Whitley Bay’s open-top delight

Saturday 22nd August 2026 Despite the hot weather I’ve hardly done any open-top bus riding this summer. Aside from East Yorkshire’s Beachcomber in Scarborough (blog coming up next weekend in the ‘Every Route 99’ series), my only other journey exposed to the open air was last Tuesday afternoon when I enjoyed a round trip from Tynemouth to Whitley Bay on Go North East’s new ‘Tide Tour’. Introduced on 18th July for the six week summer season (through to Bank Holiday Monday 31st August), this one-bus daily service running every hour between 10:00 and 17:00 is being funded and overseen by the North East Mayoral Strategic Authority with the route’s dedicated bus even featuring Kim McGuinness’s name as part of the livery to make the point. It’s actually enlightening to see a Strategic Authority get involved in providing a bus route solely aimed at the leisure market as once franchising really takes hold we don’t want to lose seasonal services of this kind which are much appreciated by…