The old today, honestly. Thinking only of themselves. Take me for example. Turned 60 last year, but still in work and just about able to afford the (ruinous) train fare from London to the Lake District; particularly with the one-third reduction you can get with a Senior Railcard (£26 a year).

But what do I do? I decide to go by bus instead, because it’s free. When I say bus, I really mean buses, an awful lot of them. You still have to pay for the long-distance routes, but the local ones you can go on for nothing. It doesn’t matter where you live in England, your Freedom Pass will be honoured in the cities, market towns and one-bus-a-week hamlets across the land. In theory, at least.

The aim was an itinerary made up of lots of little steps: 15 miles here, 20 there, that being the span of most of the local routes. Before setting off I went to the Britain and London Visitor Centre in Regent Street. The man behind the counter scratched his head and gave me a patient but flummoxed look.

It was the first of many like that to come my way in the days ahead. Some would turn into open laughter, others would curdle into contempt.

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He told me that until about ten years ago the bus company in the Isle of Wight, Southern Vectis, used to publish a timetable of every single bus route in the country, but then it stopped. Nodal points, he said, that was the key.

This is transport speak for the larger towns, the logic being that if you head for these you have more chance of catching something useful for the next leg. On my map of England, the nodal-point strategy began translating into Aylesbury, Oxford, Banbury, Stratford… The main thing was to pull clear of London in a ten o’clock direction, until the day or the buses gave out.

My card relished the challenge. As from January 2 this year, London’s over-60s don’t have to wait until 9.30am to use their Freedom Pass. As this is valid on the Tubes as well as the buses, it meant I could get myself from my home in Richmond, southwest London, right up to Chesham, Bucks, early in the day. It’s the farthest extremity of the Metropolitan Line, one of only two stations in Zone Nine.

Chalfont and Latimer, where you catch the Chesham shuttle, is a country station, but with Tube trains that take you between rolling fields and wooded hills. It is slightly unreal. Our train has two people on it, and one of them is the driver. It is on this line that I first have the sense of getting out of the game; still functioning, but working on a different schedule. Basically, getting on a bit.

My arrival at Chesham Broadway brings the average age down with a bump. This is where the buses stop, turn, and head off all over the region – Hemel Hempstead, Berkhamsted, Watford, Amersham. If I’d planned a timetable for my journey, it would already be in tatters, because the Tiger Line service seems to have switched to 90-minute intervals without any of the passengers knowing it. None of them minds.

A man called John walks by, recognises his friend Martin at the stop and says it’s a lovely day for it. “Comfortable bus, the sun is out, you don’t have to think about parking.” Martin and his wife have lived in the town for 30 years. Today they are going into Aylesbury to search the local records for her family history. Her people were in Slough, West Ham and Walthamstow, but she has a feeling that, way back, they were in Chesham. “People don’t go anywhere here except by bus,” says Martin. “You only have to walk a few hundred yards and there’s a big hill.”

Two buses swing into the Broadway, but they’re false dawns: 52 to High Wycombe bus station, 62 via Holmer Green to Amersham. Pam at the bus stop says all the rules have changed and no one’s letting you know what buses you can and can’t take. This keeps coming up – a fear that somehow or other this business of a Freedom Pass taking you anywhere is too good to be true and is going to be snatched away any minute. What was it Janis Joplin sang when we were all young, or youngish: “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.”

There’s never more than nine of us on the Aylesbury bus at any one time. For most of the way everyone is a senior. The youngest person is the driver, a woman in her forties. A few miles from the town she stops the bus on a country road to chat to a friend. I ask her if I’m likely to get anything going through to Oxford, but she says curtly, “I don’t know. I’ve nothing to do with Arriva.”

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