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Heathrow <-> Bath - no more direct coach?

Posted by (South Carolina, USA) on

I made reservations several weeks ago to ride from Heathrow to Bath and back direct. Yesterday I received multiple e-mail regarding my itinerary. The trip to Bath is unchanged but I have two updated itineraries for the return trip. The first is leaves Bath an hour earlier than the original but is still direct. The second leaves Bath for Bristol with an hour before the next coach to the airport. My account on the NE web page shows the second, earlier-departure direct, but it's tagged as 'cannot be amended yet'.

I did a quick check and it -appears- direct service between the two ends sometime during my stay. I'm not surprised to see schedule changes, and this comes with plenty of notice to work around it. I mention this primarily because many discussions reference the coach between Heathrow and Bath as being direct, vs having to change trains. For me, the direct service was the primary reason I chose the coach in the first place. If I have to connect anyway, I might as well take the train.

Would someone more familiar with the ticketing web pages see if that's actually what's happened?

Posted by
5792 posts

I don't believe that we know your travel dates, to be able to check this. I think you are arriving on 23 May (but not sure), but there doesn't seem to be a finish date that I can immediately see on your previous posts.

Posted by
84 posts

Well, duh! That would probably help. Arrival is May 21st, departure on the 31st.

I'm not looking for help changing my booking or travel mode. I bring this up so that if the direct option is indeed gone, we won't be misinforming people when they ask.

Posted by
5792 posts

I'm not seeing any timetable change, either for your specific dates or for any date looking way forward into July.
I had that happen to me once when going to Penzance- two buses ran at the same time overnight on different routes. With fair notice, I got bounced off one coach onto the other with a 2 hour difference in arrival times - as one coach had over sold to intermediate destinations. As it happens the time difference was in my favour.
Because this is a rail strike day I am wondering if they are just trying to juggle available resources. The Bath coaches are single deckers, the Bristol ones are often double deckers, thus greater capacity.
The leg to Bristol you are on a 'code share' double decker service bus- the X39 anyway. You would have no reserved seat on that leg anyway and I would expect the X39 to be very busy that day.
So you may just want to accept the hour earlier direct bus.
It's probably easier to hire in extra coaches, if that's what they need to do, from Bristol, rather than from Bath- as Bristol is staffed and has lots of room in the Coach Station.

Posted by
84 posts

So you may just want to accept the hour earlier direct bus.

Yeah, that wouldn't be a problem, but...

The reply I received to my e-mail says

Unfortunately we cannot assist you with this from here as we don't have access to the booking system to check this for you so although the latest email should have the most up to date journey details

The lastest e-mail is the one with the one-hour layover in Bristol. That puts us in Heathrow at 10:05 (instead of the original 9:15) for a 12:15 flight. That's closer than I want to cut it. We dislike changing hotels (and really didn't want to stay in London) but we may be better off spending the last night somewhere with a direct rail shot to the airport. Fortunately, we don't have anything planned for the last two days so we have flexibility.

Posted by
5792 posts

I'm sorry to say this but that is BS from National Express.
The early bus is at 0545 direct arriving at 0755. Then yours at 0627 to Bristol, for the 0800 coach forward.
The fares have shot up during the afternoon. Earlier the 0400 bus was priced at £1, now its £35.
Leaving that aside I can see that there are at least 15 seats currently available on the 0545 bus.
I've just made a dummy booking for one of those seats, got all the way through to the point of pressing the pay by pay pal button. It even accepted my senior coachcard discount of £11.70

Posted by
84 posts

Thanks! This is a once-in-a-lifetime, 40th anniversary trip, so the price doesn't matter. I rebooked us on the 0545. I now have two ticket numbers for this hop. I should be able to cancel the one going through Bristol but if I can't, we going to throw away a lot more than £90 on this trip.

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