Megabus Smegabus

Aye, you can fuck of an' all smiley

Despite its low low fares making it the choice of conveyance for the poor/students and that it could provide a green (ish), cheap and sensible solution to nationwide travel (well, intermediate distance travel anyway), I’ve had enough of the Megabus and coach travel in general.

This may well stem from when I was 17 and coming back to South Wales from the Midlands. Not only did this particular journey take ages and feature a stop of more than an hour in Birmingham, it also occurred when the nation happened to be in the grip of one of its epic downpours. In trying to negotiate a very large puddle on the motorway the bus managed to flood the luggage bit and soak all my stuff in muddy water. It wrecked a whole load of my clothes and it was still bloody late. Not happy.

It could also have something to do with ludicrously long coach trips of well over 24 hours through continental Europe while on school ski trips.

Anyway, since then I’ve been an infrequent coach traveller, preferring the train if possible. But I’ve now had 2 fucking horrendous coach journeys courtesy of Megabus over the last few months and I’m turning my back on coaches.

The first of these journeys from hell followed an awesome weekend in London. It was a truly epic one. Coming back from the American Football in Wembley on the Sunday night I knew there were no trains running that late that I could guarantee catching, so had booked the ‘red eye’ leaving at half 11 and arriving at about 3 on Monday morning. Fine, I thought, I’ll catch some zeds on the way back. It started badly as the match had finished early so I’d rocked up with over an hour to spare so was forced to hang around lying on the floor with 3 heavy nights on the booze, all day drinking on Sunday and crashing on random sofas kicking in. When I finally got on the bus it was packed, cramped, roasting hot, smelt terrible and I had some metaller kid blasting shitty death metal at ear drum shattering decibels sitting next to me. Needless to say the experience was fucking awful and I didn’t sleep at all.

However today took the biscuit.

I was heading down for an interview for a job in London. I’d looked at trains but they were too expensive due to the late notice and the fact I had to travel at peak time, so I decided Megabus would have to do. I arrived in plenty of time, but the bus came 15 minutes late. As soon as I’d boarded the driver announced that there was a problem with the electrics so they had to change the bus in Cwmbran. I was just thinking I could have had an hours extra kip if I’d stayed at my parents house. So we’re now super late and the new bus’ heating doesn’t work so it’s freezing. We then get caught in traffic all the way down, especially in central London.

Now, I ain’t daft. I’d made contingencies for this. I thought half hour delay was expectable and reasonable so had made provision for that. Unfortunately we rocked up 45 minutes late, prompting a sprint to Victoria rail station as I searched the TfL website on my phone trying to figure how the fuck I can get to Catford in 40 minutes. What ensued was a madcap dash across London with an apologetic phone call to my prospective employers en route. Not exactly ideal prep for a job interview.

Seriously, Megabus can suck my ass.

But I’ll forgive it a touch if I get the job as then I won’t be poor enough to have to resort to using it.