Featured image: Ian Burke

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A Manchester Met journalism student has found himself at the heart of a new episode of BBC Radio 4’s Illuminated, after two years broadcasting his unique journey across the UK’s bus networks on his own podcast, Slower Travel – Adventures by Bus.

Speaking to aAh! Magazine, Multimedia Journalism student Ian Burke opened up about experience as the star of Illuminated’s ‘Night Bus episode, where he explored Manchester’s night buses during a trip across the city. Reflecting on the episode, Ian described it as “an experimental documentary, filled with all sorts of weird and wonderful moments.”

Ian’s journey took him on Manchester’s V1 bus route, departing from Oxford Road, as he set out to document the sights and sounds of the late-night journey all the way to Leigh. However, the trip turned into an unexpected marathon, lasting well into the early hours – well past 2 am – as Ian soaked up the atmosphere of a typical night bus ride.

“I’m not built for staying up until the early hours,” he laughed. “I’m an old man! But we got some nice background noise, some general chitter-chatter of people walking around, but there was also a group of rowdy students and one of them rumbled us right away: ‘Oh look, it’s BBC News!'”

A leap of faith and an egg sandwich

Before Illuminated, Ian hosted his own bus podcast for over a year. Slower Travel, currently on hiatus at its 25^th episode, saw Ian document his journeys up and down the country across the nation’s bus network.

He said: “When I’m going out, I’m taking notes and notes and notes. It’s ridiculous. But the thing is, you’re taking everything in at once. I love hearing accents change as you go. I love going to bakeries and seeing what local treats they have.”

It was an idea borne over two decades before picking up a microphone. At 22, Ian recalled jolting awake in the early hours of the morning, mind racing.

“I had an actual dream about going around the coast of Britain by bus,” he said.

“I woke Eleanor up – my then-girlfriend, now wife. Great idea. It was about 2.30am or something, and I said, ‘Let’s go around the coast of Britain by bus’, to which she went, ‘Eurgh…’

“I took that to mean: that’s a great idea, tell me more about it in the morning.”

He went on to buy a road atlas, in which he plotted out a winding trail across Britain’s coastline with only the vague hope there would be buses available along the way.

He also planned a test round – a trip to his grandparents’ caravan in Wales. After four buses, eight hours, and an egg sandwich in Warrington, he made it to a phone box in Rhyl to call Eleanor – he’d made it. They were ready.

“It was 15 June, 2002. We left the house at something like half-seven in the morning, and bumped into the next door neighbour at the bus stop. He asked why we had backpacks, and I said, ‘We’re going on a trip around the coast of Britain by bus.’ ‘Are you mad?’ ‘No, honestly, we are.’

“It was quite the leap of faith, to be honest, and it was the best thing we’ve ever done. I loved it.”

Travel writing

Ian’s idea to start a podcast came later. In 2017, he and Eleanor found themselves on the road again, this time in Bristol.

He explained: “There was this fellow who got on the bus to Chippenham, and he looked like Martin Bell. It was at the uni there, and there were these two girls fawning over every word he said.

“They asked him what he had to do in the summer,” he continued, before dropping into a received pronunciation accent: “And he went, ‘I guess I’ll just get into travel writing.’

“And it really got my hackles up! I was thinking, ‘Oh, it’s that easy, is it?’ If you sort of click your fingers, you can just do a bit of travel writing. And clearly, for him, it was. I’ve seen it through my entire working life, where people have failed upwards because they’ve got connections. Generally speaking, working class people don’t have those kind of connections, and can’t get them because they’re not in those circles in the first place.

“It wound me up that he could just click his fingers and go and do whatever he fancied. I thought, well, you know what? Fuck you! I’m going to get into travel writing – and you can stick it up your arse!”

A call from Radio 4

“I had a phone call out of the blue in September from a producer, saying ‘I hear you like buses’. And I said ‘no, no I don’t.’”

Despite spending over a year hosting his own bus-travel podcast before he went on to celebrate them on Radio 4, surprisingly, Ian’s work never stemmed from a particular love for transport.

“I don’t like buses,” he said. “I like bus routes. And I think it all sort of stems from when I was little. Other kids would read, you know, The Gruffalo, or whatever; I was there with the A-to-Z.”

After recording the podcast, Ian was hopeful his episode on the night bus would highlight a different type of intrigue than the typical day journeys of Slower Travel. 

“There’s a serenity to travelling at night. It’s just people travelling along in this little yellow tin, going about their business, you know. No aggro, no argy-bargy, no funny business.

“I met this fantastic woman from Uganda called Grace. When I lived in Cornwall, I kept my barber up in Manchester, because once you’ve got your barber. It’s like having a football team: you only change your football team in extreme circumstances.

“So I’d come up every couple of months, get my hair chopped, and go back down – and that’s what Grace had done. She’d been down to London that day to have her hair done.

“She lives in Leigh with her family, and on the half-twelve bus coming home, that’s a long day. But she saw her friends, saw some family members while she was at it, and she’d had a dead good day.

“I felt proper honoured to just have that little snapshot into her life. You never know who you’re gonna find on the bus. You get all walks of life on there.

“You go from A to B, but you’re taking the rest of the alphabet a lot of the time as well. It’s interesting. It’s an interesting way of seeing the world.”

Dreams for the future

Ian’s foray into the nation’s bus routes isn’t set to end with his BBC appearance. After teasing a healthy stack of unrecorded Slower Travel scripts, he went on to describe his dream trip for as soon as the coming summer.

“There’s one part of the UK that I’d really, really love to go to. Just between Goole and Scunthorpe – apparently, the most boring part of Britain.

“It’s a paradox, innit? It’s this square kilometre, apparently, where there’s nothing in it whatsoever. It’s just a flat field, and there’s not even any trees in it! No fences, no features, it’s just a field with a farmer growing grass.

“I’m into sitting on buses, non-league football, and listening to music no one’s ever heard of, so I think I qualify as quite a dull person, and that would be my perfect match. I’m determined to go on an adventure over there in the summer and find the most boring square kilometre in Britain.”

Night Bus aired on BBC Radio 4’s Illuminated on Sunday 9^th March.