We started the day standing at a bus stop just north of Kendal and two slightly older women joined us to catch the 555 to Keswick. Then suddenly, and in a slightly apologetic tone as if they were letting us down, they told us they had decided to go the other way and crossed over the road to get a bus south. Transport For London were quite right to call it the Freedom Pass.
Wonderful journey through Windemere, Ambleside and Grassmere. It was misty but the Lake District is always beautiful. The double-decker, which was higher than many of the cottages we passed, was pretty crowded and one sometimes wondered if it would make it over the next hill. We should be grateful to the Lake District National Park for not straightening or widening these roads. This bus travels this route each way every hour. Why would anyone drive here? If you want to stop or take a walk, you don’t have to park and there’s another bus in an hour.
Unfortunately at Keswick it began to pour with rain – our first of the journey. We had lunch and then stood under the awning of the Booth’s supermarket and waited for our bus to Carlisle. It came in 15 minutes early and the crowd that had gathered was delighted. But the bus driver was having none of us until it was time to leave. So we went on shivering in the rain. As we eventually got on he said: “I have to have a break you know” and we all forgave him.
On this bus we decided to curtail our trip at Carlisle and not try to get to Gretna. It was going to be complicated journey on an irregular bus route to Dumfries and we weren’t sure where the border was and it was raining. So at Carlisle we got a train home and came through Shap, enjoyed another perspective on the Lake District and then I went on through the Hope Valley. We have both decided we are very glad we live in the north of England.
Now some more of Manju’s facts. We’ve been on thirty seven buses and spent thirty four and a half hours on them. The whole trip would have costs £125.90 if we had had to pay. Now something less than facts. A very rough calculation indicates that in the south east, the cost was 30p a mile, in London 18p a mile, in the rest of the country 20p a mile and in the Lake District back to 30p.
It’s been a very good trip but not quite so good as last year’s for three reasons, we think. Because there was so little publicity nobody knew who we were so we didn’t have the delightful engagement with passengers, drivers and bus station staff. Second, this journey was very urban and urban generally equals boring. We went right across the three biggest cities in the country and in the south the small towns seemed to merge into each other. Third, we allowed ourselves to plan the journey too rigidly around where we had friends to stay. This meant some very long tiring days, particularly Cambridge to Birmingham, and we had little time to do any sightseeing. We had promised ourselves a visit to Ely Cathedral but it was impossible. We have to remember that we are 60-something backpackers and not 20-something. But we shall do it again, perhaps around the east coast from Colchester to Cleethorpes.
We deliberately don’t say much in the blog about our hosts. They have all been wonderfully generous and warm towards us, provided us with lovely dinners, stimulating conversation, comfortable bedrooms and proper breakfasts and, sometimes even, sandwiches for our journey. Our thanks to all of them.
No rows about quantum physics or the crossword this time so we are still very good friends.
Thursday, 9 April 2009
Tuesday, 7 April 2009
Day 7 - Horwich/Chorley to Kendal
Manju went to her home last night in Lostock and I stayed with friends in Chorley where I used to live. She was seen off by her whole family, including Dara, at Horwich and I got on the same bus at the excellent new bus station in Chorley. Again, motorway (the M6) to Preston. This feels very un-local-bus-like. We struggled with a hard Araucaria crossword about the Redgrave family. Manju is convinced that because someone complained about an easy crossword by him, he is working hard to dispel any idea that he is dumbing down. And we have to suffer as a result.
From Preston to Lancaster where we wandered around the town, ate Italian, and bought flowers for our host. Then the 555 to Kendal. A delightful ride on the top of a double-decker through Carnforth with a view of Morecame Bay and the southern lakes. We are nearly there and hope to be in Gretna by early afternoon tomorrow.
From Preston to Lancaster where we wandered around the town, ate Italian, and bought flowers for our host. Then the 555 to Kendal. A delightful ride on the top of a double-decker through Carnforth with a view of Morecame Bay and the southern lakes. We are nearly there and hope to be in Gretna by early afternoon tomorrow.
Monday, 6 April 2009
Day 6 - Whitchurch to Chorley and Bolton
We have taken our only two car trips here because our hosts live where there are no buses and even the buses that come near don't run on Sunday. We caught a D&G bus to Nantwich. The driver said this stands for David and Gerald but we don't believe him.
It was a private taxi to Wrenbury where we were joined by a Spanish family and watched two narrowboats pass before the Lift Bridge was lowered for us to go over. Then there were lots of passengers as we did a number of figure of eights around the various villages.
Very speedy journey from Nantwich to Crewe. Crewe Bus Station is a disgrace. This is by far the worst we have seen anywhere and we've seen plenty. Its dirty and delapidated, has no waiting area or seating and the toilet is disgusting. You have to pay 20p to get in through a heavy door, which many people wouldn't be able to handle, and then it doesn't close properly. So we made a hasty decision to get on an earlier bus than planned to Macclesfield. Pleasant journey via Sandbach and a pleasant lunch in the town.
Then to Manchester where we were met by the Chair of the Greater Manchester Passenger Authority, a Councillor from Chorlton, and Jonathan Morgan from the GMPTE press office. Yet another photograph of us smiling and thrusting our passes forward. Then we walked to the splendid new interchange at Shudehill. Ten out of ten for this bus station. The X61 bus to Horwich and Chorley surprised us by going on the M61 from Swinton to Horwich. We didn't think that was allowed, but it was great as it cuts the travel time considerably.
It was a private taxi to Wrenbury where we were joined by a Spanish family and watched two narrowboats pass before the Lift Bridge was lowered for us to go over. Then there were lots of passengers as we did a number of figure of eights around the various villages.
Very speedy journey from Nantwich to Crewe. Crewe Bus Station is a disgrace. This is by far the worst we have seen anywhere and we've seen plenty. Its dirty and delapidated, has no waiting area or seating and the toilet is disgusting. You have to pay 20p to get in through a heavy door, which many people wouldn't be able to handle, and then it doesn't close properly. So we made a hasty decision to get on an earlier bus than planned to Macclesfield. Pleasant journey via Sandbach and a pleasant lunch in the town.
Then to Manchester where we were met by the Chair of the Greater Manchester Passenger Authority, a Councillor from Chorlton, and Jonathan Morgan from the GMPTE press office. Yet another photograph of us smiling and thrusting our passes forward. Then we walked to the splendid new interchange at Shudehill. Ten out of ten for this bus station. The X61 bus to Horwich and Chorley surprised us by going on the M61 from Swinton to Horwich. We didn't think that was allowed, but it was great as it cuts the travel time considerably.
Day 5 - Birmingham to Shrewsbury
Before setting off on today’s bus journey, we took a tour of the Cadbury estate so that Manju could compare it with the other model villages or towns she has seen – Port Sunlight and Welwyn - and then went past my old school. Then the 45 into New Street. At 9am on a Sunday morning, this bus was packed with the most ethnically mixed group we have encountered. It was all very noisy and jolly. Manju overheard a conversation between two strangers, a black woman nurse on her way to work, and a white guy who indicated that he was going into town for a drink. They discussed one god or many, agreed amicably that there was one god whatever you called him and wished each other well for the rest of the day.
We walked across a city centre I no longer recognise to Priory Queensway for a bus to Walsall. Then more urban sprawl to Wolverhampton where we enjoyed the sardine sandwiches provided by last night’s host. We left Wolverhampton for Bridgnorth and, at last, hit some real countryside. The ability to rest ones eyes for minutes at a time on the far horizon is such a relief after the cacophony and clutter of the streets where the buildings and billboards, the traffic lights and vehicles endlessly restrict your view. Manju illustrated her eclectic tastes as we came into Shropshire. She is a scientist so likes facts. She told me that up until last night (half way through our journey) we had been on twenty two buses for twenty and half hours and they would have cost £67.70 if we had had to pay. She then read me Houseman’s ‘On Wenlock Edge’ from her electronic reader.
At Bridgnorth, which declares itself as Shropshire’s first Fair Trade town, we asked the bus driver where we could get the bus to Shrewsbury. He drove us on after everyone had left the bus and showed us where to go and said he would be our driver for the ongoing journey. Its a good job he did because the road the bus stop was on had only opened last week, the bus stop was without any information and we would have been stuck. These bus drivers really are very good. There was one in Solihull who when we asked for the location of our next bus, drove us on to the stop and we were able to get an earlier bus. In any case, at this anonymous bus stop in Bridgnorth, other waiting passengers discussed the qualities of the drivers on the service (called Choice) and told us they were organising a petition because the new weekday driver was too slow. Our bus driver was 10 minutes late at the stop but said: “I always come late so no-one misses the bus”. He then gave us a guided tour of the hills we passed – Wenlock Edge, the Wrekin and the distant Welsh mountains – and when we got to Shrewsbury proudly pointed out where Darwin went to school and the enormous statue of Clive of India, also a son of Shrewsbury.
We have just seen our second what I now know to be a female greater spotted woodpecker in the garden where we are staying.
We walked across a city centre I no longer recognise to Priory Queensway for a bus to Walsall. Then more urban sprawl to Wolverhampton where we enjoyed the sardine sandwiches provided by last night’s host. We left Wolverhampton for Bridgnorth and, at last, hit some real countryside. The ability to rest ones eyes for minutes at a time on the far horizon is such a relief after the cacophony and clutter of the streets where the buildings and billboards, the traffic lights and vehicles endlessly restrict your view. Manju illustrated her eclectic tastes as we came into Shropshire. She is a scientist so likes facts. She told me that up until last night (half way through our journey) we had been on twenty two buses for twenty and half hours and they would have cost £67.70 if we had had to pay. She then read me Houseman’s ‘On Wenlock Edge’ from her electronic reader.
At Bridgnorth, which declares itself as Shropshire’s first Fair Trade town, we asked the bus driver where we could get the bus to Shrewsbury. He drove us on after everyone had left the bus and showed us where to go and said he would be our driver for the ongoing journey. Its a good job he did because the road the bus stop was on had only opened last week, the bus stop was without any information and we would have been stuck. These bus drivers really are very good. There was one in Solihull who when we asked for the location of our next bus, drove us on to the stop and we were able to get an earlier bus. In any case, at this anonymous bus stop in Bridgnorth, other waiting passengers discussed the qualities of the drivers on the service (called Choice) and told us they were organising a petition because the new weekday driver was too slow. Our bus driver was 10 minutes late at the stop but said: “I always come late so no-one misses the bus”. He then gave us a guided tour of the hills we passed – Wenlock Edge, the Wrekin and the distant Welsh mountains – and when we got to Shrewsbury proudly pointed out where Darwin went to school and the enormous statue of Clive of India, also a son of Shrewsbury.
We have just seen our second what I now know to be a female greater spotted woodpecker in the garden where we are staying.
Saturday, 4 April 2009
Day 4 - Cambridge to Birmingham
A long day from Cambridge to Birmingham. We caught the excellent X5 from Cambridge to Bedford at 9.40am. This bus runs every half an hour, seven days a week, from Cambridge to Oxford, from early in the morning till late at night. We used it on our last trip from Milton Keynes to Oxford. Then we had a rather tedious slog through Northampton (the only repeat destination on our trip from Berwick to Land’s End), some pretty villages, Rugby, Coventry and Solihull. Then there was a bit of post graduate bus planning. I had found a bus from Solihull which came into Birmingham on the Stratford Road which, as a Brum girl, I knew would intersect with the 11C circular bus route and take us to Cotteridge where we are staying (and where I went to secondary school). I had even photocopied the appropriate page of the Birmingham A to Z. This meant we didn’t have to go into the centre and out again. The plan worked perfectly and we arrived at our hosts at 6pm.
Friday, 3 April 2009
Day 3 - Camden to Cambridge
The day began with the sight of a woodpecker on the bird feeder two metres from the house where we were staying. Very exhilarating.
From Kentish Town we took the 134 to Friern Barnet and from the same bus stop, the 234 to Barnet Church and that was the end for us of the remarkably efficient London transport system. Then to St Albans and separate buses to Stevenage, Letchworth, Royston and, finally, Cambridge. The leafy suburbs of north London are in great contrast to the transpontine brick desert of the south east. Actually we weren’t very impressed with anywhere we travelled through today. Endless identical high streets between towns which nearly merge into each other. The only exception was Welwyn Garden City which lives up to its name. It is delightful and the centre (probably protected by listing) is still an elegant twenties square uncluttered by advertisements or neon. Letchworth Garden City is also very pleasant.
Some of the buses today were extremely crowded with school children and others. But it is amusing how all these buses, called service buses in the trade, suddenly do a figure of eight to pick up passengers from a trading or housing estate, a hospital or a supermarket. If you think you have seen that allotment site before you probably have.
The connections between today’s buses were excellent except for Letchworth to Royston. They only run every two hours so we had lunch there. A happy drunk who heard us discussing this problem could not understand why we didn’t catch a train and offered to escort us to the station. Letchworth also has an excellent independent new and second hand book and music shop called David’s.
But now we are in Cambridge and all the clichés apply.
From Kentish Town we took the 134 to Friern Barnet and from the same bus stop, the 234 to Barnet Church and that was the end for us of the remarkably efficient London transport system. Then to St Albans and separate buses to Stevenage, Letchworth, Royston and, finally, Cambridge. The leafy suburbs of north London are in great contrast to the transpontine brick desert of the south east. Actually we weren’t very impressed with anywhere we travelled through today. Endless identical high streets between towns which nearly merge into each other. The only exception was Welwyn Garden City which lives up to its name. It is delightful and the centre (probably protected by listing) is still an elegant twenties square uncluttered by advertisements or neon. Letchworth Garden City is also very pleasant.
Some of the buses today were extremely crowded with school children and others. But it is amusing how all these buses, called service buses in the trade, suddenly do a figure of eight to pick up passengers from a trading or housing estate, a hospital or a supermarket. If you think you have seen that allotment site before you probably have.
The connections between today’s buses were excellent except for Letchworth to Royston. They only run every two hours so we had lunch there. A happy drunk who heard us discussing this problem could not understand why we didn’t catch a train and offered to escort us to the station. Letchworth also has an excellent independent new and second hand book and music shop called David’s.
But now we are in Cambridge and all the clichés apply.
Thursday, 2 April 2009
Day 2 - Canterbury to Camden
We left the llamas and oast houses of east Kent for the Medway towns. The signs of spring are so much more advanced here. The daffodils are fading but the magnolia and cherry blossom are gorgeous. Canterbury to Faversham, Sittingbourne, Maidstone, Chatham and Rochester. Apart from the last two, from the perspective of the bus and bus stations, they are indistinguishable. As we drank a cappuchino during the morning, Manju said, “Its 10.20 this must be Maidstone”. There seems to have been a planning tendency to combine bus stations with shopping malls and they are all the same. But we hadn’t seen anything yet. Our bus drivers were all unerringly helpful and knowledgeable but quite unable to understand why we didn’t just catch a train into London from the various rail stations we passed. Then after the splendid bridge over the Medway, we hit Bluewater. At least it sits in a kind of crater so it doesn’t dominate the landscape like the Trafford Centre outside Manchester, but it is ghastly. Visiting this place seemed to be the only way to connect the Kent buses with the London ones.
Our journey on was incredibly efficient but boring. Bluewater to Woolwich by the 96, Woolwich to Elephant and Castle on the 53 and finally the168 to Camden Town. From the bus the landscape was unchanging until we got to Greenwich and Blackheath - urban sprawl for ever. And the atmosphere of the bus is different. They are crowded. You have no relationship with the bus driver because all he or she does is nod at your pass. You get off at a door half way down the bus so the idea of thanking the driver seems ridiculous. All the announcements are pre-recorded. If the bus is a bit crowded, the bus driver obviously presses a button and a disembodied voice tells you to move down the bus. And the people are either sullenly silent or - mainly youngsters - noisy and aggressive.
The media are back in touch. So far this trip has been very different from last time when we were met and followed the whole time by journalists and camera men. Since that trip we have both done various radio and TV interviews in our local areas and were interviewed together by Jenni Murray for Womans Hour on Boxing Day. Manju is regularly recognised in the streets of Bolton and has become a star of the Womens Institute circuit. As I walked up the red carpet to the Vivienne Westwood exhibition at the Millenium Gallery in July in Sheffield, one of the camera men said: “Aren’t you the bus lady”. But this time the media interest is muted. Manju’s local paper are using this blog to record our diary and we shall be met in Manchester by local TV and radio. But Manchester is a long way off …..
Our journey on was incredibly efficient but boring. Bluewater to Woolwich by the 96, Woolwich to Elephant and Castle on the 53 and finally the168 to Camden Town. From the bus the landscape was unchanging until we got to Greenwich and Blackheath - urban sprawl for ever. And the atmosphere of the bus is different. They are crowded. You have no relationship with the bus driver because all he or she does is nod at your pass. You get off at a door half way down the bus so the idea of thanking the driver seems ridiculous. All the announcements are pre-recorded. If the bus is a bit crowded, the bus driver obviously presses a button and a disembodied voice tells you to move down the bus. And the people are either sullenly silent or - mainly youngsters - noisy and aggressive.
The media are back in touch. So far this trip has been very different from last time when we were met and followed the whole time by journalists and camera men. Since that trip we have both done various radio and TV interviews in our local areas and were interviewed together by Jenni Murray for Womans Hour on Boxing Day. Manju is regularly recognised in the streets of Bolton and has become a star of the Womens Institute circuit. As I walked up the red carpet to the Vivienne Westwood exhibition at the Millenium Gallery in July in Sheffield, one of the camera men said: “Aren’t you the bus lady”. But this time the media interest is muted. Manju’s local paper are using this blog to record our diary and we shall be met in Manchester by local TV and radio. But Manchester is a long way off …..
Wednesday, 1 April 2009
Day 1: Wednesday April 1st 2009: home to Dover to Canterbury
We met at Charing Cross station and caught our train to Dover Priory. We followed the Eurostar corridor till Folkestone, and then travelled between the sea and the White Cliffs to Dover. We should have caught the 15 but were seduced into taking the no 89 bus, a little 29-seater, with a destination blind to Canterbury. This bus took an hour to go circle various villages around Dover and then made a final spurt on the A2 into Canterbury.
There was a slight altercation on the bus . Someone, who we later learned was the local curmudgeon, was moaning about the lack of space for his large black bin liner filled with who knows what. Manju thought he was cross because her rucksack was in the storage space. She sorted out the space with him. When he got off the bus, the bus driver stopped the bus, turned to Manju, and asked her not to take it personally as this man always complained when the buses were not double deckers. As before , everyone thanked the driver, and he seemed to know many of his passengers personally.
We spent a lovely afternoon in warm sunshine in Canterbury, being shown round the Cathedral and this beautiful city by our host, who is an expert.
There was a slight altercation on the bus . Someone, who we later learned was the local curmudgeon, was moaning about the lack of space for his large black bin liner filled with who knows what. Manju thought he was cross because her rucksack was in the storage space. She sorted out the space with him. When he got off the bus, the bus driver stopped the bus, turned to Manju, and asked her not to take it personally as this man always complained when the buses were not double deckers. As before , everyone thanked the driver, and he seemed to know many of his passengers personally.
We spent a lovely afternoon in warm sunshine in Canterbury, being shown round the Cathedral and this beautiful city by our host, who is an expert.
Sunday, 29 March 2009
New Trip 1st April 2009 - Dover to Gretna Green
We are starting a new bus trip from Dover to Gretna Green on 1st April 2009. Next blog will be from Canterbury on 1st April
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