AS the Campaign for Real Ale would cheerfully confirm, the John Bull in Alnwick is one of the finest pubs in North-East England.

The Tanners Arms, half a mile away, is also pretty canny, ivy covered and coal fired. It’s in the Good Beer Guide, too.

It was possibly unwise, nonetheless, for Ronnie Chambers and his dad to have a couple here and a couple there and then to head back to Newcastle on the X18 bus.

Ronnie’s 50, his dad a bit older. They live at Blackhall, on the Durham coast. Hadn’t they heard of the X18? Didn’t they know that the X stood not for express but for excruciating? They sure know now.

“After an hour we were still within ten miles of Alnwick,” writes Ronnie, in some anguish. “”We’d been through every village in between and on what appeared to be C roads.

“By the time we got to Morpeth my dad was beside himself and I had to ask the driver if we could answer a call of nature.”

It’s a sorry story, but really only half of it. The X18 runs from Newcastle to Berwick, a straight-line journey of 60 miles which, more discursively, takes five minutes short of four hours – a sort of extreme masochism, like buying a St James’ Park season ticket.

Clearly in for the long haul, the column decides to go the whole way.

BUT what to take for the journey? A Taylor’s pie and a good book, certainly, but what of thermal underwear, sleeping bag and (whisper it) incontinence pads?

It’s Haymarket bus station, 9.30am last Thursday. A big clock dominates the concourse: one side says five to ten and the other quarter past one. It’s hard to tell if it’s fast or, like the X18, arthritically slow. Either way, it’s been like that since time immemorial.

“In the interests of health and safety,” says the PA, “please do not feed the pigeons.” Not on Taylor’s pie, anyway.

The double decker Arriva X18 leaves at 10 03, stand Q. “Gets you there quickly, comfortably and reliably,” says the timetable booklet for the route. It’s lying.

A board lists other destinations: Blagdon, Benfield, Billy Mills. The 309 goes to New York but probably not the Big Apple. Buses have names like Cobalt Clipper; ours has something on the side about coast and castles but should really be the Berwick Ranger.

There’s an elderly chap in the Q queue with a leather cap and lapels full of badges – the worst sort – and a Geordie couple in trackie bottoms intent on total immersion. “It doesn’t matter how long it teks, the pubs’ll still be oppen,” says the lad. Wanna bet?

The route board on the side of the bus simply says “X18” then switches, slyly, to “and Berwick.” I board trepidantly, like a first-time flyer, though the X18 may not be supposed a winged chariot.

The old bloke in the leather cap has bagged the front seat upstairs. You’d have bet a week’s pension on it. It’s not possible to see what the badges depict, but probably something to do with Big Chief I-Spy.

Morpeth’s reached in half an hour, no problem. It’s thereafter that the magical mystery tour really begins.

THE day starts pleasantly, the coastal route’s scenic. “We get stowed out in summer,” says the driver. Ronnie reckoned they’d passed about 20 turns to Ashington; he’s right. All roads lead to Ashington and, mercifully or otherwise, none seems to get there.

Other locations suggest the desultory nature of the route. Amble’s passed slowly, Warkworth at – well – Warkworth pace, Craster no faster. Ar Craster it’s tempting to jump off and have one of the excellent crab sandwiches at the Jolly Fisherman, but that might be considered cheating.

The bus rather resembles a young puppy, poking its nose into everything but never in one place for long. There are times when a more graceful creature than an Arriva double decker might be said almost to pirouette, before returning whence it came. It’s a route with more twists and turns than a large intestine.

At Alnwick the bus changes drivers. Poor passengers have no such convenience. At Acklington prison, or whatever these days it’s called, a rough looking young lad gets off and heads for the gate. Probably he’s desperate to be let in.

That morning’s Times has a story about Qatar Airlines plans for the world’s longest route, 9,034 miles from Dohar to Auckland but at least there are loos on Qatar Airlines. Mile high, too.

We’ve reached Seahouses when the driver gets out, rings the depot, reports that a red stop light keeps coming on.

“I’ve walked all roond the bus and there’s nee leaks,” he says.

Gosh. Really?

They urge him onwards through Belford. On the A1 in the middle of a Northumberland nowhere the bus conks out completely, red light flashing like Amsterdam on a lads’ weekend away.

The driver says it’s not mechanical, but a computer fault. “It needs a reboot,” he adds, which is probably a technological euphemism for a good kick up the backside.

A tractor driver stops briefly, uncomprehendingly. He probably believes a call of nature to be the lowing of a pregnant heifer.

The Geordie lad says he’s “storvin’” – I don’t tell him about the Taylor’s pie – their lass rings her mam. “Brocken doon, middle of neewhere. Can you tek the dog oot? It’ll be borstin’.”

The dog isn’t the only one, of course.

It’s tossing down, the wind’s getting up and the bus rocks recklessly every time a heavy goods vehicle speeds past. Quick? Comfortable? Reliable?

“I wouldn’t care,” says the driver, “this bus is one of our good uns.”

An X15 will be along in an hour. The X15’s known as the “direct bus”, apparently. It only takes two-and-a-half hours from Newcastle. Robert Louis Stevenson’s aphorism comes to mind: “It is better to travel hopefully than to arrive.”

So it is that finally we reach Berwick-upon-Tweed five hours after leaving the Tyne. It has to be said that it’s a great relief.

BERWICK’S been having a hard time of late. The football team’s bottom of Scottish division umpteen, the Jusrol factory is rolling out of town, the natives are so patriotically schizophrenic they may have to be treated for it.

The Berwick Advertiser reflects the mood. “Town council lurches into a fresh crisis,” says the front page headline.

The Good Beer Guide, happily, has three drown-your-sorrows entries for the town. There’s time for a quick couple in the Pilot before heading home again. Unlike Ronnie Chambers and his dad, I’m travelling south by train.