Saturday 4 April 2015

My National Express experience

Having first time landing in a foreign land on my own, the first thing I had to do was find my way from London Heathrow to Bristol. There are multiple ways to do this, the train, the bus, and on foot (yeah, no.) 

Just take the train! Well normally that would be my first option but I decided not to do that because taking a train required me to take a tube east into London Town, change onto national rail and head back west to Bristol. The time taken on the tube from Heathrow to London Central is slightly less than an hour, so I figured I wanted to go with the fastest way possible, and that was by bus.

Bristol is actually only slightly over 2 hours west of London by bus, and after hours of research there are two options : Megabus & National Express. Megabus can be a lot cheaper at times but again, its bus stop is situated in London, and I just didn't want to go back and forth. So that left me with National Express which happens to have busses leaving directly from Heathrow.



I actually bought my ticket online before hand at £19. BUT, my flight landing was delayed due to air traffic and I arrived an hour later MISSING my bus. Fortunately, National Express has an office right outside its Heathrow bus stops and I managed to amend my ticket time for an extra £10. So in total, I paid the same price as on the spot tickets. 

National Express Ticket Office

National Express interior

Not long later my bus arrived and might I say, it was a very comfortable 2 hour ride. The bus was on time, if not early, driving at a constant speed. I could tell they probably train their drivers really well. They didn't have things like Wifi and sockets on every seat but compared to what I'm used to, it is a luxury. 

I've read some mixed reviews on National Express before. But hey, I'd say give it a go because it's value for money and convenient. 

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