I have a cunning plan

It's actually surprisingly difficult to plan a bus journey across England. Not only are there multitudes of different bus companies serving each area but their sites and timetables are not connected. Oh, some sites reckon they will plan but most fail. The best of the bunch seems to be https://nationaljourneyplanner.travelinesw.com/ - at least it gets us to Swindon and beyond, a feat seemingly beyond, for example, https://www.traveline.info/ and despite the fact that, in this case all the buses are operated by the same operator - Stagecoach, the nationaljourneyplanner site offers a route to Cheltenham which starts after the bus pass watershed of 09:30, something Stagecoach themselves couldn't plan.

Now, starting here near Southampton the obvious choice would seem to head north to Oxford or strike out from Reading. Wrong! There just don't seem to be any useful bus services out of those destinations that will take us on further.

Another option is Swindon, and then on westwards to Cheltenham. Oh, it looks like 5 buses and over and this might actually work. And so it goes, slowly meandering northwards across this green and pleasant land until 5 days later - Gretna Green - we've covered the length of England! Our cunning plan is so cunning you could stick a tail on it and call it a weasel. However I suspect, just like Blackadder's plans, there is much that could go wrong.