VISITORS TO LONDON are offered tickets to travel on buses that follow various routes that connect places that the companies operating them, like Big Bus and Toot Bus, consider to be of interest to tourists. Once a ticket has been purchased, the holder can get on the open-topped double-decker bus at one stop along its route, and disembark at another, and continue doing so all day. However, the ticket holder can only use the buses of the company that issued the ticket. Using Big Bus as an example, the price per adult ranges from £49.99 for a 24-hour ticket to as much as £69.99 for a 48-hour ticket, which includes a boat trip and walking tours. Children’s tickets are £10 cheaper than those for adults.

What these companies offer is without doubt helpful for minimally adventurous tourists. But the users of this service are confined to travelling along the few routes on offer, and must wait until one of their company’s vehicles arrives.

The hop-on hop-off companies provide travel within the Transport For London (‘TFL’) zones 1 and 2. An adult 24-hour TFL travel card, which gives unlimited use of all Tube, DLR, Elizabeth line and London Overground services within these zones costs £16.60, and £29.80 for zones 1 to 8 inclusive, which covers most of London. With a TFL travel card, the tourist can hop on and off as many bus and tube trains as he or she wants within the validity of the travel card. The zone 1 and 2 card costs one third of the price of the cheapest adult Big Bus ticket, and allows the traveller much greater flexibility.

Using a TFL travel card means that you are on your own, without a guide. But that hardly matters as there are good travel apps to help you find your way from A to B. And if you select bus routes carefully, you can get to see much of London from a regular TFL bus route. For example, the number 148 will carry you alongside Hyde Park, down Park Lane, past Hyde Park Corner and Buckingham Palace, to Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament, and across the Thames on Westminster Bridge. Further along this route, you will reach the Imperial War Museum. Another route, number 9, runs past the Design Museum, Kensington Palace, the Royal Albert Hall, Knightsbridge (near Harrods), Green Park, Hyde Park Corner, the Royal Academy, Piccadilly Circus, Regents Street, Trafalgar Square and the National Gallery, and Aldwych (where you can catch one of several buses to St Paul’s Cathedral). And this is only two of many bus routes that link places that many tourists wish to visit. In addition to the buses, the TFL travel card holder can cover great distances quite rapidly using the tube trains.

With a little bit of ingenuity and a TFL travel card, a visitor to London can get a far more interesting experience of London, its sights, and its people, than if he or she opts for the relatively inflexible, far costlier hop-on hop-off buses,