Who says coach travels' not sexy?

The Wrap was intrigued this week by a survey from a UK bus company, National Express, that indicated one in 30 people has fallen in love with a fellow passenger while travelling on a coach.

The bus company interviewed 2000 people for the survey so by our reckoning that means 70 of those interviewed found romance on the road.

It has to be said that in the same survey, one in five found themselves sitting next to a crushing bore.

If these figures are taken as the norm, the Wrap wonders how many times Cupid has visited passengers on bus routes such as the busy Singapore-Kuala Lumpur route, or between Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City?

A spokeswoman for National Express said she was not sure why coach and bus travel sparks love and friendship between passengers, but “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”.

The Wrap isn’t sure about the sherbet lemons, a bittersweet candy we enjoyed as a kid. On the rare occasions we have ventured onto a long-distance bus, some of the smells wafting through the bus are more likely to make the eyes water than the heart flutter.

And we have seen enough American movies featuring Greyhound buses to know that scary people who do unspeakable things always populate these vehicles.

Greyhound buses invariably travel lonely, dangerous roads and drop off their passengers in deserted towns in the middle of the night.

The person who can really tell us about love on a bus is John Anderson who left New Zealand for his first overseas trip when he was 22 years of age. He returned 20 years later with a wife and the world’s biggest travel company for 18-35 year-olds, Contiki Tours.

He started out with one small red bus, touring Europe on a shoestring. On his second trip he ran short of money to enable him to complete the full itinerary back to London.

He recalls, “I worked out the cost of travelling direct back to London without going through Spain and put that money in my left pocket. The rest of the passengers’ money I put in my right pocket.

“I drove to the casino in Nice and put the money from my right pocket on the roulette table: red – because that was the colour of our bus - and a high number.

“The wheel spun, the ball stopped, and the croupier announced, “Vingt Cinq, rouge, 25 red”.

“I collected the chips, cashed them, put them in my left pocket, and next day we all drove to Spain.”

Anderson feels he must have been doing something right on his trips: “Marriages made not in heaven but on a Contiki tour have become a familiar event,” he says. “On one legendary occasion, we had seven weddings from one coach.”

Anderson is now writing a book about his experiences, and inspiring others as a motivational speaker.