COACH TRIPS FROM LEWES- HOLIDAYS and DAYS OUT
Your writer suspects that, rather like Agatha Christie novels, coach trips are considered too downmarket for Lewes tastes.
But as a more environmentally-friendly form of transport they are worth more consideration. After all, a form of transport that can take you from Lewes outside Waitrose to the Tatra mountains in Poland with only one change looks good.
Investigations soon showed that there are two types of operator, the local coach firm and firms operating nationally or regionally.
Local coach firms include Discovery Tours which picks up in Brighton and Sussex Universities at Falmer,
Local firms tend to run day trips and short hotel breaks in the UK. They also pick up at a limited number of places, which means that you are not rolling around your home area picking people up for long periods.
National and Regional companies are different in that they also offer holidays abroad. Travelman has heard good reports of Just Go Holidays
Less well regarded are Leger Holidays and Shearing’s
There are trips all over Europe, including Corsica and Sardinia. There is no obligation to go on any of the excursions so the holidays may be good value even if you just use them as travel and a base. All you have to do is book and turn up. The rest is done for you.
But there are issues:
- The journeys can be very long and you cannot get definite timings until about 10 days before departure, by which time you cannot back out without penalty. You are taken from Lewes to a service station near Dover where you board your coach to your destination. Often the coach will travel overnight, although on some trips there is an overnight stop. Travelman was quoted 20 hours for an overnight journey to Poland.
- Nor will the companies release the pick-up times until just before the trip. As Lewes is fairly near to Dover these should be reasonable, but there are stories of people being given 2am pickup times.
- The company needs to find a hotel that can take up to 40 people and which will also give good group rates. This can mean that the hotel is some distance from the attractions you are going to visit, leading to longer coach journeys each day. It can also mean that hotels are not the standard they ought to be. Have a look at the reviews on Tripadvisor or Booking.com
- The conditions say that the excursions are not guaranteed, which can be a problem if you are particularly booking the holiday for the excursions.
- As with all package holidays, if not enough people book then the holiday will be cancelled.
- Most coaches cross the channel on the Dover ferries, so any disruption there will make the journey longer.
- Do have a look at the reviews, which are normally on trustpilot, or search for (name of company) reviews. They are often not good. Companies try to boost their score by pressing you to review the booking process. They seem to be able to manage this, which boosts their score, but if you look at the reviews of the actual holidays the story is not so good.
updated 8/12/25