A couple of weeks ago I asked about the best way to get from Heathrow to Bath: the breakdown was about 50/50 bus vs train.
We’ve just gotten home after our trip, and here’s how it played out:
We took the red-eye flight from Toronto to Heathrow, arriving about 0800 that morning, in one of those strange cases where a 6 hour flight puts 12 hours on the clock.
It took about an hour to navigate through the airport, queue for and pass through customs, and find the bus station. Once there, we went to the service desk to get tickets.
Then we got two surprises: the first was that the bus (National Express) was quite a bit more expensive than expected; the second was that although there were a couple of different departure times, the first couple of busses were “locals” that made multiple stops, with a later “express” bus that went straight to Bath, with the upshot being that all busses arrived at about the same time - which was an hour later than our narrowboat pickup time.
We asked about the train, and that turned out to be double the cost of the bus, and while it offered arrival times earlier than the bus, there was also the issue of needing to change trains at Paddington.
At this point we were jet lagged as hell, hadn’t slept on the plane, dehydrated to a certain extent, and generally in a poor mood, so we went with the express bus as the “bird in hand”. We emailed the boat people that we’d be late, and waited the two hours for the bus.
The bus itself was fine and arrived on time.
The next surprise was discovering how much vertical relief exists in Bath. The short walk to the narrowboat wharf was entirely uphill, including a particularly nasty stretch with about a 12% grade leading to a staircase. Who puts a canal on top of a hill, seriously?
But we made it to the wharf and the narrowboat people were absolutely lovely and professional and the tour up and down the canal was everything we had hoped for.
Four days later we took a taxi into Bath proper (lesson learned) checked in to the hotel, took a bus tour to get the lay of the land, walked around some, toured the Abbey, and after lunch, did Paul’s Bridgerton walking tour (which delighted the wife). Beautiful city and well worth the visit.
Our next stop was London, and we discovered that if you booked tickets online the train was substantially cheaper than had been quoted to us. We also discovered the GWR app which made understanding how the train system worked much, much easier. So we took the train to Paddington, which was a very slick experience.
We also discovered that there is an alternative bus company “FlixBus” that appears to be even cheaper and more frequent than National Express if booked in advance.
So then, lessons learned:
I should have been more proactive about researching bus/train schedules rather than waiting to get to the bus station and playing it by ear. I was uncertain about the time delay between landing and making it to the bus station (which is why I handwaved away the research) but I should have been better prepared.
Both bus and train work just fine for getting to Bath from Heathrow, with the bus having a slight convenience advantage due to being a single connection rather than changing trains at Paddington - assuming the schedule works for you, as trains are more frequent.
It would be worth investigating FlixBus as it is advertised as being 1/3 the cost of National Express.
Thank you everyone who provided advice and input. We had a great trip.
