ABOVE: Stagecoach East Midlands 26260 (YW19 VRJ), an ADL Enviro200 MMC, is in Laceby, en route for Grimsby on route 250. All photos in this article were taken on Thursday 21 August 2025.
A Route 250 for my 250th
10 January 2026
Sometime in the ninth Century, Grimsby, in North-East Lincolnshire, was settled by Danes. The common toponymic suffix "by" is derived from the Old Norse word býr for village. Local legend says a Danish fisherman named Grim founded Grimsby in the ninth century, a tale featured in the medieval romance "The Lay of Havelock the Dane", though historians see it as mythical, linking "Grim" to the deity Odin, who was known by names such as Grimnir.
None of that is certain, but what we can be sure of is that, located near the mouth on the south bank of the Humber that flows to the North Sea, Grimsby adjoins the town of Cleethorpes directly to the south-east. And it represents the starting point of route 250 to Kingston-upon-Hull, which I have decided to profile for this, my 250th article (yes, really)!
ABOVE: Route 250
BusTimes.org lists seven route 250s in Great Britain. These comprise of a community service in Liphook, Hampshire; a school service in Central Bedfordshire; and five all-day services in London, Manchester, West Yorkshire, South Lanarkshire, and the route I am riding today, from Grimsby to Hull. It's a route I wanted to do on my previous visit to the region, but didn't have time for.
ABOVE: Stagecoach East Midlands 21272 (DK09 GYG), a Volvo B7RLE Wright Eclipse Urban, turns into Town Hall Square, Grimsby, on local route 10. The bus carries the Lincolnshire InterConnect livery, for the network of rural buses in Lincolnshire, although route 10 is not a part of that network.
There isn’t a Bus Station in Grimsby, so buses congregate around four sides of the “Riverhead Exchange” – actually a series of separate roads in the Town Centre. There was a Bus Station here, but it was closed in 2013 when plans were unveiled to redevelop the site (it didn't happen).
We pick up on the south side of the “Exchange” – Town Hall Square. The Grade-II listed Town Hall itself, in its present form, was completed in 1888, when its uses included a Police Station and Magistrates’ Court – complete with cells which have been converted into the “Time Trap” museum.
ABOVE: Grimsby Town Hall
I wonder how people who live in these parts describe where in Britain they reside? Just a few miles to the north-east (across the water) puts you in the East Riding of Yorkshire. Humberside would do, as that's the River Humber flowing alongside the town. Lincolnshire covers it too, even though this part was hived off into a unitary authority called North East Lincolnshire in 1996.
Stagecoach calls it the East Midlands, or, at least, it's the Stagecoach East Midlands subsidiary that operates the 250 service.
The bus arrives in good time. It's an ADL Enviro200 MMC, in standard Stagecoach colours. It's the longest model available (as far as I know!), at 11.8 metres long (or 38 feet, 8.4 inches).
ABOVE: The long length of Stagecoach East Midlands 26259 (YW19 VRG), an ADL Enviro 200 MMC, is apparent as it turns into Town Hall Square, Grimsby, ready to start the long run to Hull. The Town Hall is out of view to the right, but another civic building, belonging to North East Lincolnshire Council, can be seen behind.
On this August Thursday morning, there's a decent gathering for the 10:00 departure on this hourly service, and several people are booking all the way through to Hull. That's an hour and 50 minutes away, but it is, of course, only going to cost them £3.00 each!
We start out on time with around 18 passengers leaving Grimsby. This is going to be a busy journey the whole way through. The bus is fitted with both Audio Announcements and (unobtrusive) Customer Information Screens. The system struggles with some of the announcements, such as "Franklin Sixth Form College" on the outskirts of Grimsby, where the word "sixth" is very distinctly spelt out as two syllables - "six-the".
We leave Grimsby through its western suburbs. It doesn't feel like we are truly clear of the town until we reach Laceby. This large village (3,259 people were living there at the time of the 2011 Census) is just outside the Grimsby town boundary.
Parts of the Church of St Margaret here (the Nave and parts of the base of the tower) date back to the 10th or 11th Century, and the Church is now Grade-I listed:
It's whilst walking around Laceby later in the day that I discover that route 250 has a branding (of a sort) for its buses. This bus is going at speed but one can still see the simplicity of the brand:
ABOVE: An unidentified Stagecoach East Midlands ADL Enviro200 MMC, which might be 26268 (YW19 VRT), with the subtle "TwoFifty" route branding passes the George Butler Close stop in Laceby at speed.
Most buses on route 250 do not seem to have this dedicated branding. There are a couple of reasons for this, which I shall come back to later.
We are properly out in the countryside now, as we turn north and head for Keelby. This takes us out of North East Lincolnshire, and briefly into Lincolnshire itself.
Keelby is listed in the Domesday Book as "Chelebi" or "Chilebi", with the ending in "-by" indicating a former primary Viking settlement (as with Grimsby earlier).
Keelby Village Hall is situated in the centre of the village. Built opposite St Bartholomew’s Church as the Church Mission, the foundation stone was laid in 1897. Eventually it became known as the Church Institute and is now Grade-II listed:
We make the approach to Brocklesby, which had a population of 124 at the time of the 2001 Census, but which was merged into the Keelby figures 10 years later.
ABOVE: Looking out of the front of the bus, somewhere between Keelby and Brocklesby
Despite its small size, it had a station until as recently as 1993, albeit remote from the village. The station location was designed to suit the Earl of Yarborough, in his capacity as chairman of the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway, which built the line.
The station is no longer operational, but we are close to a junction where trains take two very different routes out of Grimsby and Cleethorpes to the east - a northern branch line towards Barton-on-Humber and a western main line route right across the country to Liverpool.
I manage to miss the station buildings (now privately-owned) by looking out of the wrong window as we cross the tracks:
Whilst Brocklesby is part of Lincolnshire, by the time we reach the station, we have crossed into North Lincolnshire.
We come to Ulceby, a rural village, surrounded by fields and farms. Just to the north is the village of Wootton, where the post is just being delivered to the "Nag's Head" public house:
The village of Barrow upon Humber (no hyphens, it seems) contains the site of a late Anglo Saxon monastery, fully excavated and subsequently built over. The roads are quite tight as we meet the bus going the other way:
ABOVE: Stagecoach East Midlands 26261 (YW19 VRK), an ADL Enviro200 MMC, passes my bus in Barrow upon Humber, en route for Grimsby.
Barton-upon-Humber (with hyphens, it seems) lies three miles to the west of Barrow. We are now on the southern bank of the Humber Estuary. This is a town (population 11,066 at the 2011 Census) where we take a double-run to serve the railway station interchange:
ABOVE: Stagecoach East Midlands 27764 (FX61 HGL), an ADL/TransBus Enviro300, at the Barton-upon-Humber Interchange with a journey on route 350 (Scunthorpe - Barton - Hull).
From this point (as can be seen in the picture above), we are joined by the half-hourly route 350 from Scunthorpe. The two routes now run together through to Hull, with an uneven 15-30 minute frequency of three buses per hour (even more uneven as the 350 we have caught up with is 10 minutes late)!
ABOVE: The Old Mill in Barton - now a pub
We are now approaching the main attraction on the 250 - the Humber Bridge:
The Humber Bridge is a 1.38 mile single-span road suspension bridge. When it was opened to traffic by Queen Elizabeth II on 24 June 1981, it was the longest of its type in the world. It lost that record in 1998, to the Akashi Kaikyō Bridge in Japan. By 2025, it was only the fourteenth-longest!
The bridge spans the River Humber (an estuary formed by the rivers Trent and Ouse), between Barton-upon-Humber and Hessle. At its highest point, it stands 510 feet high, and it is Grade-I listed.
ABOVE: Part-way across the bridge, looking east
ABOVE: Looking down on Clive Sullivan Way, Hessle, way down below on the northern side of the crossing. Clive Sullivan (1943-1985) was a legendary Welsh rugby league winger and the first black captain of any British national sports team, famously leading Great Britain to victory in the 1972 Rugby League World Cup. He played for both Hull Football Club (a rugby club) and Hull Kingston Rovers.
As we come down to earth in Hessle, we enter our fourth county of the trip - East Yorkshire. In the late 19th and into the 20th centuries, Hessle was a major shipbuilding centre.
The bus has been busy all the way, and there are very few seats left for the last lap:
We cross into our final county - the unitary authority that is Kingston-upon-Hull, governed by Hull City Council.
All is quiet as we pass the MKM Stadium. The stadium, which holds more than 25,500, is home to both association football club Hull City A.F.C. and Rugby League club Hull F.C.
We pass the East Yorkshire bus depot, now a part of the Go-Ahead Group. There's not much to see in the way of buses - they're all out-and-about!
And finally, we come to the Hull Interchange, which I have described before. Hugely busy with its 38 bus stands in the main railway station building, there is always plenty to see in the way of buses, even if there are only two operators represented...
ABOVE: East Yorkshire and Stagecoach East Midlands buses in Hull Interchange
We've arrived on time at 11:50. It's been a fascinating ride and a good load has been brought into Hull this morning. A similarly busy load is already awaiting the return departure at 12:00.
I mentioned that there were a couple of reasons why so few of the branded "TwoFifty" buses are visible on the route. One reason is that only three seem to have been treated to the livery, on a route that needs four buses. But the other reason is an oddity that has been hidden in plain sight in this article - right from the picture at the top.
At the time of my journey, buses on route 250, on arrival into Grimsby, were continuing to Louth as service 51, with through journeys offered. The display on the bus at the top of this article is "continues as 51 at Grimsby for Louth" - rather a messy descriptor. One of the two branded buses I saw on this trip was actually working on route 51. It seems pointless to create a brand for a service if that service interworks onto another route.
However, a couple of weeks after my visit, the 51 was renumbered 251 - presumably otherwise unchanged. It makes a little more sense, perhaps, for a "TwoFifty" branded vehicle to be working on the "TwoFifty (One)". Perhaps...
Still, the 250 is a fascinating ride - and popular, which is always good to see. My rides were both so busy that I wonder whether they could perhaps try some double-deckers on the route (I don't remember a low bridge or anything like that). Imagine crossing the Humber on the top of a double-decker bus!