Northumberland using only public transportation?

Mustlovedogs, I think it would be harder to see everything you want using public transportation. It's probably do-able but I don't know if it would be worth it. Others may have different opinions, though. :) That said, there is public transportation available - you can find some info here: https://www.northumberlandcoastaonb.org/getting-around/

Have you thought about taking a tour? There are many good tour companies that explore that region and I'm sure other posters will be able to offer some recommendations. I know that Pam, who frequently posts here, recently did a tour with Seymour Travels that covers northern England. And I'm sure there are others. In fact, you'd probably see more with a tour than you would driving as it's hard to see the scenery when you're keeping your eyes on the road (and I speak from experience). :)

Most of these places are not too bad for transport- Rothbury (last time I looked))- for Cragside even had a 2 hourly bus from Newcastle.
Kielder- there is no effective public transport from there, except on a Sunday (maybe)
What survives is of the 1 day a week variety.
I am 99.9% sure that the above timetable is out of date (pre Covid)- I can't find the 714 on the Arriva or Nexus websites and Adapt NE say that their bus is now Friday only and on a dial a ride basis.

If you get there don't miss the ferry on the reservoir- that takes you to some great walking opportunities. Also Kielder is a very small village with very few facilities.
It is worth going there 1000%, but you must be prepared.
You could go to Bellingham on the bus and try to get a taxi from there. But my advice would be to bite the bullet and get a taxi from Hexham Station on a weekday.

Holy Island is a problem as Borders Buses no longer run the #477 bus daily ever, so you are working round tides and when they can be bothered to run the bus- every 3 or 4 days.
I would strongly suggest staying in Seahouses for a couple of nights. Several boat operators run turn up and go Farne Island boat trips from the Harbour, but Billy Shiels MBE also runs a Holy Island landing cruise when tides allow. You get about 2 hours on the Island then return via the Farnes- although you also want a dedicated trip there (hopefully a landing one, depending on Avian flu) to really appreciate the islands.
From Mardee's 2022 link for the #477 to Holy Island-

During the summer holidays there is a twice-a-day Monday to Saturday service.

That is not true in 2023. We have another forum member who has been caught with that statement, and is having to use a taxi from Berwick to stay on the island for 2 nights. She thought she had a bus back off the island, unfortunately that plan is also unravelling currently.

I don't know of a comprehensive timetable for the county.
Most services are run by Arriva, but Go North East run those in the Hexham, Hadrian's Wall and Bellingham area.

Cragside- I have just looked- 2 buses a day in each direction on the X14 now stop at the house-https://bustimes.org/services/x14-newcastle-to-morpeth

Holy Island- many contradictory sources (giving different operators and different timetables) say that there is a shuttle bus from the Car Park to the Castle for the less able (able bodied people can walk it in 10 minutes).
We have had confirmation today from the Castle that the bus is not running in 2023.

We went to northern England about six years ago in September and did not rent a car. Our trip included Durham and Haltwhistle in Northumberland plus the Lake District, Yorkshire Dales and North Yorkshire Moors. We took a few trains, but relied mostly on the buses. We had a great experience and found the buses to be comfortable and reliable.

We were just in the Peak District for four nights and found the buses to be much less reliable. One bus (from a train station) didn’t show up after 25 minutes so we took a cab. We missed another bus because it came ten minutes earlier than the schedule at the bus stop and online. A driver for this line told us the schedule had changed. He also told us another bus we were going to take was no longer running. We were a nervous wreck about taking the bus back to the train station, but we’re unable to get a cab so we crossed our fingers. Thankfully, that one showed up (just seven minutes late). Are these problems a post-Covid issue common to all bus companies or a problem with the particular bus company in the Peak District? I don’t know. We are in Scotland now and a little nervous about coming back through Yorkshire Dales where we will be relying on buses again.

You should be prepared to supplement the bus with taxis. But don’t assume you can call one at will. There were lots of taxis waiting at the Chesterfield train station, but when we attempted to line up a taxi early one morning by calling the night before, we struck out. Two companies didn’t answer the phone, one said they couldn’t get a driver that early (7:30), and one said they only do school trips on the early morning. If you are going to use a taxi, arrange it well ahead.

I still think you can do it, but you can’t get everywhere, you need to plan very carefully, and you need to have backup plans (or at least be flexible) if something falls through.

I just love northern England! It is worth spending the time.

Such wonderful and thoughtful responses, thank you. Combining taxis with buses and trains is encouraging news. I am sure it will take more planning than just jumping in the car, though!

The observatory would be really neat to see, but I don’t know how for example a late night star gazing program work (I read one starts at 8 and ends st 11) without having a secured taxi to pick us up.

I’m going to start doing some more research on these bus links and timetables- thanks to all of you for posting them!! It’s probably over a year away, but I’ve got the bug lol!

Mardee I have thought about a tour, given the fact that we’ll need transportation. We did really well going independently to London, but that’s a totally different type trip with everything so close together. I will check into them more soon!

For your trip to Hadrian's Wall, I'd consider booking Peter Carney, who is recommended in Rick Steves' England guidebook.
https://www.hadrianswall-walk.com/
https://www.hadrianswall-walk.com/?page_id=1902

Carlisle TIC use Great Guided Tours run by Carol Donnelly MBE- https://www.greatguidedtours.co.uk/

She does all the officially organised tours- but also does private tours.

Much as I love Northumberland, many parts are impossible by public transport, and especially so post covid. Many services have been cut back hard with fewer services running.

What is your concern about driving? If you are wanting to get to places like **Kielder (well worth it!), Holy Island, Cheviot will be a lot easier if you have a car. Places like Alnmouth, Alnwick and Rothbury (Cragside) are reasonably do-able by public transport but you will need to check out bus timetables and be prepared for long waits between buses.

Northumberland is a large county and quite sparsely populated over much of it. There just isn’t the demand for public transport. You will need to prebook taxis.

** We first visited Kielder nearly 50 years ago and public transport up the North Tyne Valley was dodgy even then! The bus up the valley was run by the owner of the garage in Bellingham and he was notorious for not bothering to go into the smaller settlements if he didn't think there would be anyone there to pick up. I remember standing in Falstone waiting and waiting for the bus which never turned up. We could see it on the main road completely ignoring the Falstone turn. The person we were staying gave the driver a real earful when she next saw him...

@carroll You are correct that bus services have been cut back massively. It’s the same combination of factors that has stymied a lot of the UK: covid when service use dropped, Brexit which has made it difficult to recruit enough drivers, and huge cuts in government spending since the financial crash. A lot of rural bus services are subsidised by local authorities as they are not financially viable otherwise.

Wasleys, I know it seems silly for a visitor to the UK to think that driving is something to be avoided, but I just cannot commit to wanting to try it. I know myself- at 20 something and more- I would have been all in, but at 60 and change I am changing in my driving patterns, even here in the states. I hate busy highways, nighttime driving on less than brightly lit roads gives me the white knuckles. So, as much as I’d like to drive, it’s not in the cards.

Alnmouth looks lovely, and seems to have good transit options. I was wondering about Rothbury, too. Maybe we could get a cab to the observatory? HF Holidays offers a seven night Northumberland Discovery tour that looks interesting. Has anyone used them before?
https://www.hfholidays.co.uk/holidays-and-tours/northumberland-discovery-tour-7

That HF Holiday is a bit unusual in that it is staying at a commercial hotel, rather than one of their own houses, which are purely HF.

For the Observatory you'll absolutely need a cab if you are going for the night time viewing.

You are 20 miles from Bellingham, about 35 miles from Hexham.

You have to get back to Bellingham at least for transport in the morning. Most of the places the Observatory recommends are either in between Kielder and Bellingham, or even north of Kielder in the remote borders.

By googling there seems to be a company called Bellingham Taxis based in, well, Bellingham. Pre book them.

Booking.com has several possible places to stay in Bellingham.

BTW all bus fares until late next year in England will be a flat rate of £2.50 (£2 currently until late October 2023), no matter the distance if you are on a through service- a Government scheme.

I can only comment on visiting Hadrian's Wall without a car, which I did last month. I took the train to Bardon Mill, stayed at The Bowes Hotel right near the train station, and then used that as a base to walk/hike to the wall from Houseteads Fort to Twice Brewed and all areas in between. This involved many hours of walking, including some steep uphill sections, and mostly exposed to the sun, so it may not be for everyone. From what I saw, there are buses that cover some of this route, but they don't run often and will not take you all the way to the wall. I did see some small tour buses, so if you don't want to do as much walking as I did, you may want to research the various tour companies that go to Hadrian's Wall.

HF Holidays are long established. Without your own transport, that HF holiday in Alnmouth would do the job. Fly to Newcastle, train to Alnmouth and your transport is taken care of. Alnmouth is an excellent place to stay - pubs for meals and a huge beach.

The observatory is not really practicable without a car.

Do visit Newcastle if you can. https://englandsnortheast.co.uk/

Carroll our experience in the Peak District was the same. Buses were often quite late. And we were stranded in Eyam for three hours when the scheduled bus just didn’t turn up. Eventually we and another couple shared a taxi, but it’s not easy to get a taxi in some of those small towns. Chatting to locals, they confirmed that this is not an unusual occurrence.

Ramblin, i think I am beginning to see that the observatory visit may need to wait till another time. I think if we stuck to seeing more of the coast and its sites, we’d be happy.

If we were to do this on our own (the jury is out on a tour as of now) it would make even more sense. I am curious though, would flying into and out of Edinburgh be possible and then taking a train to Newcastle be preferable than Manchester? It seems about an hour closer when I plug it into the search function of trainline.

Then we could maybe do a day In Newcastle, take a guided tour of Hadrian’s wall and head by x14 Arriva bus to to Cragside and from there to Alnmouth for other sites.

Still in the very early thought process of this!

I was thinking the same about choice of airport, albeit for a different reason, that there is a regular train service from Edinburgh Waverley to Alnmouth (some of which trains continue to London KC)

Edinburgh is far better for Newcastle by train IMO as you have a far wider choice of operators and times- from MAN it is hourly, solely by Trans Pennine. From Edinburgh there are 4 operators- LNER, TPE, Cross Country and LUMO, so the frequency is around 4 per hour.
Whether it is worth connecting at say Amsterdam or Paris for Newcastle is another thought I was having. NCL airport website lists the one stop US connections which are possible. The only direct US flight is to Orlando (mainly due to The Mouse).

I am of the view that the Observatory can be done, anything can if you throw money at it, but it seems a big diversion in terms of this overall trip. Bellingham is another of those unknown places to Americans, quite a nice village with a little museum and several good pubs, and the Upper North Tyne Valley is attractive. But that is more a diversion before or after a Hadrian's Wall Visit.
As far as Bellingham the #880 bus is quite good, it is beyond which is a struggle. Bellingham is actually a viable base for exploring the wall.

What is the attraction of Kielder Observatory? All of the area is a Dark Sky area. Bellingham is a delightful small village and in the past we have stopped there many times. The bakery used to be very good. Go and find The Lang Pack in the churchyard. On a clear night, arrange for a taxi to drive you up the B6320 towards the house at Hareshaw Head (about 5-6 miles). This is in the middle of nowhere and you will get fantastic views of the stars. there are so many it is almost impossible to identify the constellations...

The unreliability of the Kielder buses must have been a local tradition. Some years later than Wasleys (but still probably 30 years or more ago) the first time I tried to get there the bus (by then run by Howard Snaith with an ancient characterful vehicle) left before the connection by the then Tyne Valley Coaches arrived into Bellingham- it seems that all the farmers wives who had come down in the morning were back, so why wait in case a stranger arrives?
Next time Howard also played fast and loose with the route just as years earlier. I think he knew where people wanted to board by "bush telegraph", like the earlier version of the bus. It was the same story on his route to Otterburn- what's a timetable? By then I knew to get there 2 hours early on TVC, but because of the lax attitude I never did complete the Pennine Way north of Bellingham. I'd done it all the way from Edale in the Peak District, but the last two legs were my nemesis.
And another time I tried to connect in Kielder to the then bus to Hawick. That time we had been busy setting down people at their homes and chatting- a true community bus. Unfortunately Telford's for the bus to Hawick ran a more professional operation, and ran to timetable!
Howard was later banned from the road due to bad maintenance records, and never got back to local bus services after the ban was lifted.
In the days of the train to Kielder and north to Saughtree for the Border Counties Railway then the Waverley line everything ran so much better!

I did enjoy your story isn31c - it took me right back. I'd forgotten the name and he was a real character. I remember he was banned for poor maintenance of his vehicles, which lead to a lot of local gossip at the time. Happy days....

As much as I would love to be a part of a local transportation organization for all of the fun described in isn31c’s post, I’m going to really need to determine if we want to do a self guided visit to Northumberland. That 7 night HF Holiday tour looks pretty decent and ticks a lot of boxes we want to see. I’m just not sure how much we’d like not being able to be as independent with a tour, because we’ve never done one.

For our London trip I planned periodically for about a year (don’t judge 😉), had my little black folder with tabs and itinerary and tickets and RS’s pages all inserted- I’m a former schoolteacher, what can I say? Lol
I enjoyed doing it, and was super proud of myself for the way everything turned out - well, except for the almost wrong train snafu!

However, now that it is done, there is some interest on my part to the thought of letting a travel company do all that and just showing up, but then the thought of one day just getting a cab to take us to Bellingham and seeing the Dark Sky area like Wesley’s suggested makes me pause and think we’ll try and plan to go on our own again.

In terms of bus reliability, is the Arriva X18 pretty reliable? As far as I can tell it would be a good bus route to use if one were to go on his/ her own. I looked up taxi services in Alnmouth, which I think would be a good base; most have really good reviews and are well- established.

Thanks for sharing all your advice- and wonderful stories!

Yes, to bring us back to the present day and the task in hand Arriva's operations, be it the X14, X18 or one of their other services are pretty good and as reliable as any bus company is in the Post Covid days of driver shortages. They will reduce their high frequency Tyneside services rather than lower frequency ones.
Arriva are a multi national company with both train and bus operations in many if not most Western European companies.

Keep checking their website for service changes as the time of your trip draws closer- https://www.arrivabus.co.uk/north-east

And this page details their North East Regionwide Ticket for £31.50 per week (=£4.50/day) which may be of use. https://www.arrivabus.co.uk/buy-tickets/region/north-east/zone/ane033

For service updates they have a twitter account referenced here- https://www.arrivabus.co.uk/service-alerts-landing/location/north-east

I think you'll find Alnmouth a lovely place.
The HF hotel in a converted granary sounds an interesting place to stay. HF are not exactly a tour. If you want to join each day's activities you can.
Or just strike out on your own.
A lot of the benefits without being herded around.
My post about HF may have been mis-understood. They used to run many more of their own houses than they do now, so have to use commercial hotels to supplement their programme these days. My father first used the Holiday Fellowship [their Sunday name] way back in 1947 in the Peak District, and was always very happy with them.
They gave him his first taste of country walking, a love of rambling which lasted for his lifetime and is in my DNA as well.
They were set up in 1913 with working class ideals of getting people out from the mills into the open air. The background principles were then (not now) quite socialist.
They have many glowing reviews on this forum, and I am sure will suit you fine.

re: going with booking a tour to get to see what is on your list.

Talk to the company and see if they have built in 'open' time within the 7 days.
I'll be on a 9-day tour in Aug, and I have several afternoons and a couple of open evenings where I can do what I want.
I won't know until it happens if this is enough open time for me, yet it is at least a start.

Thanks for the suggestion blm2023. For that tour I linked there is one free day listed on the itinerary, which I liked to see. We may tack on a day at the front or back of the trip if I thought we needed more, but I will ask about flexibility within as well.

Reupping this post because after talking about the possibility of driving with my two travel companions- my son and daughter- they feel they could drive while I help them navigate. One is early 30s, the other late 20s. I would love to be able to have the freedom of a car.

I do want to ask you all about the narrow roads there. A friend of mine - who is a regal British lady in her early 70s- has sworn off driving in the Cotswolds because of the fear she and her husband have developed due to the winding narrow roads there and the crowds they experienced at last visit. Her stories do make me hedge a bit. Are the roads in Northumberland a bit easier to navigate?

Mustlovedogs, I have driven in the Cotswolds, Northumberland and Scotland and I can tell you that the first two are WAY easier than Scotland. Yes, there are narrow winding roads but British drivers are very polite and you just have to watch for oncoming traffic.

I recently posted something about driving in the Cornwall/Devon area and that it scared me a bit because of the very high hedges there, its popularity and the rocky cliffs. But several people posted that when you're visiting Cornwall off season, it's much quieter and easier. Since I will be there in late March and early April, I'm not worried about it now.

The Cotswolds is a smallish area and one that is heavy infested with tourists in the summer, so that right there tells you something. Northumberland is not as crowded with tourists and is a much larger place. So I really do not think you will have the issues that your friend had.

Thanks Marlee. That is comforting to know. We’re hoping to go in 2025, undetermined season. I love spring and early summer trips, but would like to also consider fall. I’m going to do some reading on that topic. If anyone wants to give their thoughts about the best time to go, please do!

England is beautiful in the fall. I still remember my first trip there and how gorgeous the moors were. All around me were hills covered with purple heather and gorse and green valleys as far as I could see. I was there in late September and loved that season.

Next year I'm going in late March through the end of April and it will be interesting to see the difference. But I don't think you can go wrong with the fall.

Northumberland is a lot quieter than the Cotswolds and you won't have to contend with the coach trip traffic either.

Thank you, very much for this post, as my husband and I were just talking about the pros and cons of public transportation in this area (for a future trip).

Mardee, what was specifically challenging for driving in Scotland? My husband has over 4000 miles logged in UK England and Ireland, but our daughter and partner want to have their first experiences driving on our UK trip, which is mostly in Scotland (also Heathrow to York-Edinburgh). We will be driving Stirling to Invarary to Oban to through Glencoe to Scottish Crannog Centre to Edinburgh.

Thanks.

I think you’ll find Northumberland easy enough to drive around. It’s very sparsely populated compared to most of England and the roads are really pretty quiet all the time. There aren’t lots of tourists either. I love Northumberland. It is well worth visiting for its natural beauty and history. Just don’t bank on good weather.

I took a day tour from Newcastle to Holy Island and Bamburgh Castle last month. It was easily done and solved any transport issues. I have done the Hadrian’s Wall area on public transport and it works great. I do suggest hiring Peter Carney as a guide for the day at Hadrians Wall. He will tailor the tour to your interests and provide transport along the wall that day. The other days simply take the bus.

The key to a successful trip is to put together logical combinations geographically and then utilize multiple sources to get around. Day tours can be very helpful!

I took a day tour from Newcastle to Holy Island and Bamburgh Castle last month.

Carol, what company was this with?

For anyone who has done Hadrian's Wall before 2023 it is a bit more challenging to do this year by bus, because the AD122 is now just two hourly even in high summer, rather than hourly as in the past.

Mardee, what was specifically challenging for driving in Scotland?

CanAmCherie, for me, it was the mountains in the Scottish Highlands that were very challenging. I have a fear of heights, so some of those narrow, winding roads that went up into the mountains and hills were pretty scary for me. It wasn’t so much driving on the left or even the single track roads. Mostly because of the heights. When I was driving on the mainland in Scotland, I didn’t have any problem. I probably should’ve clarified that above. For other people, it may not be as bad. 😊