Today we took the 09:10 Southampton to London Greyhound. First impressions were very favourable, nice looking coach, very well fitted internally with lots of leg room and a decent recline on the seat. Beats Megabus by a mile and NatEx by 1/2 mile! Driver was friendly on boarding but omitted totally to make any announcements either over the PA, or if it had failed, by simply addressing the passengers. We left Southampton on time and got to the M25 junction with the M3 in good time and then came the first surprise, we carried on up the M3 to take the A316 into London. If I’d been driving I’d have taken the M26 and M4 route at this time of day, after 10:00am. We hadn’t even got to Twickenham before we were reduced to a stop start crawl which lasted all the way to Richmond where the problem became apparent – roadworks. However, it was very apparent that these roadworks hadn’t suddenly appeared overnight, they were everywhere with large holes in the road from which cables sprouted and hundreds of cones. I can’t imagine why the driver took this route when he must have known of the roadworks. Consequently we hadn’t even reached Chiswick by the time we should have been in Victoria :-( When we finally arrived in Victoria again there were no announcements or apology for the very late arrival.

The return journey was much better, the driver greeted everyone over the PA, detailed where the emergency exits were, told us where the fire extinguishers were, asked us to use the seat belts and added that there was a toilet at the rear and generally did a very professional job getting us back to Southampton just 5 minutes late.