Five Adur Trips Where a Taxi Is the Wrong Answer (and What to Do Instead)

We'd rather you trusted us than used us. That sounds like a line, but it's also just good business on a coast this small — if we talked you into a cab for a walk you could do in ten minutes, you'd remember it the next time you actually needed one at 3am with a suitcase.

So here's an honest list. Five journeys where the driver should talk you out of it, and one section on when we're genuinely the right call.

1. Anything under a mile and a half

Shoreham High Street down to the footbridge and over to Shoreham Beach. Lancing station up to the village. Worthing town centre to the pier. These are twelve, fifteen, twenty-minute walks, and a cab will cost you the minimum fare for all three minutes of it.

Two of you doing that there and back is a round of drinks money spent on a journey you'd have finished before the app found a driver. Save it — the seafront is the whole point of living here.

The obvious exceptions: it's coming down sideways, you've got a toddler and a buggy and a shoulder bag full of snacks, or walking isn't easy for you. Those aren't luxuries.

2. A weekday morning into Brighton

This is the big one. From Shoreham-by-Sea, the Coastway West line gets you into Brighton in around twenty to twenty-five minutes. From Lancing or Worthing, add a few. Meanwhile the A27 and A270 at eight in the morning is a slow-moving car park with sea views, and no driver has a secret route that beats a train on rails.

If you're heading into Brighton for work, a hospital appointment or a day out, the train almost always wins on both time and money. The same applies coming back in the evening peak.

Where it flips: engineering works, a strike day, a late finish after the last service, or four of you splitting a fare so it lands at roughly the price of four tickets. That's when you call us — and that's exactly the sort of day the Coastway tends to pick.

3. The Lancing-to-Worthing seafront shuffle on a sunny Saturday

The 700 runs along this coast like a small green lifeline, and on a fine weekend it's the most pleasant bus route in Sussex — you get the sea on one side and no parking anxiety on the other. The promenade walk between Lancing and Worthing is about two and a half miles of flat, easy going, and there are worse ways to spend an hour.

A cab along that stretch on a busy Saturday isn't outrageous — it's just unnecessary, and it's slower than you think once the coast road fills up.

4. A daytime Gatwick run when the trains are behaving

Controversial, from us. But if you're travelling on your own, in daylight, with one bag, and the line is running normally, the train to Gatwick — direct or with a single change — is cheaper than any car and immune to the M23.

Where the cab takes over: anything before about half five in the morning, anything after the last service, anything on a weekend when they're replacing track, and anything involving three people and four suitcases. A family of four with hold luggage is often better off in a car than buying four anytime fares, and considerably calmer about it.

5. The station run you could walk in the time it takes to get a driver

Shoreham-by-Sea, Lancing and Worthing stations all sit within a short walk of large parts of town. If you're fifteen minutes from the platform with a rucksack, walking is not a heroic act — it's just the fastest option. Station car parks fill early and the surrounding streets have restrictions that catch people out, so the calculus is usually walk, then bus, then cab, then drive-and-park.

Caveats, and we mean them: a 6am train with a heavy case, a dark walk home in January, or a late arrival back when the streets are quiet. Those are real reasons to book, not excuses.

When a cab genuinely is the right answer

Being useful means being clear about the other side of the ledger too. Book one when:

• You live off the bus map. Upper Beeding, Bramber, Coombes, Botolphs, the lanes above Findon — an hourly service, or none, changes the maths entirely.
• The weather has turned. A twenty-minute walk in horizontal November rain with shopping bags is not character building.
• Mobility is a factor. Not everything is visible, and nobody owes anyone an explanation.
• There's a group of you. Four people splitting a fare to Brighton or Gatwick often pay train prices for door-to-door service.
• The connection is tight. If missing it means missing a flight, a wedding or a hospital slot, buy the certainty.
• It's late and the trains have stopped. The gap between the last service and the first is the one time the coast genuinely goes quiet.

The short version

If you can walk it in fifteen minutes, walk it. If the train does it in twenty, take the train. If the 700 is due and the sun's out, get the bus and enjoy the view.

And when none of that works — when it's dark, raining, you're loaded with luggage, or you're heading somewhere the timetable forgot — ring us. We'll be there, and we won't hold it against you that you walked last time.