But today two women from Yorkshire and Lancashire will board a bus in Berwick-upon- Tweed to embark on the "adventure" of travelling the entire length of the country without paying a single penny in fares.

Christine Jackson and her friend Manju Ghosh travelled more quickly by train to the border town last night.

This morning they were expecting to hit the road as part of a 700-mile trip using only local bus services.

Ms Jackson, 66, from Sheffield, will use a new English National Concessions travel pass for the epic journey, which will see her and Mrs Ghosh, 61, from Bolton, attempt to reach Land's End by a circuitous route.

The pair decided to set out today because it is the first day that the concessions pass is valid, meaning that they and everyone else over 60 can now take advantage of free bus travel anywhere in England.

Ms Jackson, a retired management consultant, described the trip as an "adventure" and said she and Mrs Ghosh would
be doing their favourite crossword puzzles to pass the time during the trip.

She added: "The idea just emerged.

"We like going on buses and we wondered whether it would be possible to travel from Berwick to Land's End for nothing.

"Then we just decided to try it out.

"Obviously this will be the longest trip we have ever done by bus and its certainly the longest journey I will ever have made on service buses, which will stop every 400 yards or so."

Working out connections has been a challenge because there is no national timetable for buses in the same way as trains, and they said they were prepared for a few revisions on the way.

"We have drawn up a detailed itinerary, but there may be times when we have a long wait for a bus, or one doesn't turn up, but we will just have to try and find an alternative," said Ms Jackson who does not own a car and "chooses not to drive".

"But it has been difficult in some areas to find a bus, its very difficult to find a good bus where there is a good rail link.

"It is clearly not in the interests of bus companies to compete."

"The thing with buses is that they are not cancelled in the same way as trains, so we are hoping to get to Land's End on schedule in 12 days time.

"Hopefully our challenge will encourage more people to get a bus pass."

Several Yorkshire towns are included in the first few days of the journey – including Richmond, Northallerton, Thirsk, York, Selby, Doncaster and Sheffield.

Friends will be putting the pair up during the trip.

Mrs Ghosh, a retired doctor from Bolton, said when she told her two sons aged 27 and 31 what she planned to do, they told her she must be "totally crazy", but yesterday she insisted she would enjoy herself.

"It is a lot of fun taking a rambling, meandering route and buses these days are fantastic, they are not the dirty, smelly things they used to be in years gone by," said Mrs Ghosh who has been friends with Ms Jackson for 15 years.

"When we are not doing our crosswords, we will be able to talk to people on the bus and see things out of the windows.

"You can't do that in the same way when you are driving a car."

Ms Jackson has been helped in her quest by the South Yorkshire Passenger Transport Executive, which made sure that she had her travel pass in time to board her first bus this morning.

David Brown, the executive's passenger services director, said: "In South Yorkshire we have around 230,000 people who are eligible for the national concessions pass and we have already sent out around 160,000.

"It's great to see that Ms Jackson and Ms Ghosh are already making good use of theirs."