ABOVE: Arriva Northumbria 1390 (MX10 BZS) stands at Blyth Bus Station, loading up for a run to Ashington on route 1. All photos in this article were taken on Thursday 25 June 2026.
Finding the 1 ... in Northumberland
Blyth to Ashington
11 July 2026
Runs: Daily, with full evening service
Operator: Arriva Northumbria
Weekday daytime frequency: Every 30 minutes
Estimated Peak Vehicle Requirement: Three buses
(estimated eight buses interworking with routes 57 / 57A, Ashington to Whitley Bay)
Off-peak journey time (weekdays): 34 minutes
Estimated route length: Seven miles
There's something interesting at the back of Arriva Northumbria's Blyth depot... Something new...
It's the unmistakable shape of a BYD BD11 electric double-decker. In fact there are at least three parked up here, but my hurried picture only captures two:
ABOVE: A clear view of what could be Arriva Northumbria 8014 (NL26 EVD, right), a BYD BD11, inside Blyth depot. There's another one just visible to its left. In the foreground are more familiar single- and double-deck types.
If only I had walked round the block before stepping on the bus... I have spotted these electric double-deckers hidden behind the fence as the bus on route 1 pulls out of Blyth Bus Station (the depot is just down the road). I could have got better pictures...
I have come to Blyth, Northumberland, in my continuing search to find "the one"; my choice of a route 1 to go into my Hall of Fame - the 100 British Bus Routes series. There are so many to choose from (about 140) that I need to make my choice carefully.
This route 1 is a simple run across a tiny bit of south-east Northumberland. If the names of the two ends of the route sound familiar, but you can't think why, they were both reconnected to the railway network in December 2024, under the (now abolished) "Restoring Your Railways" programme. And the railway is certainly prominent on parts of the route, as we shall see.
Blyth itself is a sizeable town of almost 40,000 people (at the 2021 Census), six miles north of the seaside resort of Whitley Bay and only four miles from the northern extremes of Tyne & Wear. The centre of Newcastle-upon-Tyne is less than 11 miles to the south-west.
The port of Blyth dates from the 12th century. In the early 18th century, but the development of the modern town only began in the first quarter of the 18th century. The main industries which helped the town prosper were coal mining and shipbuilding, with the salt trade, fishing, and the railways also playing an important role. These industries have largely vanished, but the port still receives paper and pulp from Scandinavia for the newspaper industries of England and Scotland.
The Bus Station itself is a basic affair; four sides of a square with a sixties-style two-storey office block in the middle, partly on stilts. There is a suggestion that it might once have been a "Travel Centre", but everything is closed up now.
ABOVE: An Arriva double-decker stands in Blyth Bus Station.
There is something rather more historic opposite, though. The building that today masquerades as the town Library was opened in 1882 as a Mechanics' Institute:
I am leaving Blyth on the 09:47 departure. It's a Thursday morning and there will be a steady flow of passengers. Buses on route 1 run half-hourly on weekdays, and every hour in the evenings and on Sundays.
The coastline in this part of Blyth is dominated by the docks. If you want a beach you need to go a bit further south.
I manage to capture a (very poor) picture of a bit of the infrastructure that briefly becomes visible from the bus (unfortunately I am sitting on the wrong side)...
Although a station was opened at Blyth Bebside in 2025, it's a couple of miles to the west of the Town Centre. The 1 starts out of town to the north, taking an inland westerly turn along the south side of the River Blyth, which has a substantial inlet here.
It's mainly residential here, as we head through the suburbs of Blyth. Cowpen may have been the focus of the salt trade in these parts, as the 1848 publication, "A Topographical Dictionary of England" by Samuel Lewis, records that "the canons of Brinkburn and the monks of Tynemouth had salt-mines here, the latter being also owners of much of the land, and there were formerly several other salt-works near the river" (source: Co-Curate).
There's a very strange sight to be had at the Dales Primary School between Cowpen and Bebside, when I spot what looks suspiciously like a Pacer train carriage in its back yard (cue another poor photograph):
And that's exactly what is is... The two-car retired train was donated by Porterbrook to the school, for children with special educational needs. It has been converted into a library and a Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics classroom, and has a train driving simulator.
It has taken 14 minutes so far and we're still in Blyth. We have reached the Bebside Interchange - basically just a bus stop. This is the nearest stop on route 1 to the Blyth Bebside station. But the station is on the other side of a major roundabout that allows access to the A189 Gateshead to Ashington road. There is a walking route across the junction, but it has no pedestrian priority. You would be better off catching a different bus, I suspect, to get closer to the station.
One such bus is the X9 (Newcastle to Blyth), one of which meets us at this very roundabout:
ABOVE: Arriva Northumbria `7613 (NK59 DMY), a VDL DB300 Wright Gemini 2, heads across the A189 junction towards Blyth, on route X9 from Newcastle. The level crossing at Blyth Bebside station can be seen behind.
Route 1 makes a brief trip along the trunk road, as a means of crossing the River Blyth. This is the first such crossing available from the eastern coast - we are two miles inland.
The bus passes a sign that says "Welcome to Bedlington Station", which implies that the whole town of Bedlington is actually called Bedlington Station... Well it does to me anyway.
We do come to the station itself a little further on. This was the last station to be opened on the reopened Newcastle to Ashington route, as recently as March 2026.
ABOVE: Bedlington Station
Bedlington itself is an ancient market town with evidence of habitation from the Bronze Age.
The railway owes a lot to the people of this town, and to one family in particular. Thomas Longridge Gooch (1808-1882) was civil engineer of the Manchester and Leeds Railway, whilst his younger brother, John Viret Gooch FRSA (1812–1900), was the locomotive superintendent of the London and South Western Railway. A third brother, Sir Daniel Gooch (1816-1889), was an English railway locomotive and transatlantic cable engineer. He was the first Superintendent of Locomotive Engines on the Great Western Railway (GWR) from 1837 to 1864 and became GWR's Chairman from 1865 until his death in 1889.
In 1865, Sir Daniel Gooch was elected Conservative MP for Cricklade, holding the seat for 20 years. It is reported that, during his time as MP, he never addressed Parliament. He suggested in his diary that it "would be a great advantage to business if there were a greater number who followed my example".
Before the Gooch family made their impression on the industry, John Birkinshaw (1777-1842) invented wrought iron rails (patented in 1820). Such rails replaced wooden rails, which were weak, and cast iron rails which, being short, broke easily and only allowed very low speeds.
We pass into the intriguingly-named Bomarsund. The village grew around a coal pit that opened in 1854, and was named after the August 1854 battle, in the Crimean War, at the fortress of Bomarsund in Sund (now part of Finland). The village was also home to the former Northumberland Brewery.
Next comes Stakeford. This is a large village of more than 4,500 people.
The short nature of this route 1 means that we're already very close to the finish line. There's one final treat to be enjoyed, in the form of the crossing of the River Wansbeck, north-east of Stakeford.
This gives a view of the impressive Wansbeck railway viaduct. Constructed in the 1920s (between 1926 & 1929 depending on information sources), the viaduct is a plate girder crossing, with 14-span, steel-braced towers or trestles on concrete foundations. The 1920s crossing replaced an earlier bridge dating from 1859. It is 1042 feet in length between abutments (data source: Bridges on the Tyne).
And so we come to Ashington, once a centre of the coal-mining industry. In the 1700s, all that existed of Ashington was a small farm with a few dwellings around it. Ashington developed in the 1840s, when the Duke of Portland built housing to encourage people escaping the Great Famine of Ireland to come and work at his nearby collieries.
Ashington has produced an impressive number of successful sporting personalities, including footballers, cricketers, Premier League Motorcycle speedway rider Leon Flint and golfer Kenneth Ferrie, who has played on the PGA Tour. See a fuller list here.
No wonder the town is proud of its past:
The return of the railway to the town, in 2024, will undoubtedly also have contributed to its "bright future":
We reach journey's end, on time at 10:21. The driver has already prepared for his next journey out, as the 10:25 departure on route 57A to Whitley Bay. Buses interwork with routes 57 and 57A, enabling a more efficient operation on the latter routes, which would otherwise have a 26-minute stand in Ashington. If I have got my sums right, that allows the two routes to be run with eight buses rather than nine.
ABOVE: Arriva Northumbria 1390 (MX10 BZS) again, in Ashington Bus Station and already prepared for service on route 57A.
Ashington railway station is a few minutes' walk to the west. The new railway route has been incredibly successful, generating many more passengers than were expected. But route 1 complements, rather than duplicates, the railway route, digging into those villages that the train doesn't reach (or doesn't stop at). I have no idea how route 1 today compares how it functioned before the railway was reopened, but it seems to be doing fine to me.
But it's not going to be "The" 1 for me. The search continues...