ABOVE: Coastliner 3634 (BT66 MVS), a Volvo B5TL Wright Eclipse Gemini 3, has just arrived in Whitby after the long run from Leeds on route 840. All photos in this article were taken on Tuesday 16 September 2025.
Scenic Bus Rides:
To Whitby in a Heartbeat
30 May 2026
I'm on my way from London to Middlesbrough, so naturally I have left the train in York. The onward journey, for me, will be by bus, and the first bus departs from right outside the station.
Well normally it does, but not today. When I leave the station, I find all of the bus stops cordoned off. Some work is underway here, and my bus will be departing from elsewhere.
But where? There are no signs to show where alternative stops might be. And having thought I was in good time, just a couple of minutes from my stop, it's now quite tight to find another stop and get there ahead of the bus. Oh and I have a suitcase to drag with me as well.
I have no choice but to look online for information. I have no idea what someone would do if they didn't have a Smartphone or didn't know what websites to look at for alternative stop information (BusTimes.org in my case).
I'm directed to Rougier Street, just inside the city walls. York of course is a major city. Founded in AD 71 as Eboracum, archaeological evidence suggests that Mesolithic people settled in the region between 8000 and 7000 BC.
Although I have made many journeys through the region, I have not spent any significant time looking at the city's bus services since the First Group "ftr" articulated buses were trialled here from 2006. That scheme was an unmitigated disaster in my view.
The descriptor "ftr" was short for future. The driver was sealed in the cab, tram-like, and had no interaction with passengers, who had to pay on entry using a ticket machine inside the entrance, behind the cab. Boarding passengers had to queue and the bus could not proceed until everyone had bought a ticket. Delays at each stop were significant as everyone had to get to grips with the machine and work out how to use it.
Much easier today, with every bus here having the traditional form of driver-only entry:
ABOVE: Connexions Buses 5147 (5147 UA), a Scania CN230UD OmniCity new to London United as YN08 DHV, passes First York 63661 (ML73 DZA), a Wright GB Kite Electroliner, in Rougier Street, York.
The bus I am actually after styles itself as "Britain's Most Scenic Bus Route". Whilst there are competitors for that title (such as the 555 in the Lake District), this one is certainly "up there".
I'm taking the 840 service, which works its way across the North Yorkshire Moors, one of the largest expanses of heather moorland in the United Kingdom, to the seaside town on Whitby. Companion route 843 follows the 840 as far as Malton, before branching off to Scarborough. I've covered the 843 before (here), on an unseasonably mild December journey, but the section of route 840 to Whitby has long been on my "to-do" list.
BELOW: A diagram of routes 840 & 843, including the section between Leeds and York which I have yet to try.
The problem with the Whitby variant is that it doesn't run very often. There are only four trips per day, at broadly two-hourly intervals. And, here in York, even at 13:30, three of them have already gone. And I haven't timed myself well for the last one, as it isn't due for another hour.
But there's a short-working on the 840, running as far as Thornton-le-Dale, just beyond Pickering. So I'm going to catch this one as far as Malton, a place I have been through several times but never stopped in before.
This Coastliner service is part of Transdev's extensive network in the north of England. The 13:27 departure is about three minutes late. It's formed of a Volvo B5TL Wright Eclipse Gemini 3, one of a batch that Coastliner bought in 2016 to upgrade the service. Other buses also turn out, including, on the day of my visit, one single-decker, which would have completely negated the benefits of selling this route as a major tourist service. The front seats have already gone on this bus - I suspect that, on a route like this, they go at the first stop in Leeds!
Another important selling point on this route is the three pound fare, which would be the cost all the way to Whitby if I wasn't breaking my journey. Prior to the reduction (initially to two pounds, of course), an end-to-end single on this route was something like £15.00.
Having paid my three pounds for Malton, I settle into a high-specification, high-backed leather seat in row three of the upper deck, having hauled my case up the stairs with me! It does get me a funny look from another passenger, but I'm not leaving it downstairs, and I'm not staying down on this route!
It takes a few minutes to get out of York, but we are then quickly into the countryside. Although there are a few fast stretches down main roads, this is not an express service, and it calls into a selection of wonderful villages along the way. One of the first of these is Stockton-on-the-Forest, still within the City of York unitary authority's boundary. The village is named in the Domesday Book and sits in a very green area, but I haven't been able to ascertain what specific forest, if any, the name is derived from.
At this point, the road through the village (and there's only significant road through this linear village) runs parallel to the main A64 road, just to the south. You can see the main road in this picture, taken from somewhere around here:
We join the A64 for the run through to Malton. There are some pictures of this section in the earlier 843 article.
At the start of this section, we're just a few miles from Stamford Bridge. On 25 September 1066, the Battle of Stamford Bridge took place between an English army under King Harold Godwinson and an invading Norwegian force. Godwinson repelled the Norwegian invaders, but his army was defeated by the Normans at Hastings less than three weeks later. (Incidentally, Wikipedia also offers a Chelsea versus Tottenham Hotspurs football match from 2016 under the heading of "Battle of Stamford Bridge"!)
We make our way north-eastwards. Sunshine has been alternating with rain showers today and will continue to do so.
ABOVE: An unidentified Volvo B5TL Wright Eclipse Gemini 3 heads for York and Leeds on route 843.
My pictures on this section are taken from row three and cropped, and I think they have come out quite well! This is the approach to Malton:
The bus arrives into Malton bus station at 14:30, eight minutes late.
Malton sits on the northern bank of the River Derwent. If you cross the river, you are technically in the neighbouring town of Norton. Both Malton railway station and the bus station actually sit in Norton.
The bus station is a very simple affair, although I think I have captured it well on a decent sunny afternoon (as it is at this point):
ABOVE: Coastliner 2780 (BF63 HCZ), a Volvo B9TL Wright Eclipse Gemini 2, stands at Malton Bus Station with a route 843 service from Scarborough to Leeds
Malton was named as the most dog-friendly town in the UK at the annual Dog Friendly Awards, in association with the Kennel Club, in 2018/19. It has also voted as one of the best places to live in Britain by The Sunday Times in both 2017 and 2018.
Malton has been described as "the food capital of Yorkshire", famous for its year-round food festivals celebrating local produce, and for its "trailblazing town centre of independent food stores and award-winning artisans, where you can find anything your taste-buds desire" (source: National Trails).It can only be a coincidence that TV chef James Martin was born here, but it's rather an appropriate one!
Also born here (despite his online name) was "The Hull Boy", Marcus Skeet, an endurance runner and influencer who, in 2025, aged just 17, became the youngest person to run the length of Great Britain, raising £130,000 for the charity Mind in the process. Skeet, a boyhood supporter of Hull City football club (hence his online alias), received the Pride of Britain Special Recognition Award in 2025 for his achievements.
Leaving the bus station, and technically crossing from Norton back into Maldon, I find this unusual bus stop arrangement in Railway Street / Wells Lane. My bus served the left-hand stop on the way in, and will serve the right-hand one going out again, after serving the Bus Station in between!
ABOVE: The unusual bus stop arrangement in Maldon as buses from York on route 840 serve the left-hand stop, in Railway Street, whilst buses heading for Whitby serve the right-hand stop on Wells Lane. In between, they run across the River Derwent to serve the Bus Station, a couple of hundred yards down the road behind me.
I leave Maldon after an hour, on the 15:30 departure to Whitby; the last of the day to go right through and which, on this extremely long route (circa 85 miles), will have left Leeds at 13:10. Again the front seats have gone - probably at Leeds Bus Station - but I am able to spread out across a table seat for four behind the stairs, with just me and my suitcase to be accommodated.
Some buses divert via Flamingo Land, a theme park and zoo near Kirby Misperton, but the services going through to Whitby do not - presumably because it's a long enough run as it is.
We come to Pickering, a delightful town that I stayed in some years ago, where I got caught in an unexpected hailstorm whilst driving through! The town sits at the foot of the Moors, and was positioned on the shores of a glacial lake at the end of the last ice age. It was an ideal place to create a settlement at that time, with the moorlands to the north, the wetlands to the south, running water in the beck, forests all around and fertile, easily worked soils. It is also one end of the North Yorkshire Moors Railway, which is a lovely day out.
Traffic is building up as the school run kicks in:
ABOVE: The centre of Pickering, looking towards Eastgate (right).
Three miles on from Pickering is the village of Thornton-le-Dale, or Thornton Dale.
Much of the village is now designated as a Conservation Area, and right in its heart is a 17th century thatched cottage, Beck Isle Cottage. The cottage is Grade-II listed and has appeared on countless calendars and chocolate boxes over the years. Some say it is the most-photographed home in Yorkshire, and possibly the whole of the UK.
My photograph is just of a tiny bit of Maltongate, which the bus passes the end of as part of a turning manoeuvre to serve the Thornton Cross stop. The waters of Thornton Beck pass along this road, and they're not the only waters in evidence - the weather has turned, briefly:
ABOVE: Maltongate in Thornton Dale, with Thornton Beck flowing through on the left. On the right is the Thornton Dale Parish Church. The closer building with the clock is the Hill Memorial Institute.
After Thornton-le-Dale, a recorded commentary springs into action, pointing out some of the features along the route. It is informative, not intrusive. That claim that this is "Britain's most scenic bus route" is made again. And why not - it's made on the side of the buses as well!
ABOVE: Coastliner 2780 again, showing off the "Britain's Most Scenic Bus Route" branding. Despite being eye-catching and bold, it manages NOT to cover any of the windows - exactly what branding should do.
A fairly minor road gets us from Thornton Dale back to the main A169 - the road that will, broadly, take us to Whitby. We join the latter alongside the Fox and Rabbit Inn, which looks quite lonely in the middle of the afternoon, surrounded by open country, but is clearly a lively and bustling spot in the evenings, that even has a caravan field behind the main building.
These really do become the rugged Moors as we progress. The North York Moors National Park covers an area of 554 square miles and had a population of 22,935 at the 2021 census. The Moors consist of a moorland plateau, dissected by a number of deep dales or valleys containing cultivated land or woodland.
We pass the Hole of Horcum - a hollow valley 400 feet deep and about three-quarters of a mile across. The Hole was created by a process called spring-sapping, where water welling up from the hillside gradually undermined the slopes above, eating the rocks away grain by grain. In this way, over thousands of years, a once narrow valley widened and deepened into an enormous "cauldron". Local legend says that it was formed when Wade the Giant, a Germanic mythological character, scooped up a handful of earth to throw at his wife during an argument.
I'm on the wrong side of the bus to get a decent picture but there's a panoramic view on the Wikipedia page.
Another carefully-cropped picture, taken through the front of the bus, shows the general landscape:
In the next view, I have left the picture uncropped, as I believe that the panoramic view gives a better impression of the territory. The road will descend to the level below (in the centre of the picture), before rising again as seen on the far top left:
There's one more big treat to come. The village of Goathland's biggest claim to fame was once probably its station on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway, on the line to Grosmont. It was closed by British Railways in 1965 and reopened as part of the heritage line in 1973.
ABOVE: Goathland Station
But, in 1992, Yorkshire Television moved into Goathland for location filming of a new police procedural series called Heartbeat. Based on the series of novels by Nicholas Rhea, the 1960s setting and compelling stories, coupled with the starring role of EastEnders star Nick Berry and the soundtrack of 1960s popular hits, made it an instant success. The series ran for 18 years and chalked up 372 episodes, as well as a spin-off medical drama called The Royal.
It may now have been 16 years since the series ended, but people still come from far and wide to see the place. And a very pretty place it is too.
Goathland doubled up as Aidensfield, and signs of the fictional village exist all around. The Aidensfield Garage, for example (doubling up as Scripps' Funeral Services), now appears to be a cafe and souvenir shop:
Over the road, the Goathland Hotel doubled up as the Aidensfield Arms, and still carries signs for the latter. Down the road is the main village green. There's a Police car parked up, but it doesn't look like the latest model:
ABOVE: The Aidensfield Stores in Goathland and, inset, the 1960s Police car.
Having taken a couple of pictures, I have a second chance as the bus does a U-turn at the edge of the village and passes back through. This has been a very long double-run - at least a mile-and-a-half each way. But well worth it! By the way, if Heartbeat isn't your thing, the station has been used, as Hogsmeade Station, in the Harry Potter films as well!
A few miles north is the village of Sleights. The end of the journey is almost in view now.
The bus has to miss out the village of Ruswarp due to a local incident, so we're suddenly on the final stretch into Whitby. There's a view of the sea for the first time, and is that the famous Abbey on the skyline?
The bus arrives in Whitby on time, at 16:53, the full scheduled journey from Leeds having taken just 17 minutes short of four hours.
The town is in two distinct halves, split by the River Esk. From the Middle Ages, Whitby had significant herring and whaling fleets. It was also where Captain James Cook (1728-1779) learned seamanship. Cook first explored the southern ocean in HMS Endeavour, which was built in Whitby.
The famous ruined Abbey was once a seventh century Christian monastery that later became a Benedictine abbey. It was confiscated by the Crown (Henry VIII) during the dissolution of the monasteries between 1536 and 1545.
Bram Stoker's 1897 novel "Dracula" features Count Dracula coming ashore at the headland and running up the 199 steps to the graveyard of St Mary's Church, in the shadow of the Whitby Abbey ruins.
Nowadays, the town is renowned for its tourism and its thriving shipping export trade.
ABOVE: Whitby - the railway station is to the right, just out of view, although the station sign can just be picked out (extreme right, middle)
This is journey's end for the 840 bus. It's been a delightful ride, and I would recommend it to anyone! Whether it is "Britain's Most Scenic Bus Route" is obviously going to be a personal choice, but no-one can deny that it's stunning! I just wish it ran a bit more frequently...
And in case you're wondering... The Arriva X4 bus will take me from here all the way on to Middlesbrough, in just under two hours. That's probably an article in itself one day, although I need some better pictures...