Coach firm slashes prices on cross-country UK journeys with tickets from £2 each way

A bus company is offering trips across the UK for just £2. FlixBus – one of Europe’s biggest coach operators with an extensive network across the Continent – has a deal running until April 21 for journeys taken up to May 12.

For just £2, as well as a £1 booking fee, you can hop on a journey across large sections of the country, allowing you to explore the UK in a cheap and environmentally friendly way.

New services to Manchester Airport from Stoke-On-Trent and Birmingham, as well as Welsh cities including Cardiff, Swansea and Newport to Bristol Airport, are included in the promotion. Also new for 2024 is the addition of Inverness, Aviemore and Pitlochry to the Scottish network, with connections from £2 on services launching on April 25.

The Shambles in York

Recent additions to the network including the brand-new York, Leeds and Manchester route will also benefit from £2 tickets on offer. FlixBus is encouraging people to find ‘more life in real life’ with its network of more than 60 UK destinations, as well as daily international routes to the continent. Cross-country routes between cities such as Manchester, Newcastle, Leeds, Middlesbrough and Sunderland are available in the offer.

Andreas Schörling, managing director of FlixBus UK, said the network offers affordable tickets and “comfortable, modern vehicles” and is celebrating its third anniversary with “£2 travel around the vibrant cities and towns of the UK”. The company aims to “become the best-loved coach brand in the country”, he added, offering “reliable services to as many passengers as possible”.

In England there is a government-backed scheme capping local bus tickets at £2 until December 2024. Last year transport ministers got the Treasury to agree to a £500million package of funding to help protect services across the country.

The cap was introduced as a temporary measure at the beginning of the year to help people with the cost of living crisis, as well as encourage people back on buses after a drop in usage over the pandemic. The average single bus fare for a 3-mile journey outside London is £2.80 – meaning passengers are saving almost a third of the single ticket price. The savings on some longer, less well served routes are significantly higher than this.

Early evidence has shown more people have been taking buses since the cap was introduced – helping bus companies stay afloat after usage dropped during lockdowns to as low as 10% of pre-pandemic levels.

Last year Transport Secretary Mark Harper said: “Taking the bus is the most popular form of public transport and millions of people rely on these vital services everyday. That’s why we’re investing half a billion pounds to help people save money amid cost of living pressures and continue to level up transport in all parts of the country, doing our bit to help halve inflation and grow the economy.”

Check out more of Daily Mirror’s latest travel stories by signing up to our free weekly newsletter.