Every route 99. 17 of 25.

Sunday 2nd August 2026

After the South East, the South West, South Wales, East Anglia, the Midlands and the Potteries this year’s relentless journey northwards checking out all Britain’s 25 bus routes numbered 99 brings me to South Yorkshire to sample the County’s hourly inter-urban route that links Doncaster with Retford in neighbouring Nottinghamshire making it the only route 99 to straddle two English counties.

It’s another Stagecoach operated route making it the fourth of that company’s seven to be featured in this series so far (check out blogs on Hastings, Exmouth and Pontypridd for the previous three).

And it was a pleasure to be joined by Nottinghamshire based blog reader Richard on this journey who has enjoyed a significant career in the bus industry gaining much experience in a range of bus companies and different ‘Group’ owned businesses not least becoming an expert in scheduling and timetable composition as well as gaining a wealth of knowledge.

As you can see from the timetable, this route 99 offers more or less an hourly proposition on Mondays to Saturdays with just a couple of exceptions for journeys operating via Station Road in Ranskill (one southbound and two northbound), a schooldays variation on a morning northbound journey and the first southbound journey at 07:20 from Doncaster not operating on Saturdays. There’s no Sunday service.

An end to end journey time of around 45 minutes makes for a theoretical requirement of two buses although I notice there’s no northbound departure from Retford in the afternoon at 15:45 making for a two hour gap and presumably a commitment for a school run, which, if so, is strange that that journey doesn’t run on a Saturday either.

The route follows the A638 (and the East Coast Main Line) for the entire journey from Doncaster to Retford via the relatively small communities of Bawtry, Scrooby and Ranskill. Part of the road dates back to Roman times as well as once being the original ‘Great North Road’ before the designation of the parallel A1 and then the A1(M).

The size of communities served along the route together with the much quicker journey time offered by trains on the parallel rail lines (13-15 minutes) explains why, for what you might think would be a busy inter-urban trunk bus service, only musters a single deck hourly frequency during the daytime with no evening or Sunday presence. However the frequency of trains between the two towns isn’t that enticing, with some gaps in an uneven hourly frequency, and the railway station in Retford is a fair walk from the town centre, so the bus does offer a good alternative, as well as serving the communities located along the route.

I arrived in good time to catch the 09:35 departure from Doncaster’s rather soulless bus station located conveniently next to the railway station and underneath the Frenchgate shopping centre, but sadly not offering a very inspiring place to begin a journey.

The bus arrived a few minutes late from its previous journey from Retford with around six passengers on board and the same number were soon on board as the bus pulled up at stand B3 for an on time departure with another boarding at the first stop and another alighting in Belle Vue Way, 10 minutes later in a short stretch of bus only road to the south of the dual carriageway alongside a large Asda and close to Doncaster racecourse and where we paused for two minutes being ahead of time already.

Richard mentioned this location was close to where South Yorkshire PTE famously trialled a trolleybus operation in 1985 as a precursor to its plans to reintroduce trolleybuses on four bus routes in Doncaster and two in Rotherham. A consortium of the PTE along with Hestair Dennis, GEC Traction and Alexanders built an experimental vehicle based on an Alexander RH-bodied Dennis Dominator which came with an auxiliary air-cooled diesel engine for use when manoeuvring away from the overhead wires which were installed on the experimental route alongside the racecourse.

The vehicle never operated in mainstream service but did carry passengers in revenue-earning service in September 1985 in conjunction with an open day at the PTE bus garage in nearby Leicester Road. The advent of deregulation in 1986 killed off the project and the vehicle is still in storage at the Trolleybus Museum at Sandtoft.

After that interesting interlude we were back on track again heading south towards Retford with a parent and young child alighting at the next stop by the Dome Leisure Centre.

After that it was a fairly uneventful journey along the A638 with four boarding and one alighting at four stops along the way as we arrived in Bawtry, half way along the route, where two alighted leaving six on board.

It was then on to Rainskill where three were waiting to board and we paused for another three minute wait to keep to time before turning left at the traffic lights to make the one a day deviation along Station Road.

This three minute double run proved beneficial for the passenger waiting close to the level crossing where we turned round to retrace our route back to those traffic lights and turned left to continue to Retford.

It’s a strange deviation being a distance of just 360 yards from the main road and I assume has its origins back in the day when there was a station located here on the East Coast Main Line. This closed in 1958 but it’s obviously left an enduring legacy with this limited facility still pertaining.

We only gained one more passenger between Ranskill and Retford giving us a total of 11 on board as we pulled into the town’s bus station at 10:32, seven minutes behind schedule with the next departure back to Doncaster at 10:45 although the driver changed the destination screen to Gainsborough on route 95 which departs at 10:30 indicating the vehicles inter-work between the two routes and a bit tightly too.

Roger French

Did you catch the previous 16 blogs in this series? 1 Eastbourne-Hastings, 2 Petworth-Chichester, 3 Woolwich-Bexleyheath, 4 Tilbury Town-Tilbury Ferry Terminal, 5 Chippenham-Swindon, 6 Ubley-Chew Valley, 7 Exmouth-Brixington-Exmouth, 8 Taunton-Chard, 9 Pontypridd town circular, 10 Cheltenham-Gloucester, 11 Leigh-on-Sea-Shoeburyness East Beach, 12 Malton-Chelmsford, 13 Lowestoft-Southwold-Halesworth, 14 Solihull-Kingshurst, 15 Telford-Shawbirch circular, 16 Newcastle-under-Lyme-Chell Heath.

Summer blogging timetable: 06:00 TThSSu