On Trains & Buses

First Manchester has announced its Easter weekend service levels. Aside from a few exceptions such as services 100 (Manchester to Warrington via Trafford Centre) and 184 (Manchester to Oldham and Huddersfield), a Sunday service is on offer on Good Friday and Easter Monday with Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday having usual Saturday and Sunday timetables, respectively.

In the Isle of Man, Good Friday and Easter Monday bus services are following Sunday timetables as well as any journeys marked as applying to bank holidays. Additionally, Hullad Oie also operates and the morning departure of service 4 from Peel is at 08:00. Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday timings are as usual for any other weekend.

Rosso observing Sunday timetables on Good Friday and Easter Monday. Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday seeing usual bus timings around Rossendale.

Ipswich Buses are running Sunday timetables on Good Friday and Easter Monday. Other days of long weekend are as they usually are.

Transdev Keighley running a Saturday timetable on Good Friday and a Sunday service on Easter Monday. Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday are observing usual timetables. More details are on the bus company’s website.

Yorkshire may be getting a taste of the Tour de France in July but Ireland is having a flavour of the Giro d’Italia in May. As a result, there is a mixture of special additional services and alterations to normal services in Northern Ireland between the eight and eleventh of May inclusive.

Information from Stagecoach North East for services around Newcastle, Sunderland, South Shields, Teeside and Hartlepool.

This is the information from Metrobus: A Sunday service will operate on Good Friday 18th April, Sunday 20th April and Easter Monday 21st April. A normal Saturday service will operate on 19th April.

There are three seasonal bus services starting on Holy Thursday in Northern Ireland and they continue until the end of September too. Here they are:

252: Larne to Coleraine

402: Coleraine to Carrick-a-Rede

405: Mourne Rambler

The first two of these are coastal services sampling the delights of County Antrim’s coastline and the third one allows you to enter County Down hill country. All are worth savouring.

A community company calling itself Western Dales Bus is addressing a need for bus services around Sedbergh, Dentdale and Wensleydale that cannot be served by a commercial bus company. Volunteers drive a minibus provided by Cumbria County Council that works journeys connecting with trains on the Settle to Carlisle railway line.

A Saturday service is offered year round between Dent train station, Sedbergh and, with one return journey, Kendal. Summertime sees a similar offering running to its own timetable on Sundays and bank holidays too. On the extra days, there are extensions to Hawes too. This summer service started from 2014-04-01 and it’s good to see its like returning and 2014 is its third year if I remember correctly. Nevertheless, I believe this is the first year that a community company is doing the honours and I hope that they do well because this is lovely and quiet part of the world.