100 British Bus Routes: Route 82
Lancaster to Kirkby Lonsdale
8 May 2025
ABOVE: Lonsdale Buses 206 (BV22 HBF), a Volvo B8RLE MCV eVoRa, passes along Caton Road, north of Lancaster City Centre, on route 82. This picture was taken on Saturday 3 May 2025; all other pictures in this article were taken on Friday 2 May.
Runs: Daily (with very limited early evening service on Mondays to Saturdays)
Operator: Kirkby Lonsdale Coaches, trading as Lonsdale Buses
Weekday daytime frequency: Every two hours
Weekday Vehicle Requirement: Approx two buses at any point (multiple interworkings with other routes)
Off-peak journey time (weekdays): 62-63 minutes
Estimated route length: 19 miles
Operator: Kirkby Lonsdale Coaches, trading as Lonsdale Buses
Weekday daytime frequency: Every two hours
Weekday Vehicle Requirement: Approx two buses at any point (multiple interworkings with other routes)
Off-peak journey time (weekdays): 62-63 minutes
Estimated route length: 19 miles
There’s a brand-new bus parked in Stand 14 at Lancaster Bus Station. It’s a 25-reg, and I’ve seen very few of those to date. (My assumption has been that many of these vehicles are parked up in depots, awaiting electrical supplies. It’s certainly the case in London.)
But this is a tried-and-tested diesel vehicle, belonging to Kirkby Lonsdale Coaches (the buses just carry “Lonsdale Buses” as the branding). Registered in April 2025, this bus is about to take me on a scenic journey across Lancashire and into Cumbria, on route 82.
ABOVE: Lonsdale Buses BU25 YZO, a Volvo B8RLE MCV eVoRa, stands in Lancaster Bus Station prior to covering the 0935 service to Kirkby Lonsdale on route 82.
It’s a crowded bus station and one could easily end up a stand or two adrift of where one should be. I reflect, as I wait at stand 14, that stands 13, 14 & 15 all have labels within my line of sight.
There’s a big “15” to guide intending passengers to that stand, and a much-smaller “14” directly in front of me that seems to be saying “congratulations – you have found your stand”. To the right is a giant “13”, back-to-front. This is to guide drivers into the right places from the bus ‘apron’. But it’s noisy signage (if you can have such a thing), and there are 20 stands to accommodate!
My driver arrives in good time for this departure. The bus is a Volvo B8RLE MCV eVoRa - one of the shorter ones, at around 10.8 metres in length. This means that there aren’t very many seats in the saloon that are actually accessible without climbing a step – only six in fact, plus some tip-ups.
I am expect the journey out of the city to be a straight-forward one. I’m staying at the Premier Inn at Caton Road, north of the city, and the 82, and companion service 81 (of which more later), uses this road to get out of town.
Or rather, I thought it did! Not half a mile out of town and we take a detour off the main road into the “Newton Area”, a residential area just off the main road (to be honest, if you didn’t know it was there you might not notice).
ABOVE: The entrance ot the "Newton Area", a residential area of Lancaster.
It's quite a large area, as it happens, with the Lancaster Canal running through the middle of it. We barely scratch the surface, and one can't see the canal from the bus.
This detour, through narrow streets, is of course where we meet the incoming service 81, and it makes for a tight squeeze! We return to the Main Road and pass underneath the Lancaster Canal, still without much of an inkling that it's there.
Just past my Premier Inn, we reach the M6 motorway, and a huge swathe of road infrastructure that has been created to accommodate the city Park and Ride service, the latter of which I will come back to in a future article.
We need to go broadly across the motorway, but this involves a left turn, a 600-yard drive to an enormous roundabout (we cross the River Lune here too), followed by an almost-complete circuit of the roundabout, a short drive back, and finally a left turn, under the motorway itself, to get us onto the route proper. I dread to think how much time would be lost here if there were to be a huge traffic jam.
This brings us to the village of Halton, where the Church of St Wilfreds can be found.
In the churchyard stands the Halton Cross, which is believed to have been carved by Norsemen over 1000 years ago. Coins dating back to King Canute (994-1035), which are now in the British Museum, were discovered on Halton Moor in 1815. As well as this, vestiges of a Roman camp and an ancient barrow are near the church, and it was at this Roman Camp where the remains of an ancient Roman Altar were discovered.
We take the Low Road out and pass an extremely tight spot just after the Greyhound Inn. This isn't the last tight spot we will encounter today!
Through Halton Green and we come to "Crook O'Lune", a picnic site. This would be a lovely spot to take a walk, as the undulating River Lune, just out of sight to our right, curves first to the south and then sharply towards the north, much like the Thames does around the Isle of Dogs (see EastEnders titles for details)!
Just after this curve, we find two spectacular river crossings – the Caton Lune Bridge for vehicles and the Crook O'Lune East Bridge for pedestrians:
ABOVE: The Crook O'Lune East Bridge, photographed from the Caton Lune Bridge
Soon after comes Caton. We're now within the Forest of Bowland Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The Caton Oak (also known as the Druid's Oak) was an ancient oak tree that stood here, reputedly dating from the time of the druids. The tree declined during the 20th Century and fell in 2016. An acorn from the tree was planted in 2007 to grow a replacement.
The Victoria Institute lies at the heart of Caton village. It carries a plaque to commemorate the Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria in 1887, which is when the Institute was founded. The first building was a public hall and reading room:
Further down the road is the Caton Baptist Church:
The hamlet of Farleton is where, around 1922, garage owner John Willacy painted a white line on the main road to alert drivers to a road bend, after several accidents. Although contested, some say that this may be the earliest recorded instance of a road surface marking.
The village of Hornby is home to a 16th-Century castle (c. 1520, now a private residence), although the house was rebuilt around 1820.
Hornby is also where route 81 parts company with the 82. Together, the two routes provide a broadly hourly service from Lancaster. Both routes venture into Hornby village, but, whilst the 82 continues onwards, the 81 turns around to rejoin the main road (if you can call something in the countryside like this a "main road"), to Wray, Wennington, Melling and Tunstall; the two routes will be reunited in Kirkby Lonsdale itself.
A moment later, we are crossing the river again via an impossibly-tight river bridge, the Loyne Bridge, which only seems to be marginally wider than the bus. I take a picture to try to give a flavour of what we're up against (below), but have a look at this Streetview image for a more detailed angle.
The small village of Gressingham has a population of around 150. This village has no connection to the Gressingham Duck company (that company is in Suffolk).
The roads here twist and turn. As we twist around, the view out of the left-hand window shows the territory ahead, and our road can be picked out - a straight road this is not!
We cross a railway line at what was once Arkholme (for Kirkby Lonsdale) Station. The line is still operational (on the Leeds to Morecambe line between Wennington and Carnforth), but the station was closed by the British Transport Commission in 1960.
The building to the right of the track is the old station building. Now a private dwelling, it once appeared on the TV series Through the Keyhole when it was owned by comedian and TV personality Jim Bowen.
Through the hamlet of Newton, and on to the last village on the route - Whittington.
The streets are tight, of course, and it’s everything one would expect of an old English village…
As we get towards the outskirts of Kirkby Lonsdale, we cross the county border into Cumbria.
One of very few Cumbrian towns to be mentioned in the Domesday Book, early signs of occupation here include a Neolithic stone circle on Casterton Fell, east of the town, and remains of Celtic settlements at Barbon, Middleton (both north of the town) and Hutton Roof (west). The town developed at a crossing over the River Lune, where drover and pack-horse routes converged. A market charter was gained in 1227.
ABOVE: Market Square, Kirkby Lonsdale
The town also saw the beginning of the career of one of the world's bestselling thriller writers. As a recently-redundant television executive in 1994, Jim Grant, who was living in Kirkby Lonsdale at the time, decided to turn his hand to writing. Using the pseudonym Lee Child, Grant created the character of Jack Reacher, who has to date featured in 29 novels. It has been suggested that the name "Child" was chosen because it puts the books on supermarket and library shelves between those of Raymond Chandler and those of Agatha Christie!
And so we reach the terminus, outside the Booth’s supermarket. The journey has taken one hour and three minutes, exactly as scheduled. After a short break, the bus will continue to Settle as a 581, and onwards to Skipton, North Yorkshire, as route 580. Based on the timetable, it will then reverse its steps as a 580 to Settle, a 581 to Kirkby Losdale and an 81 back into Lancaster, with the whole circuit taking just under six hours.
Meanwhile, the return journey on route 82 will be undertaken by a bus that has travelled to Kirkby Lonsdale as an 81, and then headed to High Bentham as a 583, before reversing to Kirkby Lonsdale - a much shorter loop of just under four hours. All this interworking is why it's slightly difficult to say how many buses are allocated to the 82!
ABOVE: BU25 YZO again, outside Kirkby Lonsdale's Booth's store, at the end of the route 82 run from Lancaster. Although the photograph has not clearly picked up the destination display, it has already been changed to show its next trip on route 581 to Settle.
But it's a lovely ride through the Lancashire countryside, and comes highly recommended!