November 27th - The only public transport you can use this Christmas Day
Simon Calder's Independent Travel Podcast
The Independent
3.6 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 27 November 2023
⏱️ 5 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Wish it could be Christmas every day? Probably not if you, like me, rely on public transport, because on 25 December all the UK trains close down. But this year the long-distance coach operators are providing more intercity links than ever.
And on Boxing Day, ScotRail will offer the highest number of trains for three decades.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast. It's Monday the 27th of November and you are very warmly welcome to my portrayal of what's happening in terms of travel on Christmas Day. It's only four weeks to the big day. Yes, it is. And I've been spending the weekend, because I should get out more, |
| 0:24.0 | but I've been instead looking at what the options are for travel. Traditionally, of course, |
| 0:29.2 | no trains run on the 25th of December. They used to in the older days, particularly in Glasgow, |
| 0:41.0 | but they don't any more. Very few on boxing day, but there has been an amazing surge in the number of long-distance coaches running |
| 0:47.3 | on Christmas Day. And that's, I think, a reflection of two things, partly the move towards |
| 0:52.0 | a 24-7 society. Also, there's a lot of people, |
| 0:56.1 | travellers and transport staff, for whom perhaps 25th of December, isn't a particularly |
| 1:02.0 | significant day. So let's have a look at what the big coach operators are offering. Bear in mind, |
| 1:08.2 | of course, that Flix Bus have come along recently, and they are very, |
| 1:12.4 | very active. They say they're running an extensive network, actually, mostly in Scotland. |
| 1:18.5 | They're going to be racing around Dundee, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Dunflin, Sterling and Perth. |
| 1:26.2 | There are also going to be some cross-border services between London and Scotland, |
| 1:30.0 | and from Scotland to Manchester, Birmingham and Bristol. On the London-Scottland front, |
| 1:37.6 | National Express say that they are going to be putting on extra overnight services from Glasgow and Edinburgh to London. |
| 1:46.3 | That's Christmas Eve and Christmas night. |
| 1:49.8 | Good way of covering the ground, of course, no expenses on accommodation. |
| 1:54.6 | And those are coming in. |
| 1:56.7 | National Express altogether will be running 500 journeys across 34 routes and the most of them are actually airport services between central London and the capital's airports. |
| 2:08.7 | About 100 trips to and from altogether serving Heathrow, almost as many serving Luton and Gatwick. |
| 2:17.9 | There will also be at Stanstedt service there, |
| 2:22.2 | and that will also extend to Cambridge, Norwich and Great Yarmouth. |
| 2:27.8 | Megabus, yep, it's Christmas Day schedule is going to be quite busy. |
... |
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