I was told about this website today:
just like The AA website, you type in point A (can be a postcode, street, town, attraction, etc.) and type in point B (gives you same options as point A) and also what date/time you'd like to go. then you can tick whether you want it to tell you public transit routes or by car. if you tick public transit, it goes to the next screen which will show all the departure and arrival time options for that particular route. select the one that suits your schedule, then click on 'details' (this is the cool part). once you do that, it will give you step-by-step how to get to your journey using public transport including travel times by bus, rail, walking or coach, the names of each of your stops, the bus numbers you'll have to take and there is even an option see costs for each leg of the journey (though most of the inter-city bus fares that i've had on the sample journies i tried didn't come up). the website even provides you with maps, links to go directly to the site that is offering the public transit on your route (national rail, national express, london underground, etc.).
i think this site is way cool and will save me some serious time and money in the future. AND it'll work really well if you are in a bind and need to get somewhere within the next couple hours (as well as planning something in the future). i did find that the random journies that i sampled late at night went the long route, but at least the website was smart enough to know when buses/trains/coaches aren't availabe and uses those that are available even if it's not the fastest.
there are other options on the website as well...but i haven't even gotten to those yet because i'm so thrilled with the public transport planner!!
http://www.transportdirect.info/TransportDirect/en/Home.aspx
