ABOVE: Reading Buses 210 (SN11 BVR), an ADL Enviro400, is seen in Southcote, near Reading, working route 26 (Calcot to Reading). All photos in this article were taken on Saturday 17 January 2026.
Tentative Steps into '26
7 February 2026
I like January. Yes, really! I only take the Bank Holidays off at Christmas, and work through the rest of the fortnight. This allows those in my team who want to take the Christmas period off to do so. Then I take a couple of weeks off in January instead, hence I like the month and don't want it to end, because when it does, so does my leave!
January weather isn't great, of course, and that's why my first steps into a New Year's bus riding will often be a little tentative - just a toe in the water, so to speak. And this year, there's been plenty of water about!
Tentative steps mean that I have come to one of the closest points to my home in West London to start my non-London travels for 2026... Reading.
At the confluence of the Rivers Thames and Kennet, the county town of Berkshire dates from the eighth century, and was a trading and ecclesiastical centre in the Middle Ages. The 18th century saw the beginning of a major ironworks in the town and the growth of the brewing trade for which Reading was to become famous. The 19th century saw the coming of the Great Western Railway, which has contributed to making Reading such major commuter territory today.
ABOVE: Friar Street Reading sees Reading Buses 713 (YP67 XCH), a Scania N280UD ADL Enviro400 City CBG on "purple" route 17, followed by 204 (SN60 EDC), an ADL Enviro400, on "yellow" route 26. The bus on the left is Reading Buses 1 (MRD 1), an ADL Enviro400 EV, one of an advance guard of three electrics in town ahead of the introduction of a fleet of such buses. Those buses have entered service since my visit - on routes 17 & 21 - on Friday 6 February 2026.
Reading also has a decent local network of bus services, many of which are provided by Reading Buses, one of the few council-owned bus companies in existence today.
I have arrived in town without any idea of where I am going, apart from the basic principle that I need to step on a bus and start my 2026 adventure. But which bus?
The first one that catches my eye is, ironically for 2026, the 26 service to Calcot. It's a ride that I have done before, and there's an alternative route (15) that I can catch back into town. First two trips sorted!
ABOVE: Reading Buses 755 (YX64 VRP), an ADL Enviro400 MMC, is in Beansheaf whilst working route 26. This is a spare vehicle, in a generic livery so that it can deputise on any route as required.
Reading Buses routes are colour-coded, and liveried accordingly. Route 26 is "yellow", so it's a yellow ADL Enviro400 that pulls up outside Reading Station to form the 10:33 departure. Buses run every 15 minutes during the day on Mondays to Saturdays, and the service runs 24/7.
It takes a few minutes to get out of Reading Town Centre - that's a reflection on the number of passengers around, and the fact that Reading seems to go on a bit, rather than on the traffic (which is light at this hour on a Saturday). The main road out of town in this direction is the Bath Road, but it isn't long before we deviate away and venture into the residential areas to the south-west of Reading.
Southcote comes first. With a population of about 8,500 in 2011, it's a significant area in its own right. Excavations here have revealed evidence of Old Stone Age and Iron Age activity in Southcote, as well as Roman and Saxon habitation.
We have officially entered Calcot by the time we reach Ford's Farm, an historic farmstead that gave its name to the 1970s residential estate built on its former land. It's here that we find a bus-only road that is protected by a "sump buster" - far more effective than a camera as small vehicles simply cannot pass without risk of damage, whilst buses can simply glide over it:
ABOVE: Passing the Kennet Valley Playground at Swanholm Gardens, the sump buster can be seen in the road ahead.
The quality of housing, already pretty nice, moves up a notch as we enter Beansheaf:
ABOVE: On The Chase, near Knollmead in Beansheaf
The terminus of the 26 is the Ikea store in Calcot, but most passengers, including this one, get off two stops before, at the Sainsbury's superstore complex. This is an impressively large branch of the chain, with other stores also present on this significant retail site. It's so impressed me that I have omitted to photograph it!
The 26 had left Reading a couple of minutes late, and has maintained that lateness the whole way through, reaching this spot at 11:06 instead of the scheduled 11:03. It's been a comfortable and fascinating ride through some decent suburbs of Reading. It could have been a candidate for my 100 British Bus Routes series, but I have my eyes on something further west for that one.
I catch another bus from here, but I'll cover that in a separate article soon. It isn't the 15 back into Reading...
Fast forward an hour, and I have progressed to Newbury, Berkshire. This market town is just three miles north of the Hampshire border. Evidence has been found here of a Mesolithic settlement, but Newbury itself was founded late in the 11th century, following the Norman conquest, as a new borough, which gave it its name.
Historically, the town's economic foundation was the cloth trade. The 16th-century cloth magnate, Jack of Newbury was the proprietor of what may well have been the first factory in England.
The River Kennet flows through:
A new Bus Station was built here a few years ago. It stands in Newbury Wharf, just a stone's throw from the Town Centre. There's a sizeable number of people waiting for buses here, and I wonder which specific route they are waiting for. There are a few choices here, but, whilst I would like to do a route I have never done before, I don't want to end up in the middle of nowhere as the light fades; nor do I want to spend hours in one place because the only way out is to reverse my steps.
The latter would seem to rule out route 6, which is heading for West Ilsley, a village due north of here that had 332 residents in the 2011 Census. I would be left there for two hours and I need to plan more carefully how to pass that time before I venture there.
It's only five miles (as the crow flies) from West Ilsley to Wantage, so I wonder why the bus couldn't push on that little bit further and provide that link to a town that is much closer to West Ilsley than Newbury is! One day, I'll have to go and find out.
ABOVE: Newbury & District 606 (YX74 OSA), an ADL Enviro200 MMC, pulls out of Newbury Wharf with the 12:30 service to West Ilsley
I am very tempted by the 32 to Basingstoke, but I've done that one twice already!
The X34 to Didcot is new to me, and is the one I almost settle on. Curiously, the route does go near West Ilsley, but it doesn't stop there. In fact, it doesn't stop anywhere between the Vodaphone HQ, on the outskirts of Newbury, and Chilton, just a few miles out from Didcot, using the A34 trunk road as a cut-through.
ABOVE: Thames Travel 80921 (LK59 FDL), a Volvo B9TL Wright Eclipse Gemini 2, approaches the stand at Newbury Wharf, at the start of a run to Didcot on route X34.
It's interesting to see how each departure clears a few of the waiting passengers here; it's not been one specific bus that they have all been waiting for, but a selection.
At the last minute, I decide not to take the X34. I have noticed an impending departure on route 4 to Lambourn. This is another two-hourly service but, unlike the 6, there is another way out of Lambourn which will connect (loosely).
So this is what swings the decision. The bus starts at the Railway Station but arrives in good time for the scheduled 12:45 departure, displaying "4a" for some reason, a single journey early-morning variant:
ABOVE: Newbury Buses 608 (YX74 OSC), an ADL Enviro200 MMC, pulls into Newbury Wharf on route 4 (not 4a) to Lambourn.
This Newbury Buses ADL Enviro200 MMC is only a year old and has all mod cons, including the annoying "crick your neck" display for wheelchair users at ceiling height, restricting the forward view from the rear seats. This is a busy departure, although we lose a few passengers quite quickly in the residential areas of town. Incidentally, Newbury Buses is a subsidiary of Reading Buses.
Newbury is also of course famous for its horse racing, and I note a public house called the "Starting Gate". The current racecourse dates back to 1905, but there are records of horse racing having taken place in Newbury from exactly a century earlier.
We're into the countryside on this bus - specifically the North Wessex Downs National Landscape. This is the third largest National Landscape in the country, covering 668 square miles across Berkshire, Hampshire, Oxfordshire and Wiltshire. The area is predominantly chalk-based.
The village of Great Shefford gives the bus a chance to pause for a moment, and I note that, whilst an accurate timetable has been posted in the village bus stop, it could still do with a little TLC...
To be honest, there isn't much to differentiate the countryside round here. One sprawling open field leads onto another, and then another. The scene below could be anywhere on the route (although I think it is between Newbury and Great Shefford)!
There has been a lot of rain in recent weeks, and some significant puddles and ditches have formed at the roadside. The bus splashes through these without worry - after all, there are no pedestrians around here to catch the water. There isn't even a pavement for them to be standing on along most roads on this route!
We pass through Eastbury. This small village is only a mile-and-a-half from Lambourn itself, and has three Sites of Special Scientific Interest within close vicinity.
ABOVE: Hillside, in Eastbury
As we approach Lambourn, the bus takes a diversion. This is announced by the audio system and a display also appears to this effect. Outside London, this is still quite unusual, and buses seem to just go off on diversionary routes without warning, and certainly without signage and announcements - good work by Newbury Buses!
ABOVE: The diversion announcement on the display at the front of the bus. This picture also illustrates how the screen for the wheelchair user blocks the forward view from the rear seats. I have no problem with there being an information screen for a wheelchair user. I just think it should be lower - and smaller (like the main display).
Despite the diversion, we arrive, on time, at 13:26. The Market Place is a simple affair...
...but St Michael and All Angels Church, which sits alongside, is stunning:
Lambourn Market Cross, which is visible in the two pictures above (extreme right in both cases), dates back to 1446, when Lambourn was granted the right to hold a market. It is Grade II* listed.
I have an hour to pass and it's a lovely spot to pass it in. We are still in Berkshire, just. We stand north of the M4 motorway, bordering Wiltshire to the west and Oxfordshire to the north. The village website describes Lambourn as "the heart of the Valley of the Racehorse". The breeding and training of racehorses, the website says, is an integral part of life in Lambourn and the surrounding villages, and there are more than 30 training establishments and several studs in the area.
For me, though, a wander down the High Street finds a friendly café, "Goodies", for me to pass half an hour with a cuppa and a cake.
I am leaving the village on route 47 to Swindon. This is a community bus service, provided in this case by West Berkshire Council Transport Services. That implies that some sort of small minibus is likely to turn up. I wonder whether there will be (m)any other customers for what is clearly going to be a marginal route. But someone else arrives at the bus stop about five minutes after me / five minutes before the bus is due.
There are five round trips per day. The timetable suggests that the bus will arrive on the other side of the road, outside the church, and turn around somehow to pick up opposite. I can't see an easy place for the bus to turn around but, as it is likely to be a minibus, I wouldn't be surprised if it just did a three-point turn on the spot!
I don't find out, though. Whether to do with the roadworks that affected the 4 or not, the bus comes straight through to my side of the road, having probably done three sides of a square beforehand!
As expected, this is a 16-seater Mercedes-Benz Sprinter Mellor Strata. With inadequate legroom and a very narrow seat, it's going to be an uncomfortable ride. A shame, as the vehicle is almost new (24-reg) and very smooth (it's a Merc)!
Not quite as expected is that there are no fewer than five customers for this 14:30 departure. I pay my fare (the standard three pounds) by card, but the friendly driver insists on keeping and binning the ticket. Not just mine, but everyone's apart from the one passenger who buys a return. He collects them all as the journey progresses. Unless he's trying to keep the bus tidy, I really can't think why.
Rather less welcome is that he plays "Virgin Radio Legends", a station that seems to specialise in 1980s music, out loud across the bus for all of us to 'enjoy'. Fortunately, the rural location of this route means that the signal fades away from time-to-time, but of course it gets stronger as we get towards Swindon. A very unwelcome intrusion.
We're still in the North Wessex Downs, and the countryside remains stunning, although there's little to distinguish the countryside here from that on the other side of Lambourn. There must be times, in extreme winter weather, when Lambourn is at risk of being cut off, as it is surrounded by miles of countryside on all sides! Fortunately, being in the south, it's probably a rarer occurrence than for, say, a similar village 200 miles further north.
We carry eight passengers in total on this journey, as three join us in what feels like the middle of nowhere. This is deep countryside, with no large settlements to speak of for the first half of the journey, after which we gradually morph from open fields into the suburbs of the sprawling town that is Swindon.
All eight passengers go through to the environs of Swindon, and most to the final stop. I only have the chance for a quick rear photo of the bus as it hurries away to another job.
We have arrived three minutes early, at 15:08. It's been a scenic, if uncomfortable ride. I am at least up-to-date with the international situation, courtesy of the three o'clock news!
WP24 LPY, a Mercedes-Benz Sprinter Mellor Strata of West Berkshire Council Transport Services, pulls away from Swindon's Fleming Way interchange.
The terminus of route 47 has been one end of the lengthy Fleming Way Interchange, which opened in Swindon in summer 2025 to replace the old Bus Station.
As I leave Swindon, I spot one of the ever-diminishing number of Dennis Tridents still operating - this one with Stagecoach West:
ABOVE: Stagecoach West 18420 (AE06 GZS), enters Fleming Way, Swindon, whilst working route 4 to Tadpole Garden Village, which will presumably grow into a Frog Garden City one day...
So what started quite tentatively has seen me get all the way to Swindon, discovering a new village and two new bus routes in the process. I'm not even finished yet; I'm heading to Oxford on the S6, but that needs more consideration than I have room for here, so I'll come back to that another day...
BELOW: An approximation of the journey described in this article
