On Trains & Buses

This year, I got a few opportunities to sample Eurostar’s services between London and Paris. Brussels and Amsterdam are destinations reachable from the UK, but I stuck with France. Former Thalys services, still in red and now branded Eurostar, are part of the network too, so other destinations in Belgium and the Netherlands are a possibility, as are a selection in Germany. There are trains to skiing destinations in the winter as well as ones to sunshine counterparts in the summer. Changing your train somewhere in continental Europe will grant you more options. At a time of greater climate consciousness, it is good to have these.

The prospect of an out and back trip to Paris by train had lain in my mind for a few years, only for it never to happen for one reason or another. The idea predates both Brexit and the height of the pandemic. Last year’s visits added the idea of an outbound ferry crossing followed by a return by train. Passport fumbling on my part was enough to scupper this the first time around.

Fortunately, I got myself onto an outbound Eurostar train at fairly short notice to continue the trip. That added to the cost, which seemingly is never cheap anyway. Booking further in advance does help, though.

Travelling in standard class, I got allocated a seat, and it looks as if choosing one yourself is not a standard option, unless you get that in travelling in business class. At one turn, I saw a family dealing with the non-ideal arrangement they had been given.

For a lone traveller, it is less of an issue, and I was not put out by it. The first time around, I was seated with three others and airline seating was my lot after that. The last trip even gained me two airline seats to myself, a much more relaxing proposition that I did not expect to have.

At St. Pancras International, the waiting area was not so commodious with all who were travelling. Seat availability is not assured, though business class travellers get access to a dedicated lounge. At Gare du Nord, there is much more space for everyone. That may be on an overhead annex seemingly fasten to the front and side of the station, but it does work and there appear to be more outlets providing food and drink as well as duty-free shopping.

Because of passage through the Channel Tunnel, luggage and personal possessions needed x-raying at both locations, but this was not as strenuous as with air travel. If anything the process is much faster. At both termini, you need to pass though both British and French passport control. It is not as if you have one country’s passport control in one place and another’s in another one. However, the double clearance makes for rapid disembarkation on arrival at your destination, which can be a bonus for making onward travel connections.

Boarding is fairly efficient once they open the gates for doing so. The trains are long you need to be use the right ramp to save yourself a lot of hurried walking. Getting luggage sorted is another matter. It makes life easier and matters quicker if you are not carrying so much. My first trip only used a large rucksack because I saw myself walking around different places with it. That was easy enough since an overhead rack was all that I needed. For the second one, I carried a case as well as a daypack. The latter could go on an overhead rack, while the former had to be stored in the correct area. Getting on early made that a quick operation, though there is a step up from the platform that added to the amount of lifting and carrying (it could have been lighter…).

While there is a café bar onboard, I stuck with whatever food and drink I brought with me. With journey times not exceeding two and a half hours, there was not a lot of available time anyway. One omission that I noticed was Wi-Fi; it may have been advertised, but there was no sign of it when I tried to connect. Mobile signal did work to a point given the speeds at which we were going. That was enough for any reading or tracking where we were going. What really struck me was the flatness of any countryside through which we were passing. The Channel Tunnel section only lasted for around twenty minutes, and I dozed for much of that on the first journey.

Aside from grumbles about lack of Wi-Fi and an appreciation for choosing a seat for oneself, I had no complaints about the journeys. Gare du Nord is not the most centrally located of stations though, something for which you need to account in a city as big as Paris where it is easy to walk for an hour between any of its landmarks. The proximity of St. Pancras International to Euston worked far better for me, and even the previous terminus at Waterloo is only a short underground journey away. All in all, the added flexibility of rail travel still works. It may need more time, yet there are further uses that I can concoct for possible escapades that may or may not come to pass.

For once, there is some better news about bus services in Cheshire East. Sunday and bank holiday services have been very limited for too many years, and there is some movement on that now using government money made available in response to Cheshire East Council’s Bus Service Improvement Plan. It is a far cry from having a busy bus station on Sundays that we had when Gordon Brown was Prime Minister. If we get a Labour government after the ongoing election, it will be interesting to see what happens, even if they have little leeway on spending.

Services 12 (Leighton Hospital - Crewe - Brookhouse Estate - Shavington), 38 (Crewe - Sandbach - Congleton - Macclesfield) and 130 (Macclesfield - Alderley Edge - Wilmslow - Handforth - Wythenshawe - Airport) got Sunday and Bank Holiday services added to their timetables from 2024-06-09. Of these, service 12 also got new Saturday evening journeys from 2024-06-08. From 2024-06-03, some timings on route 38 changed to improve service reliability.

The result for route 12 is that the Saturday service runs from around 07:00 until 21:00 with a frequency of approximately thirty minutes for most of the day, with frequencies halving after 18:00. On Sundays and Bank Holidays, buses run approximately every sixty minutes between Leighton Hospital and Shavington between 09:00 and 18:00 albeit with a reduced frequency to every 90 minutes in the middle of the day.

On route 38, Sunday and Bank Holiday buses run approximately every ninety minutes between Crewe and Macclesfield between 08:00 and 19:00. Route 130 is similar with buses running approximately every 90 minutes between Macclesfield and Handforth Dean between 08:00 and 18:00, the only exception being the last bus of the day from Handforth Dean that runs an hour after its predecessor instead of ninety minutes.

D&G Bus operates all of these except for the Sunday and Bank Holiday service on route 130, a surprise given that it operates that route every other day of the week. Even if High Peak Buses have the contract for the additional route 130 journeys, D&G Bus passes and tickets will still be accepted. The other element of surprise is that both D&G Bus and High Peak Buses are owned by Centrebus, making me wonder why they might be competing against each other for contracts. Of course, there may be another story here that lies outside my knowledge.

While none of this is near as good as what we had under the last Labour government, it is better than nothing. Hopefully, the new services get the patronage that is needed to sustain them. It is one thing to have subsidised services, but we know from recent experience that reasons can be found to remove these in an unfavourable political environment. After all, years of austerity have done serious damage to Cheshire’s bus network to leave a less dependable shadow of what once was in place.

For a change, I spent the Christmas and New Year period in Scotland. Having been in Macclesfield for the same since a New Year getaway to Tenerife in 2018/9, I felt that it was not before time that I went somewhere else. There was a time when I spent Christmas in Ireland every year until family bereavements stopped that, and the novelty of being in Macclesfield had well and truly left me.

Many Ways Obstructed

Christmas was spent in Edinburgh while New Year was spent in Aviemore. The weather may have been mixed, but some better days came too, especially when I was further north. However, Storm Gerrit really obstructed travel when I wanted to travel north. Because of flooding and other damage, getting north of Perth towards Inverness or doing the same towards Dundee or Aberdeen virtually became an impossibility.

All of this arrived on the first day of train services after the Christmas stoppage. That may explain the poor quality of information provided by the National Rail app on my phone, which was far too optimistic. Getting things updated can appear to more laboured than is optimal, and this was one case of that. If correct information had been available, I would have not gone as far as Perth only to return to Edinburgh again for another night.

Others had their plans disrupted as well, so you have to ask how everyone got accommodated. Staff in Perth were not impressed to hear that many had been advised to go that far, and it seemed that everything was running in an ad hoc manner. The weather warning only came through the night before in any case.

Strong winds and heavy rainfall had blocked roads as well. The A9 was impassable near Dunkeld, which meant that road transport was no help since it could not operate, and the railway was flooded between Stirling and Perth as well; a fallen tree blocked rail services to Aberdeen and also damaged a train. Only for needing to get to a hotel, I might not have bothered at all. Thankfully, the hotel in Aviemore took the first night off my stay and kept the rest of my booking in place.

With most Scottish Citylink services calling at Broxden Park & Ride instead of Perth city centre, it was enough to make one pause for thought before risking a trip out of town. In the event, getting a seat on any coach service would have been challenging anyway. However, knowing that Stagecoach service X7 linked Perth with Aberdeen might have made for an overnight stay there instead of Edinburgh, cutting down on travel time the next day. These are times when the likes of Booking.com can help with getting things sorted while on the move, though working through options takes some time and is not so easy on the move even with the power of mobile telephony these days.

A Long Way Around

Things were clearer the next morning, albeit in a more pessimistic manner. No train was running between Edinburgh and either Inverness or Aberdeen. Trying Edinburgh’s bus station was the only way to be sure that coach services were operating. Everything going up to Inverness was fully booked while I waited to see what if any trains were running. That still left Aberdeen as a possibility and a last minute booking got me on a laden coach going there. The next to four-hour journey allowed for plenty of time to see the countryside going by the coach windows. Busy traffic made for a sizeable delay serving Broxden Park & Ride when the service was running late anyway.

On arriving in Aberdeen, it was time to see if there was any way of getting to Inverness when no trains were going between the two cities because of flooding. Though very busy, there was a departure on service 10 that did what was needed. Having a seat was a bonus and a wheelchair user failed to get on board at a later stop because of how full the bus was. What lay ahead was a four and a half hour journey with fewer people on board after Inverurie and Huntly. That made things more comfortable, though the calls to Ardersier, Inverness Airport and Inverness Shopping Park were frustrating. That was because I spied the restoration of train services going south from Inverness. Thankfully, I got to that in time and avoided making an Uber booking.

The hotel in Aviemore was reached at least so no other bookings or booking changes were needed. Then, I could make the best of what came and there were few if any disappointments in the offing. All came together in the end.

After seeing the transformative effect of spending some time in Ireland during March, I was lured into planning something similar around Easter. After surveying prospects of getting decent weather, I ended up plumping for Jersey after rejecting other possibilities like Galway, Stirling or Aberdeen. It helped that my brother enjoyed his stay on the island and that I went on a day trip there during a school excursion to Brittany.

Though Condor Ferries offer ferry connections from Portsmouth and Poole, I instead flew with EasyJet between Manchester and Jersey. Those flights were early in the day so that meant hotel stays that forwent breakfasting prior to being in an airport. Otherwise, they worked well, and I had empty seats next to me too. There was a delay to the return flight cause by understaffing at Jersey airport, but that was not critical for me.

Buses run frequently between Jersey airport and St. Helier from early until late, so that made the island’s largest conurbation my base for the trip. It also meant that I could make the best of its bus network for getting around the place, and that day outings by ferry became more realistic possibilities.

Liberty Bus (the name harkens back to the time of German occupation during World War II) operates all the island’s scheduled bus services on contract to its government. The company is owned by Tower Transit, who took it over from the now defunct HCT Group. Aside from arrangements for concessionary fare passengers, a flat fare policy is in operated. For contactless transactions, the tariff is £2.25 while this increases to £2.70 for those using cash. While there are Discover Jersey passes of one, three and seven day duration, the price of the single fare negated these, and I travelled on that basis around the island.

Aside from the airport travels, my journeys took me to L’Etacq, Rozel, La Corbière, Portelet, Gorey and St. John’s. Everything worked without drama, and the efficiency and the courtesy that I encountered was an example for operators elsewhere. My only concerns were centred around making the best of any walking opportunities and not to constrain myself with laggardness; there was a time when my plans were derailed by my reaching Liberation bus station too late on my second day on the island. There was always another option and some services ran very frequently; airport and Gorey ones stand out for me in this regard. Hourly frequencies are common though some places see less than this.

Though I had forgone ferry travel for getting between England and Jersey, I made use of its services for one day trip to Saint-Malo and another to Guernsey. Both had me forgoing breakfast at my hotel in favour of my getting something to eat during the crossings. Because there is often only a single sailing between destinations, not every day offered a day trip, so it was a case of picking from what was available.

In the case of Saint-Malo, it was a matter of choosing from the Saturday, Sunday or Monday options that were available to me. Because it offered the best chance of good weather, I chose the first of these. Many others did likewise, so the crossings were busy with queues for food service, especially on the morning sailing. Even so, efficiency and timeliness were the watchwords. On French side, that meant having plenty of buses available to convey passengers between the ship and the ferry terminal. It all allowed plenty of time to revisit somewhere that I had not frequented since my schooldays, and that was another attraction in going to Jersey in the first place.

Provision for day trips to Guernsey was not as extensive with only a Monday option working for me, though I seem to remember that there was a Thursday option too. Because the vessel was of a traditional type that also served Portsmouth, the food offer was better than on the catamaran that sped me to and from Saint-Malo. That was appreciated rather more than the delay to disembarkation that left me wondering how well St. Peter Port is for receiving foot passengers using minibuses. If the day had been brighter and drier, I might have on the outside deck more often. It probably was just as well that I was kept inside for getting something to eat; otherwise, I would have been torn between outside scenery ogling and the need to fuel myself.

The mix of Jersey island strolling and day-long getaways to other places all worked well. The weather may have been better earlier in the trip but even that was better than other locations that I considered. Transportation ran well in the main, with only ports and airports having any kind of untoward intrusion. This had been a worthwhile getaway.

When Virgin Trains ceased to operate, it came with a sense of sadness because it was the end of an era. For all their faults, it did feel as if it was an operator that cared about what it was doing, a long way from the “nobody cares” railway that some bemoan these days. Virgin and Stagecoach also have the good fortune of escaping the current criticism that is being levelled at both Avanti West Coast and First Transpennine Express as well as the travails of pandemic lockdowns.

Another of the things that I missed was the Virgin Trains train ticket app because of its integration with PayPal and the speediness of their responses when anything needed fixing. Once, I needed a refund, and it got resolved promptly. While I could have opted for the East Midlands app because of its PayPal integration, its Northern Railway counterpart got used more often despite any refusal to refund small fares and its dependence on credit and debit cards (it did store their details, though, so all you needed to remember was their CVC number). The pandemic has meant a near complete changeover from paper tickets to their electronic counterparts.

However, things have improved since then. Integration with PayPal came recently and that was followed by Google Pay capability as well. That all helps with buying tickets on the move or at short notice, which is just as well given the £100 fine for not having a ticket on trains when setting off from a staffed station (some are trying to keep ticket offices open, but there is a real danger of their closure when so many of us are using apps or online booking instead). Otherwise, there still remains the possibility of buying tickets on trains when starting from unstaffed stations.

Being an Android phone user, I cannot comment on integration with Apple Pay, though having that would not surprise me at all. In the main, I stick with the Google option for ease of use because PayPal usage can trigger multifactor authentication for larger purchases. Tickets do not always need activation either, and copies are sent by email too, so they can be added to Google or Apple wallets as well. That could be handy when the app hits a problem. After all, anything is better than the hassle of a fine when technology goes against you.