Seated for success? A survey claims
nearly one in three passengers has
found love on a coach.
Photograph: Martin Godwin/Guardian
Take the National Express, when your life's in a mess, so the song goes, and you might just meet your dream partner.

A somewhat incredible one in 30 people has fallen in love with a fellow passenger while travelling on a coach, according to a new survey of 2,000 passengers out today. Coach company National Express commissioned the report to mark 75 years of coach travel from London's Victoria coach station, and is inviting travellers to share their memories of life in the slow lane.

So what is it that is sparking the roadside romance? A sense of shared adventure? Travelling down the open road, watching the countryside rolling past and car tail lights glowing in the dusk?

"We're not sure why coach travel sparks love and friendship between passengers, perhaps it is the excitement of the unknown, the spare time people have to relax or the smell of sherbet lemons that causes people to fall for a fellow passenger," offers Karen Beasley of National Express.

Sherbet lemons? I must have been travelling on the wrong coach. My coach memories are haunted by the riper smells of neighbours eating food specially prepared to induce travel sickness - sweaty tuna sandwiches, cheese and onion crisps, or in one instance a Tupperware full of cold greasy chicken.

After the food came the snoring, farting and steady invasion of your already tiny personal space as the sweet wrappers, newspapers and coffee cups mounted up.

In the US, road movies have boosted coach travel's public image. Maybe it's just us Brits that have labelled it unsexy and uncool.

On the flip side, of the 2,000 adults included in the survey one in five sat next to a crushing bore. So perhaps I just drew the short straw.