Are you facing an unbearable commute everyday? Maybe you have a long trip ahead of you to a holiday destination or sports match? Whether you are dreading you journey or are being driven to distraction with anticipation, bus journeys have a tendency to become unbearably long and generally drag by slowly.

In order to relieve the boredom or unwanted longevity of your journey we have prepared a guide on some top solutions for passing the time.

DVD and Media Players

If you are feeling a little tired watching a film or favourite program can be the perfect solution for relaxing. Watching films occupies us with constant images and sound which can help you feel a little less lonely whilst travelling alone.

Portable DVD players have been available on the market for some time now. This means that more companies are creating players more competitively priced to suit your personal price range. Similarly there are more people producing media players of varying capacity with additional features such as FM radio.

Recommended accessories are rechargeable or long life batteries and good quality headphones. If you are taking a DVD player then a wallet for holding your DVDs will take up less space than carrying all of them in their cases.

Media players are available in a range of memory capacities to suit your library of films and songs. If you have a low capacity media player such as 256 or 512 MB then additional memory sticks can be purchased for storing more data. Consult the instruction manual to find out if your player supports transferable memory and what the standard capacity is.

Portable Gaming

Similar to watching films playing computer games can provide you with an immersive environment to help you forget about your journey. There are a variety of different consoles available offering different games to enjoy. Mobile phones are also offering increasingly more sophisticated games to download and enjoy on the move.

Nintendo's game boy revolutionised portable gaming before which relatively simple games were the strongest competition such as Paper Boy and Climber on single game units. The game boy was one of the first consoles to offer multiple games played on one machine by storing them on individual cartridges.

Since the Game Boys popularity there have been many updates with better graphics, sound and overall better quality gaming. The Nintendo DS is the latest model although its predecessor the Game Boy Advance is still available at competitive prices offering good quality gaming. Another competitor the PSP has become popular since its launch and combines multimedia functions such as music and film playback as well as online gaming via its built in Wi-Fi capabilities.

Read a book

The original and best! Who needs a portable DVD player when you have a book to get stuck into? Many people find books inaccessible and hard to get into. Books can be very rewarding with a little effort. If you are a keen reader you will already know reading has many benefits to offer.

If you don't read much, try asking a friend or member of your family to recommend a book to you. If they can't find anything to entice you then think of TV programmes or films that you have enjoyed. It may be revolutionary for some to grasp but many films, TV programmes and even computer games are based on books. Well known examples include The Shawshank Redemption which was originally a Stephen king Book, Tom Clancy's rainbow six series and the league of extraordinary gentlemen which features the characters The Invisible Man based on HG Wells classic novel and Dorian Gray from Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Arguably the best feature of books is the creativity they bestow on their reader. When you watch a film or TV programme based on a book you are viewing the directors take on the events portrayed. When you read a book yourself you can make your own interpretation. You can decide who is cast to represent each character, the look of the costumes and the ambience of the settings. Try it yourself, read a book based on a film or TV program you haven't seen and then try watching its equivalent. See which you prefer afterwards and you may just become converted!