Sunday trips...
There's fewer buses on Sunday but you can still manage a long trip...
When planning a bus trip in Scotland we often recommend Traveline Scotland though you need to remember to “untick train” to avoid its suggestions to use more expensive train travel - which is often not much faster than the bus and may well involve more changes.
Sometimes your journey can be managed entirely on Stagecoach buses and then we recommend the Stagecoach Journey Planner.
But both these planners suffer from a problem recommending some journeys because they insist on requiring at least 5 minutes between arriving on one bus and departing on the next bus - and at bus stations they insist on it taking at least a minute to walk from one stance to another.
So, if your inbound bus is scheduled to arrive at a bus station EXACTLY 5 minutes before your next bus is due to depart then these planners will NOT recommend that journey.
A typical example of a journey that involves such a 5 minute change is a Sunday trip from Crail to Perth:
The Sunday 08:55 bus from Crail High Street gets to St Andrews Bus Station at 09:25 and the 65 to Perth departs at 09:30 - but the journey planners don’t think this is enough time to change buses and recommend catching the 95 an hour earlier and waiting in St Andrews for an hour…
Now, if you definitely must catch that 65 to get to an appointment, that may be the safest approach - because, as you can see, the 65 only runs every 2 hours on Sunday.
But if you are happy to just be out for the day, you might think that if you miss the 65 you can always catch the 09:40 X24 to Dunfermline instead?
Or an 09:40 99 to Dundee?
So, if you are flexible about where you want to go, just enjoying the day out, then it doesn’t matter that there is a very slight chance that you might miss the bus to Perth.
The last 65 from Perth on Sunday is at 16:00 getting into St Andrews at 17:25:
With a slightly easier change to the 95 departing at 17:35 - but if you miss this connection the next 95 bus is not until 19:10 and you might need to think about finding somewhere for a meal in St Andrews?
The 65 runs regularly every 2 hours on Sunday, there’s another bus that runs approximately every 2 hour on Sunday, the Moffat & Williamson 64 that travels its meandering route around Fife tourist spots:
The 64 uses the stop outside the old Madras College by the ruins of Blackfriars on South Street as its terminus in St Andrews and if you look back at the 95 timetable at the top of this article you will see that the 10:40 95 from Crail High St arrives at Blackfriars at 11:07 for a tight connection with the 64 departing at 11:10.
If you miss this connection you might want to walk into St Andrews Bus Station for the 65 at 11:30 which gets to Cupar Crossgate Stance C (outside the Central Cafe) one minute before the 64 is due - if you wanted to try to pick up the 64 later on its journey…
Some buses that we recommend for Day Trips don’t run on Sundays - like the Go-Flexi rural bus, or the Glenfarg Community Transport bus that’s a convenient way to get to Kinross or Dollar.
But the Stagecoach Express buses do tend to continue to run, even if they start later, finish earlier, and don’t run quite so frequently.
So, it’s always worth checking out the timetables to see how far you can get on your day out.
For more ideas on Day Trips see our website: https://95crailbus.eastne.uk/day-trips
95 Crail Bus