The X Factor

For further evidence of cheating, though of a rather more scandalous nature, see under Earl Grey, below.

We chet because the first part of the journey to Seahouses was by car, the second – from Darlington to Newcastle – by train, the third by Metro to the Haymarket and only the fourth by bus.

JOINING THE DOUBLE DECKERS: X stands for express as the X18 wends its way to Seahouses.

Mind, the fourth more than made up for it. It takes longer to get from Newcastle to Seahouses by bus than from Newcastle to London by rail and the bus, note well, is the X18.

X, presumably, stands for express.

What of the slow bus, the daily dawdler, the bus that not only stops at every lamp post, but cocks its hind leg against it, too?

To encompass the route from Newcastle to Berwick takes exactly four hours. To Seahouses is a minute over three. This is the bus that by comparison makes the eternal X1 from Darlington to Tow Law seem just a glimpse and gone forever.

It’s a route which may most kindly be termed discursive, back and forth upon itself like a two-year-old with a crayon. We’re on the 10.03; wouldn’t miss it.

AN infrequent bus traveller, the lady of the house is apprehensive.

“What if I’m like the princess and the pea?” she asks, an unfortunate reference because “pee” is a reminder that it’s an awfully long way without, what the Americans term, a comfort break.

Other essentials generally lacking on Arriva double deckers include a couple of real ale fonts, a DVD of the previous evening’s Coronation Street, and, ideally, a double bed from which to watch them.

We bound up the stairs, nonetheless, bag the front seats like excited kids on a Sunday School outing.

The day’s miserable, the window cleaned with George Formby frequency.

The Northumberland countryside is so flooded, the cloud so low, that May Day seems almost appropriate.

Much of the time it’s impossible to see much through the steamed-up windows. This is the condensed version.

END OF THE LINE: Seahouses

Listed stops include Amble Fourways – which sounds a bit like something from a ghastly gastropub menu – Craster Heugh and Longhoughton NAAFI, though it may be very many years since there’s been a NAAFI in Longhoughton.

They also include “HM Prison Northumberland, turning circle” about which there is something quaint, almost redemptory.

Is this Mrs Teresa May’s answer to the medieval penitent stool, the place to which incorrigible cons come to confess the error of their ways, not just the road to Druridge Bay but to Damascus, also?

Sadly no one’s in sight. None gets on and none alights. The laddies may not be for turning after all.

NEWCASTLE to Berwick also features in Bus-Pass Britain, a 2011 paperback detailing 50 of the country’s most agreeable transports of delight.

They include the service from Bedale to Hawes (“a magical bus route”), the Moorsbus from Northallerton via Osmotherley to Helmsley and the 93 from Whitby to Scarborough (“a feast of some of England’s most awe-inspiring scenery.”) There are also apologies to Weardale Motor Services, whose route up the dale from Bishop Auckland should really have been included, but was squeezed out because the book had standing room only.

North Sunderland Harbour

Here’s the rum thing though. Back in 2011, the Northumberland coast route – “a bus with attitude, views that stretch forever” – was numbered 501 and took three hours and seven minutes to travel the same route from Tyne to Tweed.

Since the introduction of the Xfactor, it takes almost an hour longer.

With or without a free bus pass, it’s still well worth it, mind.

AMONG the more improbable things that may be adduced from the Arriva timetable website, or at least by putting two and two together for the first time, is that the Earl Grey, who from his 135ft column commands the best view in central Newcastle, is the same Earl Grey who was suited to a tea. Charles Grey was Prime Minister from 1830-34. The family lived in Howick Hall, 24 bus minutes from Alnwick and eight from Longhoughton NAAFI, where doubtless they served Earl Grey in abundance.

Nearby is the village of Embleton, where we once spent a long and lavish weekend after Thirsk electrical dealer Harry Whitton unexpectedly left £500 in his will in appreciation of rendered journalist enjoyment.

None has done so since.

WE’VE nearly two hours in Seahouses – a couple of coal-fired pints in the nautical, but very nice Old Ship, a plate of fish and chips in Pinnacles, a stroll around the harbour.

Pinnacles is also offering “Ice cream specials”, buy one get one free. It is an offer unlikely to be repeated in August.

The Farne Islands trips are cancelled because of the wintry weather, the village – if not the bar of the Old Ship – is almost deserted.

The etymology of Seahouses is no doubt obvious but what of North Sunderland, the village from which it is barely divisible and which gives its name to the harbour? Even in a straight line and not by X18, it’s an awfully long way from Sunderland.

Why not North Tynemouth, or North Seaton Carew, perhaps?

The sign says that it’s 48 miles to Newcastle. Since the timetabled journey is nine minutes longer than the northbound leg, it may be that going back is uphill. Is there any bus journey in the land where for four miles – Alnwick to Lesbury – buses headed for opposite destinations not only travel the same way, but follow one another in convoy, as if afraid to go out on their own?

Ninety minutes into the return, a sign says “Seahouses 16 miles.”

Happily the rain’s stopped, though the manifest problem about joining the high-ups on the top deck is that there are more bumps than a phrenologists’ convention. We’re back into Haymarket bus station at 18.08.

As they used to say in the old Settlers commercials, the rain home brings Xpress relief.

EARL Grey, at any rate, is said to have been given highly-scented tea by a Chinese mandarin, loved it, and used bergamot oil from the hall gardens to create his own infusion. .

Though he also championed the Great Reform Bill of 1832 he may second-best be remembered, however, for his pursuit and eventual affair with the married Duchess of Devonshire, who bore him a son.

“The affair did him little harm,” says Wikipedia, self-evidently, though the Duke might have done given half a chance. The child was brought up as Grey’s sister.

Finally married, Grey and his wife, Mary, produced ten sons and six daughters. “Mary was frequently pregnant,” adds Wiki, though that may be self-evident, too.

His retirement to Howick is said to have been “contented if somewhat fretful”. In one state or another he died, aged 81, in 1845.