Dingwall and Strathpeffer as well as a call in, if required, to Conon Bridge.

The former proved popular with the second passenger who joined us and took the time to explain to the driver as she boarded, how living in DIngwall and often travelling to the Outer Hebrides, she was absolutely delighted with the new service, especially as the bus stop is close to her house. “I no longer need to get a lift from anyone” she explained. We were now ten minutes down.

The journey over to Ullapool offers some fantastic Scottish scenery with the A835 a very quiet road for traffic, other than when the ferry has off loaded leading to a flotilla of vehicles one after the other.

We arrived into Ullapool at 09:51, eight minutes later than scheduled with the two passengers alighting…

… the Citylink coach was already on the stand outisde the Terminal building loading up passengers and luggage from the ferry’s arrival at 09:40 ready for its 10:00 return departure to Inverness.

I’d picked up from the ember driver he had 10 passengers booked for his return journey to Inverness at 10:01 but I’d booked for the Citylink departure so climbed aboard to find 36 passengers already sitting in the seats making for a busy coach.

We set off at 10:00 and returned to Ullapool making good progress all the way until the outskirts of Inverness where an accident earlier that morning was still blocking the A9 dual carriageway. Fortunately after half an hour sat stationary it was cleared and we got moving again arriving into Inverness bus and coach station 30 minutes down with everyone alighting.

Two of the passengers had alighted at Braemore Junction, 12 minutes after Ullapool who were in cycle gear including wearing their cycle helmets while inside the bus which was strange to see but the driver unloaded their cycles stored in the coach’s luggage compartments when they alighted and off they went.

As regular readers will know I’m a big fan of ember always finding my travel experiences to be to a very high standard and everything about their service is first rate not least the comfort and ride quality of their electric/battery powered coaches, the ease with which they make it possible to book and the information on real time tracking they make available on their website.

The company’s continued expansion indicates a confidence they’re on the right track (as well as still enjoying funding from equity backers) but all this has increasingly come with controversy, the latest being a grant award of £13.1 million from the Scottish Government to buy 100 more Chinese built Yutong coaches from the £45 million ScotZEB3 funding pot.

Understandably operators such as McGills, which lost out in the funding round, are upset, with its Chairman Ralph Roberts saying there is a “question about fairness and transparency” when “the original purpose [of the funding] was to convert diesel buses to zero emission … it now appears the fund is being used to support new competing services … which raises serious questions about whether it is delivering its stated aims”.

He has a point, not least when the ambiance of travelling out to Ullapool on ember’s lovely new coach was impressive although its sparse loading may have helped.

It’s difficult to know how much the £2 fare is generating extra passengers but I’m sure as the summer progresses numbers wanting to travel between Inverness and Ullapool for onward connections to the Outer Hebrides will only increase in which case it’s just as well there are two coaches following each other along the road – albeit competing at Transport Scotland’s expense.

With 100 more coaches on order it’s clear ember’s expansion will continue and for the first time on my visit to the Highlands last week I spotted a number of Flixbus coaches and noted they’ve established a depot/parking area almost opposite Stagecoach/Citylink’s long established garage in Inverness.

With ember now ’embedded’ and Flixbus on the scene, Scotland’s inter-urban travel market is going to be an interesting one to watch in the coming months.

Roger French

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