Every bus route 99. 23 of 25.

Saturday 17th October 2026

And so to the most northerly bus route numbered 99 in England. My journey from the South East, South West and South Wales through East Anglia, West Midlands and the Potteries as well as South Yorkshire, Greater Manchester and Merseyside before heading back over to East Yorkshire arrived in the North East for last time’s adventure in County Durham and with the second of two route 99s to ride in this region being in Tyne & Wear running between Grangetown and Hylton Castle.

It’s another route (the ninth) to be operated by an SME company, in this case L&G Coaches based in Chester-le-Street. But, this company only took on the route over having won a new tender from Nexus in July. Prior to that it was operated by Go North East in whose hands it was when I travelled on the route back in June.

As you can see from the map below, the route lies in Sunderland but the Royal Sunderland Hospital is the closest it gets to the city centre.

Blog reader Alex kindly commented on another route 99 blog recently that this 99 “has its roots in the free buses to Asda which started in the 1980s and I am not sure whether journeys to the store itself are still free. It provides a useful link across the river via Barnes Park and the Royal Hospital so has utility beyond the Asda store. At Barnes Park northbound it is only service which serves a brand new shelter only used by the 99”.

The route begins at its northern end by doing a clockwise circuit of the large Hylton Castle Estate which is located adjacent to Hylton Castle. After that it heads eastwards along Hylton Park Road where there are retail warehouse type outlets and car dealerships before heading south and crossing the River Wear over the Queen Alexandra Bridge, then back westwards again for a short distance along Pallion New Road then south through Pallion Road and Kayll Road where the hospital is located and eventually terminating outside a large Asda store in Leechmere Road.

The route’s timetable didn’t change when the new tender began in July and continues to consist of just five/six off peak journeys on Mondays to Saturdays with no Sunday service.

As you can see from the timetable above the service starts just after 09:00 and is all done by 14:23 making it an ideal candidate to slot in between peak hour school commitments and I suspect that’s why L&G Coaches proved successful in gaining the work from Go North East.

The day I travelled back in June there were few passengers travelling making the double deck capacity redundant but was almost certainly there for its peak hour work before and after.

It’s a tight timetable for the one bus with just three minutes layover at the Asda end of the route and a one minute pause in Hylton Castle on the circuit around the residential area.

I aimed to catch the 11:55 from outside Asda and the bus didn’t appear from its previous journey until 11:57, turning round at a roundabout for the entrance to the store on Leechmere Road after which we immediately set off slightly behind schedule. No passengers alighted and no-one boarded other than myself.

The interior of the bus offered various activities on the upper deck (Snakes and Ladders and Blackjack. albeit there’s no dice, cards or counters so it’s really just a gimmick), but this was rather academic as no passengers came upstairs for the whole journey.

First up we passed the Tunstall Hills Nature Reserve and then Barnes Park…

…is where we picked up three passengers at two stops before another two at the Royal Sunderland Hospital followed by a district retail area along Pallion Road and St Lukes Terrace where four of our five passengers alighted and two boarded.

The next exciting part of the route is the Queen Alexandra Bridge which looms up on the left hand side as we approach from the west.

This structure was built in 1909 as a double deck bridge with the road on the lower level and railway tracks above.

The railway carried coal from the County Durham coalfields to Sunderland Docks but fell into disuse in 1921.

It wasn’t until as recently as 1985 that the tracks were dismantled and the structure from either end of the bridge altered so that there’s no trace of the former line except on the northern side of the River you can still see where the tracks came in from the west.

It was then past the aforementioned retail sheds…

… where three passengers alighted and one boarded and we were soon approaching the Hylton Castle residential area with just one passenger on board.

After a brief pause at the ‘terminus’ bus stop on the circuit we continued round passing the Castle…

… and picking up four passengers for the journey back to Grangetown. I left the bus here and caught a bus on route 8 with its direct routing into the city centre.

It’s a low key route performing a useful off-peak travel facility linking various parts of the Sunderland area together which would otherwise necessitate a change of bus, and numbers travelling will always reflect that. I’m sure L&G Coaches will do it proud.

Roger French

Did you catch the previous 22 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, 17 Doncaster-Retford, 18 Barnsley-Denby Dale, 19 Manchester-Prestwich, 20 Whiston-Prescot, 21 Scarborough Beachcomber, 22 Spennymoor-Shildon.

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