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.
Blogging timetable: 06:00 TThS
Roger may be interested to know from this Weekend the Caithness 99 Thurso-Wick-Dunbeath is being transferred from Stagecoach North Scotland to D&E Coaches which is owned by Highland Council.
Also, Stagecoach North Scotland are withdrawing the X99 Inverness-Scrabster without replacement, although the Ember E6 is/was a direct competitor for the X99
https://decoaches.co.uk/caithness/
SM
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So Scotsgov gives loads of Zebra money to a new start company who then runs a route in competition with an existing commercial operator, who then withdraws from the route. Surely that is not what the awards should enable? Should be ring fenced to replacing existing equipment.
Steve
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You’ve got to hope McGill’s lawyers take them to the cleaners and stop this nonsense.
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ScotGovt is a disaster, they are incapable and incompetent. I hope McGills lawyer up
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I hope McGills don’t exist in the future, awful opportunistic company!
Their very silly comments in response to the Scottish Government announcing they will pursue bus franchising today says it all.
I agree Scottish Government are not great but the fragmented bus network of which McGills are apart of in Strathclyde is a sad joke that urgently needs fixing. Impossible to find out fares, no network map, no integration of any kind, amazing they even have a business at all!
Glasgow should have a world class transport system with the trains it has including its Subway but the buses let it down!
Aaron
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In what way are they awful? And opportunistic in what sense (other than successfully purchasing parts of other failing operators)?
Strathclyde has the Glasgow Tripper ticket for multi-operator travel on McGills, WCM, First, Whitelaws but publicity is awful… except in SPT’s own website where it isn’t mentioned. Nor do SPT provide a map so it sounds like you should be criticising the PTE rather than the operators.
One might also point out that there has been a huge investment in the last 40 years on road building in to Glasgow whilst bus priority is still appalling and piecemeal. But yeah…. Mcgills fault.
BW2
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Another bus service that as a morning shoppers service it works , but as a direct link to a hospital for work or day treatments surely fails with the lack of afternoon service post 1530 . I assume given the density of route networks in Nexus area that other means with a change can be achieved for a journey home. With the hourly frequency its not really timed for a worker at the hospital to nip to Asda for a quick shop ( though Asda sandwhiches are definitely not the quality they used to be ) and back in a lunch hour that a 30min service would allow checkout time permitting.
JBC Prestayn
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However, isn’t that the point? The market that it was designed for was for a shoppers service. It serves the hospital because it literally goes past the front of it but that’s not what it’s designed for.
BW2
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Nothing at Asda is as good as it used to be since those brothers loaded the business with massive debts a few years ago….
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Surprised Go-Ahead lost the route, as they have a massive school commitment in the region, unless they lost the school route(s) that went with it too. Always interested in the peak work services, usually numbered in the 9xx series, which even individual journeys change hands more often than a pack of cards between Go-Ahead and the remaining SME operators.
Terence Uden
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Alex is right that there was quite a network of free buses to that Asda when it opened in the late 80s, my memory is the ones north of the river served their other store in Bolton, but I can’t confirm that.
There is quite a complex history of circular routes in Sunderland. Traditionally the Busways 18/19 Grindon circulars passed this Asda, and also provided a link from Barnes Park through Pallion and across the Queen Alexandra Bridge before heading to Seaburn. However the route did a large loop around Grindon before doing so – the little cut through from the orange road to the green road wasn’t on the route, it continued on the orange road towards Springwell, Grindon and Thorney Close then came back down Durham Road to the Barnes. The 18/19 would originally have had a lot of traffic from the shipyards on the Wear by the Queen Alex Bridge but even in the late 90s, it was still a 20 minute frequency with full evening service – I used it to get it to sixth form college and also back from the pub by my college 😉
I think the 99 number was originally introduced by Redby for an innovative service connecting a Morrisons supermarket at the seafront with the northern estates. Ironically, that purpose is now served by what’s left of the 19 (which never served Hylton Castle)
There were other links between the hospital and the northern estates, provided by the 537 Sunderland to South Shields and another pair of circulars ran by Northern, which I think eventually were branded ‘The Magic Roundabout’, an appropriate name.
All this has ceased to be commercial (some of it never was), Stagecoach messed around with the 18/19, breaking many of the odd links people used it for, and it died a slow death but for the little stub of the 19 on the old 99 route.
The Queen Alex bridge top deck was considered as a potential Metro expansion route by the PTE in the 70s. Vorhees did a report proposing an extension to Sunderland along BR tracks (which did happen c.2000) but with extensions to Doxford Park up an old mineral line, and to Washington over the Queen Alex and along the north bank of the river. The 2000 extension continued to South Hylton and is now being considered for extension to Washington via another route.
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This route has sections that were covered by Sunderland Corporation services when I was a lad. They avoided travelling through the town centre (Town as displayed on destination screens – city status is a 21st century honour) but serviced the heavy industrial (shipbuilding, mining and glass manufacturing) areas, such as Pallion and Southwick.
The 6 ran Grangetown – Prospect – Ford Estate – Pallion – Southwick/Witherwack. The 12/12X was Humbledon/Prospect – Ford Estate – Watson Street/Pallion – Southwick. The 18 operated Springwell Estate – Prospect – Barnes Park – Kayll Road (for General Hospital) – Pallion – Southwick – Seaburn, no circulars in those days apart from the actual “Circle” route 9/19. These three services gradually lost out to the closure of the aforementioned industries although the 18 retained a modest level of patronage on sunny summer days as it linked the seaside resort of Seaburn to a large chunk of south west Sunderland.
William.
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Free supermarket buses have an interesting history. Most of them were heavily pushed in their planning applications to get them through (by countering inevitable complaints about their inaccessibility) but then were never really publicised any further so were almost always underused. It was a deliberate strategy and eventually enabled most to be killed off after everyone involved had retired, died or forgotten about them, but in a surprising number of cases they lasted for a couple of decades first, often well into the 00s. If (big if!) there are any left (and you can find anything out about them!), they’d make a great idea for a future year’s exploring series.
Supermarket counters are a similar story… they originally hired bakers, butchers and fishmongers to replicate a high street, then slowly and progressively killed them all off after that had all been forgotten.
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I recall the free bus ASDA procured for their new site in Sydenham, Leamington Spa in the early 80s which operated over quite a wide geographical area, including towns and villages over 7 miles from the store (Southam, Bishop’s Itchington etc.). I knew of a number of people that used to get the free bus to the store and then change to a Leamington Spa local bus to he town, thus saving a considerable amount of money. No doubt much to Midland Red (South)’s relief it eventually it did finish. The regular vehicle was de Courcey Leopard/Marshall JHA 246L, which I think is still with us.
Sorry, nothing to do with the 99!
Dan Tancock
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The death of the specialised counters in supermarkets has been more caused by the big players trying to reduce their costs to the level of the (German) discount chains.
On this theme, Tesco has in the last year reduced its staff uniform to nothing but a tunic/jacket – quite commonly now combined with jeans, recreating that independent bus driver look!
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Not quite a ‘dedicated’ Service but Stagecoach Hants & Surrey’s ‘7’ divert all their Monday to Friday Aldershot to Hartley Wintney/Phoenix Green journeys via Aldershot Tesco (3 return journeys out of a potential 6) in both directions. No Saturday journeys make this very short diversion – maybe because the increased car traffic that day would cause delays!
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And another DRT dies, partly replaced by conventional bus routes.
https://www.pickmeupwycombe.co.uk/
https://www.carouselbuses.co.uk/service-changes-18th-october-2026
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When I was younger I used to go on holiday to the Isle white I remember seeing Southern Vectis routes 33 at Ryde bus station. The route was like a circular town service. I remember seeing double decker’s used some times and very few people boarding on it.
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Stephenson’s 288 circular Tesco route in Maldon is free and runs half-hourly. Don’t know who pays for it though.
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https://www.maldon.gov.uk/info/20072/parking/9176/tesco_free_bus
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Crawley: Compass travel 900 in Crawley is a circular that leaves the ASDA’s goes via the bus station and back to ASDA’s the full circular takes seven minutes. Flat fair £3 covers return journey between ASDA’s and bus station. They also operate the Sainsbury’s free bus route 801,802 it does extend beyond the Sainsbury’s to the bus station. Metro bus used to run inregular service for some roads that are not served by the regular routes and then they got incorporated into those Sainsbury’s Route. Also used to be a service from the bus station to the supermarket at Three Bridges similar to 900.
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