I am a battery chicken (National Express)

Member Name: ben_83

Product:	National Express
Date:	12/05/01 (177 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: They're cheap, they go anywhere, 'nightmare journey' stories are amusing

Disadvantages: Cramped, slow, noisy, disgusting toilets, annoying passengers, no food or drink on board, no three-point seatbelts, some bad drivers, coach stations are hovels

Well, I'm not, but I'm sure the National Express people mistook me for one. On my twenty-three hour round trip from St. Austell in Cornwall to Bradford in West Yorkshire and back again I was forced into a space that was not big enough to fit me, fed food that surely wasn?t fit for human consumption and made to wallow in my own filth.

However, I digress. Let's go back to the start. I wanted to spend a weekend (travel up on Friday and back on Monday) in Bradford and not being a holder of a full driving licence and, more importantly, not having access to a car, my only options to get there were by train, plane or coach. The train was ruled out thanks to the expense (although it would have cost about the same as the coach if I had booked a month or so in advance) as was the plane. Despite being able to fly to Amsterdam, Barcelona or Paris for the price of a newspaper, it would have cost me over £500 to fly from an airport in the south west to Leeds and Bradford airport. All that was left was the coach. To get from St. Austell bus station to the Bradford Interchange cost me £62 (I think it would have been cheaper if I'd have booked longer in advance - I only bought the tickets four days before I travelled) and incorporated two changes: one with a twenty minute wait in Plymouth and one with a forty-five minute wait in Birmingham. It would take about eleven hours each way.

I am 6' tall. Nothing too strange about that: I'm sure there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people of my height and above. These people should not travel with National Express. Out of the six buses I travelled on, only one of them had adequate legroom and even that was on the low side of adequate. On the rest of them, my knees were wedged very firmly against the seat in front of me leaving them bruised and my legs numb through lack of movement. Headroom is at a premium too. Although the central part of the bus over the aisle has enough height to st
and up in, this is not the case above the seats and twice I hit my head when bending to sit down.

The seats themselves are also very poor. Think commuter train and you'll get the picture. They are very firm, covered in cheap, bristly material and so narrow that squashing up against the person sitting next to you is necessary for the one sitting in the aisle to stay on his or her seat. They also lack three-point seatbelts (at least my six buses did). The armrests are stupidly designed too. When you have the luxury of two seats to yourself, it is impossible to be comfortable stretched out across them because there is a totally unnecessary armrest stuck on the wall of the coach that very painfully digs into your back. Little foldable trays attached to the seat in front, however, are quite useful but unfortunately only featured on two of my six buses.

Of course, all of this would be bearable if the coaches got you to your destination at light speed but, unfortunately, the name National Express is so incorrect it must be liable under the Trade Descriptions Act. In no way could the word 'express' ever be used to describe their coaches. I could have flown to Australia in the time it took me to get to Bradford. I could understand this tardiness if it was only due to restrictive speed limits or something else that National Express has no control over but the main reason why they are so slow is that they seem to spend most of their time in city centres (even ones which they don?t intend to stop in) instead of motorways. Of course, thanks to our roads, coaches are often caught in traffic jams too and there is something very stressful about sitting stationary in a place you want to spend as little time as possible in.

Temperature control, too, is a problem. The only cooling devices on the coaches I was on were overhead fans, without which the bus becomes unbearably hot. However, the fan vent only has two settings - open and closed - open b
eing too cold and closed being too hot. The best compromise I could find was wearing my fleece and switching the fan on. To make things even more difficult, the driver has control of whether the fan is on or not and on more than one occasion I found myself too hot without the option of opening the fan vent. As far as I can see, there is no reason why the fan should not be on at all times.

While deciding which mode of transport I should use to get to Bradford, naturally I checked the opinions other Dooyoo members had written about National Express. I'm afraid I can't remember who advised potential travellers to make sure their buses have toilets but I am going to have to advise the opposite. Don't ever use the toilets in National Express coaches. Apart from the minor details of them being more cramped than train toilets (imagine a room that is no larger than a human being, put a toilet in it and you'll get the picture) and impossible to stay balanced on when the bus is moving through city centres, I had one of my most disgusting experiences towards the end of my first journey. I had successfully wedged myself into the tiny cubicle only to find that the room (if you could call it that) was absolutely filthy and that someone had shoved a load of toilet paper down the bowl. Needing to go reasonably urgently and knowing I'd have at least another hour and a half until I got to Bradford I decided to risk it. To my horror, as I was going, the toilet starts to fill with water and, thanks to toilet paper blockage, there's no where for it to go but over the top of the bowl and all over me. Covered in filthy toilet water and God knows what else, I sheepishly make my way back to my seat and hope no one notices that my trousers are soaking. I know it's not National Express's fault that some idiot decided to block the toilet but surely it should be checked for blockages, and preferably cleaned, every time they let the passengers off to stre
tch their legs.

Needless to say, on the return journey, I took advantage of the toilet facilities every time the bus stopped at a station, just to be safe. Unfortunately, there lies another complaint. I have heard that some National Express coaches stop at motorway service stations but none of mine did. Whatever you say about the motorway services (and I've certainly got a lot to say about them - £3 for a sandwich!?), they are better than bus stations which were the only places my coaches stopped. I had a stop at Plymouth, Bristol and Birmingham bus stations on both the upward and return journeys and they were all horrible, horrible places. Dilapidated and dirty with disgusting toilet facilities (although still better than the ones on the coach) and overpriced food and drink (for these were not available on board any of my coaches), these are places in which I'd like to spend as little time as possible.

While your coach is taking far too long to get you to your chosen destination, you will be forced to endure an unacceptable amount of background noise. Not only are the engines of the vehicles loud in the way only huge diesel engines can be but the fan and the headphone/newspaper/flatulant noises of the other passengers conspire to create an atmosphere akin to that of a classroom before the teacher comes in.

Although it is out of National Express's control, I'd also like to have a quick moan about the other passengers and, more specifically, their mobile phones. If you were that woman on the Paignton to Bradford bus on 27th April 2001 who was talking about Asda pizza to one person for about fifteen minutes (including such choice outtakes as 'ooh! Asda pizza, that sounds nice! What are you having on it? Pepperoni! Ooh, I love pepperoni! Onions? Aye, I like them too...' etc. ad nauseum) and then rang another person to talk to them about Asda pizza ('Hi, I hear your having Asda pizza for tea. I love Asda pizza, me..
.') then you can count yourself lucky because I very nearly jumped out of my seat and force fed you that mobile phone. This was the same woman who watched a portable television WITHOUT HEADPHONES! I can't comprehend how inconsiderate that is. Also, no one seemed to set their mobile phones to silent alerts (which, of course, I did) so I was treated to the most annoying custom ringtones you could imagine including 'Jumpin' Jumpin'' by Destiny's Child and the 'Thunderbirds' theme tune.

These mobile phone shenanigans were not limited to the passengers either. Concurrent with what another Dooyooer said in their National Express opinion (sorry, the name escapes me again), the driver of one of my coaches was using his mobile phone, sans handsfree, for the most mundane calls (for example, to tell his wife he was going to be late home) while he has about forty lives in his hands. Irresponsible? I couldn't possibly comment.

On the positive side (yes, there is one), National Express coaches can take you just about anywhere where there are roads which is more than I can say for main line trains. Be prepared to change buses on the way though. They are also cheap and I found that my 'nightmare journey' stories, especially the ones about the overflowing toilet and Adsa pizza woman, thoroughly entertained my aunt, uncle and cousins with whom I was staying in Bradford.

Although my opinion (and most other people's it seems) recommends that you avoid using National Express at all costs, I understand that it is a necessity for some people. For this reason, I have compiled a short survival guide for those of you who have to travel by coach.


~~NATIONAL EXPRESS SURVIVAL GUIDE~~

1. Take entertainment. If your journey is a long one like mine then take as many things to entertain you as possible. Newspapers, books, personal stereos and Game Boys are all excellent choices and should keep you
from getting bored while your bus takes ages to get you to your destination.

2. Take food. Stops are at a premium and there's no guarantee that they will come when you are hungry. Also, when you do stop, bus and service stations are ridiculously expensive and the food they serve is not of the highest quality.

3. Keep your double seat (necessary for the tall). Securing two seats for yourself is just a matter of making sure you?re near the front of the queue to get on the bus but keeping them is relies on your cunning. Once you have your two seats, the way to keep them is to look as unappealing as possible. When people get on the bus, they scan it for an empty double seat. If there are none available, they sit next to the least threatening person they can find. It is imperative you are not this person. The first thing you must do to stop the new passengers sitting next to you is put a bag or your legs on the seat you aren't sitting on. Next, you must either look out the window (do not make eye contact), try to look mean or, best of all, pretend to be asleep. No one will try and wake you to move your bag/legs unless the seat next to you is the last one on the bus. I hesitate to recommend using this method as it's not very charitable and I'd hate to think someone was using it on me. Still, after eleven hours on a National Express coach my sense of charity was long gone.

4. Take advantage of your stops. Every time the driver lets you off the bus, go to the toilet even if you don't need to. You never know how long it will take you to get to your next break and you don?t want to be forced to use the on board facilities.

5. Dress for the weather. As I mentioned earlier, temperature is hard to control on National Express coaches. Make sure you dress appropriately.

6. Silence your phone. Either turn it off or, if you are expecting an important call, switch it to silent or vibrating alert. You don't want to r
isk letting an annoying ringtone go off if there's a chance you're on the same bus as me. Unpleasantness will happen.

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