The last weekend in May usually hosts what is known as the Spring Bank Holiday in the U.K. Due to the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, this didn’t happen this year and two days were added to the first weekend in June instead. My travel on the Jubilee weekend is another tale so I’ll relate experiences from the weekend before.
As it happened, we got scorching sunny weather at the end of May and it seemed to have tempted everyone out on the evidence of my travels to and from Northumberland on the Saturday of the weekend. York was hosting horse-racing too and that ensured that the Transpennine Express service on which I was travelling was crammed with folk.
That left me wondering if a bit of forward planning would have involved booking in longer trains for the extra traffic. However, when I asked them about this on Twitter, I got no answer. That was after my asking about having longer trains on the route for those races. That was answered by saying that they only have sixty trains and they all were in use. There are new trains coming with the planned electrification of the Manchester-Bolton-Preston and Manchester-Leeds-York routes. Let’s hope that they are longer and that the overall number operated by the franchise is enlarged at the same time.
The CrossCountry train that got me from York to Alnmouth too was well used though thankfully not as busy as the one taking me from Manchester to York. The Edinburgh Marathon was the cause this time and prospective runners were chatting to one another with even complete strangers conversing. Their having a common interest must have helped.
The return journey was less frenetic, especially between Alnmouth and York. Some late racegoers still were on the way home from York with some being “well oiled” by their constant refreshment throughout the day. The chatter emanating from some had me wishing that a portable music player was in my possession but it still wasn’t overly unpleasant.
The leg between Manchester and my home town of Macclesfield was the quietest of the lot though having two Northern Rail trains timed to leave at the same time from the same platform seemed a little incompetent. The Hadfield service went first and the Macclesfield train doors were locked until that departed. Though a little inconvenient, one only need imagine the mess caused by inebriated folk catching wrong trains to realise the sense in what was done. Around Congleton, someone was struck by a train earlier on the same evening so that may explain the sub-optimal platform arrangements.
Like many, I had been out and about when so many were doing the same. That so many were using public transport was encouraging and that was at the cost of a quiet getaway. Maybe a weekend first class upgrade should have been considered even with it adding to a fare that already was not inexpensive. Travelling a little earlier in the day might have been cheaper than any upgrade.
Tags: Alnmouth, Cheshire, CrossCountry, Edinburgh, England, Leeds, Macclesfield, Manchester, National Rail, Northern Rail, Northumberland, Trains, Transpennine Express, York, Yorkshire
Snow arrived today as promised and travel disruption ensued. At the time of writing, Arriva Yorkshire and Nottingham City Transport are operating no bus services at all rail and disruption is hitting both the East Coast Mainline along with services around Bolton and Blackburn. More generally, bus services are experiencing difficulties across the north of England and into the English midlands so it’s best to check with your operator to make sure that your service is operating.
Twitter has been a good place to see what’s happening and those of us who are on there need to watch our daily limit of 1000 updates (20 per half hour, it seems) too. Even transport operators such as Virgin Trains and London Midland have been known to hit these limits on days like yesterday when severe disruption was caused by a derailment near Bletchley. For these eventualities, they have been known to open more accounts so you wonder what the limit achieves.
More roads than those used by buses get affected too and the A537 between Macclesfield and Buxton and the A54 between the latter and Buxton are closed tonight. It is an open question as to whether Bowers’ service 58 between Macclesfield and Buxton will operate tomorrow given that it was off the road last Saturday. Today, it kept going until at least 15:00 since I spotted one on the Cat and Fiddle Inn’s webcam.
Whatever you do tonight, I hope that you stay safe. Tomorrow could be interesting as well though we are promised milder weather as the new week wears on. It seems that Ireland has been unaffected by wintry weather apart from disruption to U.K. flights. That really drives home how regional how weather can be.
Tags: A537, A54, Arriva, Bowers, Buses, Buxton, Cheshire, Congleton, Derbyshire, England, London Midland, Macclesfield, Nottingham, Nottingham City Transport, Road Conditions, Timetables, Trains, Virgin, Weather, Yorkshire
Out of curiosity, I decided to explore the Megabus website for the U.K. and it surprised me to see how low some of their prices were. Apparently, there’s a seat sale on at the moment too so that may explain some of those less than £5. However, it’s easy to see the attraction of what aren’t so infrequent services from Manchester to places such as Leeds, Birmingham, Glasgow and London. With the recent increases in train fares, even a ticket costing less than £20 has to look tempting. Is that why the though of savouring their services to see what they’re like has entered my head?
While checking out express coach services, I also decided to take a look at what Greyhound offers to the U.K. traveller these days and it looks as if things have expanded beyond the London services to the south coast of England with which they started. For instance, regular services between Cardiff and Swansea are now on offer with the frequency making them look like the Welsh version of the Scottish Citylink service between Edinburgh and Glasgow or the National Express one between Leeds, Manchester and Liverpool. It looks a good move forward and I hope that it’s attracting a good level custom. Also coming within the Greyhound fold is the overnight service between London and Scotland (Hamilton, Glasgow, Edinburgh) that First Glasgow took over from Silver Choice. All the while, it’s south of England tally of destinations increases with Winchester being a recent addition to those like Portsmouth, Poole, Southampton, Bournemouth, Fareham, Ringwood (for the New Forest) and the Isle of Wight. All in all, Greyhound is growing in Britain so there must be some success being had somewhere. Maybe the attractive prices might have something to do with it because I did glimpse a few going for £1 plus booking fee.
All in all, it looks as if express coach travel might be on the up and it would not be a bad thing if a decent network built up in England and Wales, even if it meant travelling with different operators on a single journey. The looming increases in train fares are presenting an opportunity and I wonder if anyone is out there waiting to take it. Now mightn’t be a bad time to spend a little longer travelling in order to save a little cash when it is a scarcer commodity than used to be case a few years ago.
Tags: Bournemouth, Cardiff, Coaches, Edinburgh, England, Fareham, First, Glasgow, Greyhound, Hamilton, Isle of Wight, Leeds, Liverpool, London, Manchester, Megabus, National Express, New Forest, Poole, Portsmouth, Ringwood, Scotland, Scottish Citylink, Southampton, Stagecoach, Swansea, Ticketing, Wales, Yorkshire
From the travel point of view, 2010 got a very dramatic ending with the cold temperatures that brought us snow and ice. While it was the airports that bore the brunt of the weather, train and bus services suffered too, particularly in the first round of the cold weather. With the temperatures set to drop again in the next few days, we’ll have to see what happens. After all, it was in January of the year ending tonight that we really saw the snow cause trouble around eastern Cheshire. Who knows what lies around the corner?
Speaking of what may come our way in the future, we have what comes from any public spending cuts in Britain and Ireland. Warrington, North Yorkshire and Derbyshire already have shown signs of what may be precipitated by cuts to council budgets. There’s no word on anything like that from Cheshire but that may change.
Still, rail has seen some announcements regarding investment and can be said to have done better than expected. However, that has to be tempered by the prospect of sizeable hikes in ticket prices beyond those we have seen in recent years.
All in all, 2011 could become more interesting than some among us would rather. It could be one where we have to stand up for what services we have so that total savagery is avoided. Still, not everything has to be sacrificed so we’ll have to enjoy using what we can. Hope the new year is good to you and that you come through it untouched by any economic torment.
Tags: Air Travel, Buses, Cheshire, Derbyshire, England, Fares, Ireland, Road Conditions, Scotland, Trains, Wales, Warrington, Weather, Yorkshire
One thing that we’re never told about those magical white Christmases that we’re often sold is that there’s a darker side to them too. Just ask anyone trying to fly before Christmas this year and they may have a thing to say about the weather that we saw.
What visited Heathrow and Gatwick on the last Saturday before Christmas Day caused enough disruption but it was the repeated showerings of snow that caused havoc at Dublin’s airport. All that was needed was a single hefty shower and runaways were shut for several hours. The result was many panicky travellers with some booking ferry crossings as a backup plan.
Rail travel became tricky as points suffered in the cold weather with many needing defrosting. It didn’t matter whether it was Euston station or Heuston station in Dublin because delays and cancellations were made more likely; London saw more cancellations than Dublin, it has to be said. Then, London Midland train passengers were to discover how it felt to be crammed into a smaller than usual train because two couldn’t be joined together due to frozen couplers. Special timetables with lower service frequencies saw introduction in Wales, Merseyside and Scotland because of the conditions.
Buses in the south of England saw enough disruption to set Twitter alight with a multitude of status updates. That wasn’t all because the same comments applied to Lancashire, Yorkshire, Northumberland and Wales. Seeing the flurries of updates was enough to remind me of the action of snow blizzards.
All of the above information provision was heartening to see but not everyone was as good at keeping passengers up to date. For instance, I spent several hours in a plane, diverted from Dublin, sat on the tarmac in Shannon and the lack of speed in making anything happen was enough to try your patience. Decisiveness and responsiveness weren’t characteristics of the experience and it didn’t help that the I had to return to a snowy Dublin when my final destination wouldn’t have been far from Shannon anyway; it was nearer than Dublin anyway. If buses and trains did this type of thing, you could foresee uproar…
All in all, the whole experience makes me appreciate the service offered by bus and train operators all the more and neither Dublin Bus or Irish Rail left me down on the day in question anyway. My observations and experiences of what the snow did this year have me wondered why I have been pondering outings to savour the snowy hills of Scotland and Wales during a spell of cold weather. It’s no wonder that I have been sticking to enjoying what’s close at hand when snow visits.
This is our second really cold winter in a row and my only hope is that lessons are being learnt. One climate scientist has suggested we are in a run of a few of these so we all needed to be doing some learning, myself included. With regards to dreams of white Christmases, we need to live in the real world and that’s even when somewhat surreal weather comes our way like it has done this year. Let’s hope that everyone stays safe and that the stranded get to their intended destinations as soon as possible.
Tags: Airlines, Airports, Buses, Christmas, Dublin, Dublin Airport, England, Ferries, Gatwick Airport, Heathrow Airport, Ireland, Lancashire, London Midland, Merseyside, Northumberland, Road Conditions, Scotland, Shannon Airport, Snow, Trains, Wales, Weather, Yorkshire