100 British Bus Routes: Route 74
Newcastle-upon-Tyne to Hexham
18 June 2022
ABOVE: Go North East 669 (NX16 BXL), in Hexham Bus Station, has just arrived from its first round trip of the day to Newcastle. There are three more round trips to go. All pictures in this article were taken on Wednesday 4th May 2022.
Operator: Go North East
Runs: Mondays to Saturdays – limited evening service on Saturdays only
Weekday frequency: Every three hours
Estimated Peak Vehicle Requirement: 1 bus
Off-peak journey time: 84 minutes
Estimated route length: 30-35 miles
Runs: Mondays to Saturdays – limited evening service on Saturdays only
Weekday frequency: Every three hours
Estimated Peak Vehicle Requirement: 1 bus
Off-peak journey time: 84 minutes
Estimated route length: 30-35 miles
I’m looking for stand I in Newcastle’s Eldon Square Bus Station, but all the stops are labelled “B”. This is actually the Nexus symbol for buses throughout Tyne & Wear, but perhaps the B is too prominent when you’re looking for stand I, and it’s definitely unhelpful if you’re looking for stand B…
ABOVE: A quartet of Stagecoach buses in Blackett Street, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, where every bus stop, at first glance, seems to be stop B. The stop in the immediate foreground (right) is actually stop F.
It turns out that I’m not in Eldon Square, but one road adrift in Blackett Street. A quick wander gets me to the right place, and the stops are clearly labelled here. Unfortunately there is no stop I – it goes straight from H to J!
The confused list of bus departures on the bus station board (destination first, but listed in departure time order) does not appear to include my service, but it turns out that I’m just a little too early, and it is added to the display a short time later. In the meantime, I have revisited my phone, to confirm that the 74 to Hexham is going to leave from stop J. Because the stop name on the online timetable is also a hyperlink, the J is underlined and I had read it the previous night as an I. What do you think?
The stop is shared with a Stagecoach service X47 to Kingston Park, a suburb in the north-west of the City. It seems that Stagecoach operations in this region are restricted to local services, with Arriva and Go-Ahead sharing, and sometimes competing along, the longer distance corridors.
The X47 runs every 15 minutes, and is due to leave five minutes after my three-hourly 74. As the 0835 departure time for my bus approaches I wonder where it will stop if the 0840 X47 arrives first, as the previous one had been on the stand for several minutes in advance.
It’s not a problem. The 74 pulls in at 0833 and offloads half a dozen passengers from what will have been a pretty early start (0655) from Hexham. There are only three intending passengers for the return journey, including me, so boarding is swift, and bang on 0835, we’re on our way.
As we head out of the City, we take short run along a major road (the A167), where the traffic in the other direction is solid. This may explain the late arrival of the inward trip (which was due into Eldon Square at 0819).
The bus is a very short Optare Solo and – horror of horrors – there is contra-vision over some of the windows as part of the livery design. It seems to be depicting an Abbey (Hexham Abbey?), but it’s way too intrusive, especially on such a small bus.
ABOVE: Contra-vision image on Go North East 669 is way too intrusive and spoils the views.
I manage to secure a decent left-hand seat, enabling views (and photos) to that side, but there is too much in the way to enable any decent equivalent right-hand views.
Three more people join on the way out of town but we lose one of the original passengers quite quickly. We pass a new housing development, after which we’re into the countryside.
And this is a route that really meanders through the countryside! There are several bus routes between Newcastle and Hexham. Route 685 (which continues beyond Hexham to Carlisle) seems to be the most direct service between the two (and the 684 isn’t far behind). Route 10 takes a reasonably direct route slightly to the south of the 685.
Route 74, though, has a more northerly, and far less direct, trajectory. It seems to have been designed to reach as many isolated villages as possible, hence its route description, in official Go North East publicity, as serving “villages”.
ABOVE: This map, from a 48-page Go North East timetable booklet for Hexham, Corbridge and Tynedale, shows the relatively straight-forward routes 10, 684 and 685 between Newcastle and Hexham, and the much more convoluted 74 routing to the north. And full marks to Go North East for including the 685, a Stagecoach / Arriva service; the full timetable for which is included in the booklet.
After a few miles working through one set of villages, we return to a main road briefly, only to almost immediately set off again into another set of twisty country lanes, through another set of villages.
ABOVE: Edge Hill, Ponteland
We come to Ponteland, where my attempt at a photo, taken as we pass over the River Pont, is a little blurred.
ABOVE: Ponteland
Some of the roads we use are single-track and have barely room for a car to pass. There is little likelihood of meeting another bus, as, by my reckoning, on a near-90 minute journey on a route that runs every three hours, this is going to be the only vehicle on the route! We have a couple of tricky moments with other large vehicles, though.
ABOVE: A forward view of one of the wider roads on route 74!
The last remaining passenger other than me rings the bell to alight in what looks to be the middle of nowhere, but we turn a corner to the gates of Dissington Hall, a privately-owned mansion between Ponteland and Dalton that doubles as an ‘Enterprise Zone’.
It’s then just the driver and me for the next few miles until someone joins at Stamfordham Green, near its historic Market Cross.
ABOVE: Stamfordham
Matfen isn’t mentioned as a key point in the timetable leaflet header, but it is the midpoint of the journey as noted by the return bus display I spot later showing “Matfen for Newcastle”. It’s one of those places where I manage to get a picture postcard photograph, complete with horse and rider, as the bus pulls in to the Black Bull stop in the village centre.
ABOVE: Matfen, with the Holy Trinity Church in the background
Great Whittington comes and goes, and I don’t see anything to make me want to turn again and visit, but that changes a little further along when we pass a striking building housing the Errington Coffee House. It’s an old pub, apparently, and the address is Corbridge, although we don’t serve the town centre and are a few miles away from there as the crow flies.
ABOVE: The Errington Coffee Shop (formerly the Errington Arms), north of Corbridge, Northumberland
It might seem very remote, but it’s on a number of walking trails so I suspect will pick up more casual traffic than might otherwise be the case this far out.
There’s one really tight spot for the bus to squeeze through in the Oakwood area, where a very narrow road coincides with a parked trade van, leaving our driver with a mere handful of inches’ clearance on either side. That he handles this with aplomb suggests that it’s not the first time he has been in a tight spot on this route.
We’ve been in the remote countryside for ages; some of it so far off the beaten track that even Google Streetview hasn’t updated its images since 2009; but, at last, civilisation comes into view as we get our first views of Hexham.
ABOVE: Looking south towards Hexham, where the smoke from the factory pipe would seem to suggest a westerly wind?
We cross the Tyne into Hexham, where we make a brief, but fruitless, call into the railway station.
ABOVE: River Tyne, just outside Hexham
As we pull into the Town Centre, a couple of German tourists cross sharply in front of the bus and narrowly avoid being run over. I know they’re German because they’re going to be my companions on the next journey, to Haltwhistle, which I have already written about.
I admit to being baffled about the Saturday evening journeys on route 74. On weekdays, the last buses are 1605 from Hexham and 1735 from Newcastle.
On Saturdays, there are extra journeys at 1950 from Hexham; 2120 from Newcastle to Matfen only; 2217 from Matfen back to Newcastle; and 2320 from Newcastle to Hexham, arriving at 0035.
The image of that little bus squeezing through Stamfordham and Great Whittington at something after Midnight is hard to comprehend, as is the idea that anyone would be on it! But it runs, so it must be used. I can’t envisage ever being on that last bus myself to see how busy it is, though.
Back to today, and I suddenly realise that we’ve lost six or seven minutes along the way during this journey, but I have no idea where we lost that time. It’s made my connection tight, but I’ve really enjoyed this trip.
If you want to explore the villages in this part of Northumberland, or just enjoy a bus ride off the beaten track, then the 74 is the way to do it!