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.

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 …..

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.

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

Day 10: St Agnes to Land's End

We have made it! At 2.35pm GMT on Friday 11th April 2008, we arrived at Land's End, 600 miles from our starting point in Berwick-upon-Tweed. We travelled on 37 buses, through fifteen counties. It would have cost £122.70 if we had had to pay. We shall donate this amount to charity.

We started out from the delightful village of St Agnes, an old tin mining community. Many chimneys attached to the mines still stand. Apparently they were used to burn off the arsenic.
Lovely pub meal last night and delightful landlady who gave me a tour of the beaches before we left. Our bus last night was full of chattering school children coming home from Truro. Today there was a complete mixture of passengers. There was a lively discussion between the driver and the rest of the passengers about the bus's change of ownership . The wonderfully named Truronian company was bought by First Bus last week but its livery has not yet changed.

We enjoyed todays crossword by Paul. It was challenging until we realised it was about our second favourite subject - trains. The key clues were LATE TRAIN. The key answers were LEAVES ON THE LINE, SIGNAL FAILURE and THE WRONG SORT OF SNOW!

We have almost given up studying timetables. The network of buses in Cornwall is so good that we get to an 'interchange' and wait for a bus we want to arrive which it generally does within minutes. We were met at Penzance by the BBC from Plymouth. A cameraman came on the bus and his colleague drove separately to Land's End to interview us. He took a picture of us in front of the famous sign post with Nil's camera but had the impertinence to criticise the 'white out' in the background because it was such a sunny day. Manju hopes the photograph comes out as she did not know how the change the settings. We thought that would be the end of the media interest in us but I have to do a live interview on Radio Sheffield tomorrow morning, Manju's doing the same for Radio Manchester on Monday morning and we are both going to Manchester for an interview for North West Tonight on that evening.

Our readers will all be pleased to know that we are still very good friends. There was one tense moment when I nearly finished the crossword before Manju got up one morning but we have solved that problem. Either I buy two papers or I don't start the crossword until she is fully functioning. We also had an argument at someone's house about quantum physics. I think the less said about that the better. We really have giggled our way through England and enjoyed every moment. We are going to do a bit of sightseeing tomorrow in St Ives, and on Sunday we return home by train.

This is our last posting to this blog. We have learned many things from this experience - what a blog is, how to edit comments (which is why there were none for the first few days), how to persuade our hosts to give us access to their computers, how to use an iMac, how to charge up our mobiles in bus station offices, how to operate a camcorder, how to resist some of the media expectations and how to travel light.

These bad girls have not gone everywhere ..... yet.

Day 9: Tiverton to St Columb Major and St Agnes

Yesterday's blog told less than the whole truth.  Before we left our Taunton hosts, Manju had an acute muscle spasm in her back.  She moved very tentatively and it slowly eased so by the time we got to Taunton bus station, she was quite happy to climb to the top front seats on the double decker.   Just as we were coming into Tiverton, she had another spasm and slowly fainted.  Luckily we were meeting a friend of hers in Tiverton, Marilyn - another doctor - who helped me to get her downstairs.   We found a bench for her to lie on with her head on my rucksack, her phone went, and she conducted a perfectly lucid live interview with BBC North West news.  Marilyn said her pulse was weak but strengthening.  But she was suffering considerable discomfort so Marilyn took us to her home where she rested and I tried to be a competent nurse.  Its no good this.  I go on a trip with my own personal physician an end up looking after her.  We thought the trip would have to be called off but by the morning, Manju felt able to proceed.

We got a bus from Tiverton to Exeter.  It left at exactly 9.30am and our passes are only valid from then so the bus driver couldn't give us our timed tickets until after we left.  So we just failed to be twirlies - which is what Liverpudlian bus drivers call the elderly who try to get on buses before 9.30.  Great busy vibrant bus station at Exeter with loads of good information and helpful staff who even let Manju charge her phone in their office.  And there we found a wonderful bus which I had missed on the internet, from Exeter to Newquay.   Getting so far into Cornwall would make up for our lost day.  This was our longest single bus journey on a little 33 seater on which Manju was quite comfortable.  It took three hours and 45 minutes to St Columb Major Interchange which, we had been told, was the hub for buses south and west.   St Columb Major Interchange turned out to be two perspex bus shelters on either side of the road with no seats and no timetables.  But there were plenty of buses.  Four came and went in the few minutes we were there.   Not quite up to the standard of Sheffield Interchange but at least it works.  And there we met Arthur Page and his daughter who are doing our trip in reverse.  They come from the West Midlands and were delighted to meet us as they had seen publicity about our trip. We all took smiling photographs of each other and exchanged email addresses.  We caught a bus to Truro and our bus driver from Exeter joined us with his mother and got off at the WesternGreyhound bus depot to get his car home.  Well that's one way of spending the day with your mum.

At Truro, we caught a T1 Trurorian bus to St Agnes, a destination recommended by Mary from Taunton.  The bus driver gave us a lot of useful information about places to stay in the town and, more or less, gave us a tour.   I'm not sure how much of this followed his scheduled route.  We are now settled in the Moat House B and B and are just off to the local pub for meal.   Manju is coping.  She had a call from Lucy at the Bolton Evening News who is writing a daily column on our progress who told her we are now famous. 

  

Day 8: Taunton to Tiverton

A short journey today to a beautiful place near Tiverton where we are resting up before beginning the final assault on the south west tomorrow.