The Oxford Guide

This wonderful coach service takes you to London cheaply, quickly, and (for a coach) comfortably. And it runs ridiculously frequently; every 12 minutes during the day, and right through the night at reduced frequencies. For those trying to catch the bus in London, the Victoria stop is really at Grosvenor gardens - this has caused a little confusion.

This service is Stagecoach Oxford's rival to the Oxford Bus Company's Oxford Express; the two services are fairly similar but tickets are not usually transferrable between the two.

Perhaps the main advantage of the Oxford Tube over the Oxford Express is that it offers wireless internet access. Kami, who is a regular traveller on the service, says that it does have a patch around Lewknor where the signal drops for around 20 minutes; also, during 2008 the reliability of the wireless connection and the internet connectivity has been poor - on bad weeks, every other journey lacks the ability to get a link to the outside world.

There is also power available for your laptop, but again Kami says that during 2008 this has been increasingly unreliable, as with the network connection on bad weeks it's even odds whether the power works on a given journey. Sometimes the driver can turn the power on if it isn't working; generally it needs depot attention to the alternator.

Its town stops are:

• Bus station
• [Queen's Lane]?
• St. Clement's

If you plan to catch an evening coach back to Oxford at a busy time (there often seem to be busy spells around 7pm from commuters and around 10-11pm from the post-show crowd) it can be worthwhile catching the coach from the Grosvenor Gardens stop as opposed to Notting Hill Gate or later as this much improves your chances of getting a seat (it's a seats-only service, no standing) over Notting Hill Gate or Shepherds Bush.

Well-regarded seats include he two front pairs upstairs (excellent views and good legroom), and seats on the stair side between the stairs and the back of the bus - the two middle pairs have lots more leg room. The pairs just in front of the stairs upstairs and just in front of the big side door downstairs are good in that they have no problems reclining as nobody can object behind you, though the downstairs ones can get bad transmission noise on some coaches. The seats in front of the toilet can be both noisy from transmission noise and sometimes smelly from the toilet. Families tend to use the front seats upstairs so those who prefer to keep a distance from loud children may prefer the centre of the coach. Note that whilst the two front seats downstairs have good views of the road and can lead to interesting chats with the driver, they have limited legroom, no power point, poor side visibility, and not terribly effective ventilation from side air vents.