Time for 't'

One thing I could always do was spell. From the earliest age I can remember, I would look down my nose with all the supercilious smugness of the insufferable teacher's pet that I strove to be, as the other children put their 'e' before their 'i', allowed a silent 'k' or 'w' to slip away undetected, or were in two minds over which 'too' to resort to.

But I have finally been outwitted by the residents of Winchester. From the start of this week we have been operating a short term contract for Hampshire County Council, providing local routes 2 and 6a in Winchester until June. The 2 is easy. Oliver's Battery and Badger Farm hold no fear, but the 6a has me beaten!

It goes to Abbotts Barton, but in my mind - no matter how hard I try to train myself - it goes to Abbots Barton. Even though a simple glance at the map reveals the truth, and the tender documents and existing publicity reinforce the point, I cannot bring myself to double that 't'! Every time I write it, I write 'Abbots' and then - if I'm lucky and remember - go back and correct it.

I don't know why this should be so. It has something to do with the poor, innocent people of Abbots Langley, a Hertfordshire village that I served at the first bus company that gave me a home - the late, great Buffalo Travel. I must have read and written 'Abbots' so many times on official forms, in publicity and probably replies to complaint letters that I have that spelling firmly embedded in my mind.

(As a complete aside, in Buffalo days I once registered the evening service on route 344 through that village entirely in German - von Hemel Hempstead Busbahnhof nach Croxley Green Reptonweg ueber Watford Exchangestrasse - and the then Office of the Traffic Commissioner accepted it!)

To my shame the timetable leaflets refer to Abbots Barton, because I drafted and proof-checked them and failed to spot it. I only realised today that the website referred to Abbots Barton throughout, and even now the Bright Tech destinations on some of our Darts show '6a Abbots Barton' because I programmed them.

Luckily the Mobitec kit on the Solos that we are actually using has been programmed by our Commercial Assistant Mikey, and he has no such hang-ups. Indeed it is he - displaying the full condescension of one half my age and twice my ego - who has gleefully pointed out most of my slip-ups so far! He has also designed the roadside publicity which is equally correct and has attracted much favourable comment.

So all is not lost, but I'm getting to the age where old habits are hard to break, so I apologise in advance if the odd Abbot manages to slip through the net in the future! If it gets too bad, I might just have to Hyde!

The good news is that the new routes have started off extremely well. Timekeeping has not been the issue we were told to expect, with both routes running comfortably to schedule, and early passenger numbers are exceeding expectations.

Hopefully we are also exceeding theirs - certainly many positive comments have been received about the vehicle, the publicity and the drivers. Steve and Geoff are the regular presenters, backed up yesterday and today by Mikey doing the 'meeting and greeting'. Indeed for a while today all three were on the bus together, outnumbering the passengers at times.

During today's brief period of triple manning, Steve (or 'Scooter' as some of his former colleagues might apparently recognise him) managed to escape for long enough to take this rather nice shot of 222 pausing at Winchester Station on its way to Badger Farm.

The 6a also appears to have its own Les, which will no doubt add interest and colour, and it is already clear that the regular congregation have their own interpretation of where the bus is required to stop, which bears little resemblance to such trivial issues as where there happen to be signs on poles saying "bus stop"! But these are the kind of routes we love, and we look forward to being of service to our new Winchester clientele for some time to come.

Just when you thought Christmas was over...

Before we get too far into January and memories fade, it's probably worth reflecting on how the Christmas period went, if only as an aide memoire to myself later in the year when I'm trying to work out what to run over the 2012/13 festive period!

The first day on which services were modified was Christmas Eve, when we finished at around 8pm. From a strictly commercial point of view that was probably right, given that the evening was obviously going to be quiet, but Karl - my controller - who was driving the other late shift, agreed with my perspective that there was a reasonable number of people enquiring about services later in the evening and that in the event we would quite happily have gone through to the end of service. That's one to ponder for next year. Or possibly not, because Christmas Eve is a Monday in 2012 so unless anything changes all our buses are off the road by 8pm anyway!

Readers may recall from my last post that I was ruminating on whether we should have run service on Boxing Day. My perception is that 2011 saw a sharp increase in the number of operators around the country that did operate and I can see it becoming increasingly taken for granted over the next few years that this is a day on which bus services do run. Indeed, one or two figures I have heard from operator colleagues that will remain nameless, for commercial receipts on routes in different parts of the country are astonishingly high and if those levels are typical it should be a no brainer.

The difficulty for us is that - for the time being at least - a Sunday service is probably the most appropriate level, and of course we don't have any Sunday contracts, nor do Hampshire County Council make it a requirement for contractors to provide a service on Boxing Day. Of course on New Year's Day this year (more anon) we provided a commercial Sunday service in the absence of the two normal contractors and it is most likely that we would consider this kind of scenario again.

The period between Christmas and New Year was a normal weekday service for us, and that allows us to keep things simple. I am not a fan of operators with hugely complex arrangements with some services operating Saturdays, others weekdays, and others a special service. My experience of the travelling public is that even if you provide the most elaborate publicity in the world, as long as it's not a bank holiday they will expect Thursday buses to operate on a Thursday etc, so you risk upsetting loyal, regular customers for a tiny saving.

New Year's Eve we ran through until the end of service. It was quiet on the C1 and E8, but seems to have been about a normal level of Saturday evening patronage on the A. However, there was a great atmosphere with the customers on the buses, and many of them were regulars and very appreciative of the service - including the four who caught the 2340 A (none of whom were still on the bus at midnight, so I celebrated the arrival of 2012 on my own, as predicted, about halfway up Wildern Lane!). Definitely worth doing in my opinion, for the benefit of those regulars.

Once again it's a Monday this year so unless anything changes, there is no evening service on our routes in any event, and I'm not sure we would create one specially, but I'm definitely glad we did it this year.

I'm even more glad we ran New Year's Day. We didn't carry a huge number of people, but the reaction from those we did carry was bordering on euphoric! They were hugely grateful to have the service. Our drivers also saw huge numbers of people waiting at bus stops for other people's services, and had of course explained to them that there wouldn't be any, and the reaction from those people was disbelief that almost the entire industry had decided to take the day off on what - for them - was pretty much a normal Sunday.

On a brief visit to Eastleigh Bus Station to mid-afternoon to see how our drivers were getting on, I was ambushed by a couple who had been waiting for a Bluestar 2. Our driver Mikey had seen them from the end of the road, beckoned them down to the bus, explained the situation to them and then transported them into Eastleigh. They were just about to board for the trip home and were over the moon with joy about the fact that we were there for them.

In summary it's probably fair to say that from a strictly commercial standpoint, it remains a weak time of year. The easy option would be to pull the buses off the road at 8pm on Christmas and New Year's Eve and not come out on Boxing Day or New Year's Day.

However, we carry many loyal regulars who give us their business all through the year. They want to go out and about at Christmas just as much as anyone else does. Why does the industry think it's acceptable to abandon those people just because we fancy a day off or an evening off? We're in a service industry, and service means more than abandoning your regular customers because you won't be able to make a profit out of them for one or two days, when each of them is worth several hundred pounds to the business over the course of a year. I'm happy that we provided the service that we did over Christmas 2011/12, but with hindsight we could have done more!

And while I'm on the subject of abandoning customers, I do want to fit in a quick rant about other industries that shut down for the whole period. Our ability to provide service is dependent on having buses on the road. Why do so many parts suppliers think it is acceptable to simply stop providing service at lunchtime on Christmas Eve, and resume some time in early January? Why do their entire staff have to have a week and a half off, when their customers - who they claim to value so highly - are still slaving away. Frankly, it is a disgusting tactic and if I had the purchasing power to withdraw my business from suppliers who indulge in these long shutdowns, I would do so today.

Many industries do it, so it is unfair to single out one particular type of business. We had a similar problem where we are trying to get timetable leaflets printed for the new 2 and 6a routes in Winchester, but the design company we use - who happily didn't think that having someone on duty on 29th December was such an unreasonable expectation - couldn't even get quotes for print.

We manage our service levels, using reduced staff numbers to reflect reduced demand. They can probably cope with fewer admin staff, so there should still be plenty of scope to accommodate a desire to give staff more time off over the period. Why can they not manage the situation in this way, rather than simply locking the gates and telling their loyal customers to get stuffed?

If I put a notice out on all our buses this year saying "there will be no buses from 3pm on Friday 21st December 2012 until Wednesday 2nd January 2013, nevertheless we wish all our customers a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year", I wonder what reaction we might get?

On a brighter note, I am very optimistic about 2012, so I do - genuinely - wish all readers of this blog a Happy New Year, even if I am a week late!

All dressed up and nowhere to go!

That's how it felt this morning, when the mayhem of the busiest shopping week of the year gave way to a complete anti-climax of a Christmas Eve! We had our big guns lined up, with me and Karl parked in the bus station with 107 and V12 ready to slot in to cover trips if Christmas shopping congestion affected the schedule, but in the event we just sat on the wall and watched while nothing much happened and the buses flowed freely in and out.

This wasn't necessarily a complete surprise - the obvious effect of many people having a complete week to prepare for the big day was that most had clearly got themselves organised by yesterday. But we couldn't be sure exactly how today would pan out so we had our reserves in place just in case!

We've certainly been stretched at times during the week. The C in particular has been hammered for timekeeping, both as a result of traffic congestion - Leigh Road, Bournemouth Road in Chandler's Ford and the car parks around Fryern Hill being hotspots - and passenger loadings, the latter particularly encouraging given the route's newly commercial status.

We have routinely been sending out spare drivers and buses all week to cover trips so that pretty much every journey has left Eastleigh on time, even though some have been taking 75 or 80 minutes to cover a 55 minute schedule once out there.

The downside of running a circular route of course is that people waiting at the other end haven't necessarily had such a good experience, and if you have been waiting for a bus in Hiltingbury, Fryern or Chandler's Ford any time after about 11.00 any day this week you will probably have been waiting 10 or 15 minutes longer than you expected. That's very unfortunate, but difficult to avoid, and at least by inserting spare drivers and buses in Eastleigh we've managed to keep things from getting out of hand. Our Greenroad vehicle tracking system has really been a huge benefit both in enabling us to be proactive in managing the service, and communicating delay information to customers.

Luckily most of our customers are extremely understanding and take the delays in their stride, knowing that the bus will come along eventually. Sadly there remain a few who seem to live in a bubble, and the one who sneered "what kind of a service do you call this" at me yesterday when I turned up at Fryern 15 minutes late having left Eastleigh spot on time, stands out as a highlight. I decided that my preferred response of "one on which you are not welcome, madam" was probably unwise. I can understand her frustration.

Yesterday was particularly strange for traffic. The C was predictably hammered in the morning and we didn't even try to maintain the normal duties, we just had three drivers going round on ninety minute cycles (ie doing the 1010, 1140, 1310 rather than 1010, 1110, 1210 etc as they normally would) and it worked. However, quite bizarrely, at around 1400 hrs the C suddenly died down and started running bang on time, whereas the A - which had been trouble-free all day - simultaneously started running into 20 minute delays - mostly around the Sainsbury's/M&S complex at Hedge End.

Hopefully, the commercial receipts will show that it was worth the effort, but a challenging week has now given way to an extremely gentle weekend. The frustrating loss of our Sunday contracts means that after we lock the gates tonight we won't turn another wheel until Wednesday 28th - the most number of consecutive days of not running buses since we started running services in February 2008.

We did look quite seriously at running on Boxing Day, and I see that the Omnibuses blog is debating that very subject today. I am wildly enthusiastic about running on Boxing Day, as I feel that in any major retail centre there is a great commercial opportunity. However, after careful consideration we decided that since we don't have a West Quay, a Gunwharf Quays or a Festival Place on our routes, it's probably still a bit of a stretch for us commercially. I wouldn't rule it for next year though!

When I introduced Boxing Day services at Bluestar (either 2004 or 2005), we were pleasantly surprised by the demand, but found with a few years' experience that it needed West Quay to be open to be a success, and then Saints playing at home would put the icing on the cake. With both ingredients in place this year, I predict a bumper Boxing Day bonanza for Bluestar this year, and First are fools for not running! (And I've told them so!) In fact we did consider running commercial services for one day only in parts of Southampton that won't otherwise have a service, but felt that without any marketing channels open to us we would struggle to raise awareness of anything we might offer.

For the period between Christmas and New Year, we are running a normal weekday service. This is probably the period that has the greatest variety of services around the patch, with Bluestar running Saturday timetables and First running special timetables (not something of which I am a great fan to be honest - I'm not convinced the effort involved in all the publicity and upsetting regular commuters etc is really worth the saving for three days of operation, but as it is not my place to comment on First's commercial strategy yet I have now done so in two consecutive paragraphs, I'd better wish them well and leave them to it!)

Our decision to run weekday services is based on previous experience of running Saturday timetables. For us, there is no huge difference in cost between running a weekday and Saturday schedule once the schools and colleges are stripped out, and yet we have many loyal, regular commuters who rely on the journeys that only run on weekdays. We have found in the past that we have caused considerable inconvenience to some of our best customers, while benefitting ourselves from only a very small saving.

Looking at New Year, we have decided to run through until the bitter end on New Year's Eve. I'm hoping that being a Saturday night more people will be going out to celebrate than normally do, and we want to enable them to do so. I suspect it will go very quiet around 2200 hrs, but for the sake of two hours it doesn't seem worth stopping the services early.

In previous years I have welcomed the new year in some slightly strange places, including between junctions 7 and 5 of the M27 while driving back from a rail replacement duty, and memorably one year on the Cowes Floating Bridge. I expect to welcome 2012 somewhere around the bottom of Wildern Lane on the 2340 A from Eastleigh. Feel free to come and join me, we'll have a party on the bus!

The final piece of the festive jigsaw is that we have decided to run a Sunday timetable (which means us running First and Xelabus times) on New Year's Day. There's no real business case, other than that for many people now New Year's Day is not particularly special, and in fact behaves like a normal bank holiday, and I don't see why people shouldn't have buses. I've got staff champing at the bit to work, so we're going to run and be damned! I won't be at the wheel however - chances are I shall head into Winchester for the Friends of King Alfred Buses' Running Day - always a great occasion.

For now though, Christmas Eve is starting to draw to a close. Apart from Pam, our part-timer who is cheerily flogging round the C1 (having made our day with the sensational cupcakes she brought to work this morning), we've let all the drivers go now. Karl the Controller is finishing one of the remaining duties and I'm off out to do the 1907 E8 and 1940 A to be the last bus back into the yard!

Happy Christmas!

Pear Shaped

That's the best way to describe tonight's traffic!

We sensed trouble at the end of this morning's peak, when they erected temporary traffic lights at the White Swan in Mansbridge (on the A27 a mile or so south of Parkway station, on Velvet A between Eastleigh and Hedge End).

However, we had no serious problems until a casual glance at GreenRoad revealed that the 1610 from Eastleigh to Hedge End was not where it should be! Due at West End at 1629, yet at 1655 it was still in Mansbridge, and ended up about 40 minutes late.

That was just the start! After that, a reported accident on the roundabout at junction 5 (thereby obstructing both main routes south of Eastleigh) and no doubt the onset of bad weather, and the south side of Eastleigh just stopped.

Luckily, the usual flexibility from our brilliant team of drivers meant that everyone disregarded their scheduled duties and covered whatever they needed to cover, with the result that every journey left its start point on time, even if it got comically late along the way!

The 1610 from Eastleigh should come back empty, to refuel and form the 1740 A. The 1640 from Eastleigh should come back as the 1714 from Hedge End (Heath House Lane). The 1710 from Eastleigh finishes at Hedge End and comes back empty to depot and the 1740 comes back as the 1814.

Today, the 1610 arrived just in time to form the 1714 back from Hedge End. This of course meant no cover for the 1740 from Eastleigh, but Controller Karl stepped in to do that.

Normally, the 1714 runs on to the 1820 C1 but that wasn't going to happen, so the 1820 fell to me.

Meanwhile, the 1640 from Eastleigh took around an hour to reach Parkway station and eventually made it through the roadworks 55 minutes late, meaning that it arrived in Hedge End just in time to make the 1814 service back - an hour later than the trip it was supposed to do! At one stage on the outbound journey it was stationary for so long in Southampton Road that GreenRoad concluded it had parked up for the night!

The 1710 is one of two buses that we can't currently track so that disappeared into a big black hole (or maybe a big orange hole) after turning left out of Eastleigh bus station and was next seen back in the yard just over two hours later, while the 1740 from Eastleigh (Karl) eventually got to Hedge End around one hour late.

Meanwhile, the normally excellent ROMANSE was being unusually coy and would only refer to traffic being "slow southbound towards M27 junction 5", which we felt rather understated the issue - although they did later admit to the accident on junction 5 roundabout.

We'll wait with interest to see what happens in tomorrow morning's peak! Extra bodies are on standby, just in case!

A more exciting feature of tomorrow's agenda is my annual trip to London to the UK Bus Awards ceremony, where once again I am delighted to be a guest of our excellent insurance brokers Belmont International.

All a bit frustrating this year though, because I had fully intended to enter in a few a categories, but the entry deadline coincided with an obscenely busy period, on the weekend of our June service change while also preparing for various special events (IW Festival, Glastonbury etc) for which we were contracted, and I just ran out of time to prepare the entries! Mind you, I suppose it's arguable that a company that can't manage to meet a deadline doesn't really deserve too many awards, but hopefully I'll have my proverbial ducks in more of an orderly row in time for next year's awards.

Whatever happens, best of luck to all those in the running for the various gongs - I'm sure all will be worthy winners.

Apart from the fact that we know we're not going to win anything, the only other disappointment is an unfortunate diary clash that means I will have to miss out on the traditional post-lunch socialising that usually lasts well into the night (and beyond) in the company of great people, as I have to be back in Eastleigh for an early evening meeting.

It's all in a good cause though, because it's the annual opportunity for Eastleigh Borough Council members to scrutinise the performance of public transport in the borough, and as part of that to question the operators on any matters they consider to be of interest.

Eastleigh has no statutory obligation to support its public transport yet in practice it is highly proactive and takes a significant interest in the transport offer, both in terms of financial support and working together with operators to promote innovation and good practice. Its members deserve our full attention to any concerns they wish to raise, and I always look forward to hearing their views.

A Mist Opportunity

A social event required my presence in Derby on Saturday night. This gave me the opportunity to sample the buses in the Peak District, something I have long meant to do but never found the right occasion.

To be honest it wasn't really on the agenda for this weekend either. My plan had been to return south on the train as soon as I woke up on Sunday morning and spend the afternoon doing domestic chores back in Southampton. But a conversation with a couple of friends on Saturday night stirred my sense of discovery and I decided to have an adventure!

My plan was not to have a plan, but insofar as I needed to end up somewhere where I could get a train south to be back in Southampton by 7ish on Sunday evening, I had the notion of setting off on trent barton's transpeak service to Matlock at 09:50 on Sunday morning, before perhaps catching TM Travel's 215 service to Sheffield. Needless to say, what actually happened was nothing like that!

Arriving at Derby Bus Station at around 09:40, the transpeak was already on the stand loading. Moreover, it had almost a full seated load with ten minutes to go to departure. It is highly creditable that it was already available for boarding, and most useful to me because it allowed me to decide not to go on it! I like my personal space, especially when I'm feeling slightly delicate after a heavy night, and really didn't fancy nearly an hour on a full bus so I aborted the plan.

In fact I almost aborted the entire plan and headed for the railway station, but just as I was about to leave the bus station my eye was drawn to a service at 10:00 to Ashbourne and Leek. The weekday equivalent between Derby and Ashbourne is trent barton's swift, which has recently been rebranded to very impressive effect, but you can always rely on a tendered Sunday equivalent to a weekday commercial service to be confusingly different, so the Sunday bus is a 108 operated by TM Travel.

This seemed more likely to offer plenty of personal space and so it proved, with a very jolly driver and three passengers on our smartly presented Solo when we left Derby. I had absolutely no idea what I was going to do when I got to Ashbourne but it seemed likely to offer a nice ride, and if I had thought of nothing else I figured I could always carry on to Leek and try to get a connection to Stoke from there.

Two things quickly became apparent as we headed west into the countryside. Firstly, the scenery is almost certainly magnificent. Secondly, I couldn't see any of it due to the thick fog that was enveloping everything apart from a few hundred metres of the road ahead! This afforded me plenty of time to play with my phone, and I stumbled across the website for Public Transport in Derbyshire, a real mecca for a timetable geek like me!

From this I was able to deduce that I had two much more interesting options when I arrived at Ashbourne, with a choice of departures at 10:35 on either a TM Travel bus on route 110 to Matlock, or a Bowers bus on a 42A to Buxton.

The first of these options was more appealing, as it would allow me to return to Derby in a triangle and still get back to Southampton in good time. It was also a slightly shorter journey - the Buxton bus would take nearly an hour and a half to get there and that length of journey tries my patience!

So I resolved I would catch the bus to Matlock, and almost inevitably that isn't what happened!

On arrival at what grandly calls itself Ashbourne Bus Station - a layby comprising three bus shelters - both the above mentioned buses were waiting, and as expected both were Solos. However, it quickly became apparent that there was to be some swapping of buses, and in fact the bus that was supposedly en route from Derby to Leek was actually going to transfer on to the Matlock route, and the bus that was already waiting in Ashbourne - which I assumed would be the 110 - was in fact going forward to Leek.

Presumably this is to cycle buses for maintenance etc - the 108 seems a long way from TM Travel's Sheffield heartland - but since this now meant that I would be staying on the same bus I decided that would be too boring, hence I decided to go to Buxton instead.

For my first trip on a Bowers bus I was delighted to be presented with a choice of three moquettes, all entirely clashing, but the driver was friendly and cheerful. Once again, three passengers were aboard as we pulled out.

There followed one of the most surreal and enchanting bus rides I can remember. Shortly after leaving Ashbourne, we plunged off down a narrow lane and for the next hour weaved our way around woodland and dales, through picturesque villages, up steep hills to magnificent summits and down again into precipitous valleys. At least I assume we did all these things, but the dense wall of fog kept it all secret from us. Occasionally the mist would clear enough to tease us with the merest glimpse of scenic wonder, only to close in again at the next bend.

Through it all the driver made careful but steady progress, guiding us through the gloom and picking our way past cars and horse boxes when they loomed suddenly out of the murky greyness. He displayed the skill of one who knew every inch of the roads, an assuredness honed from years of experience. And yet, suddenly, as we were nearing the end of the trip he stopped and checked with us that he had to take a particular right turn. Then he revealed that he had only ever driven the route once before! Nobody could begrudge him that moment of uncertainty - all of us who drive professionally have found ourselves in that situation - but it made all the more astounding the manner with which he had guided us through the dense fog up to that point!

Shortly before our arrival in Buxton we burst out of the mist into a clear sunny day, and for the last couple of miles we called at every stop, filling up with locals for the short ride into town who would have had no idea of our adventure in the fog.

Despite the frustration of being unable to see anything this was one of the most magical bus rides I can ever recall. I loved the sense of being a long way from anywhere, in our own little cocoon remote from the outside world. And of course I have the added joy of knowing that I will have to go back to experience the route again in clear conditions, when I can properly appreciate the surroundings!

Arrival in Buxton was just before 12:00 and our bus was allowed a brief rest before disappearing out of service - here it is (the one at the front) having just been joined by one of its sisters:

It was clear that having crossed so much of the Peak District, it made much more sense to pop out the other side than to hack back across to Derby, so my thoughts turned to onward transport. The train now became an option, but my preference was for one more bus ride - you see and experience so much more of local life riding on a bus.

Stockport seemed the obvious destination, with an hourly direct train link back to Southampton. transpeak has an annoying three hour gap heading north from Buxton, so skyline 199 - also from the trent barton stable as you can tell from the absence of capital letters - was the obvious choice. 12:15 from Buxton would get me to Stockport Bus Station at 13:25, just in time for a mad scramble up the hill to the railway station for a 13.36 train. Perfect. So of course it didn't happen!

By about 12:30, with no sign of skyline anywhere to be seen, I was bored. I also knew I had missed my connection and would therefore be on the 14:36 from Stockport. Had this been the plan all along I wouldn't have minded at all, but having set my heart on the 13:36 it was something of a let down to know that I had missed it.

I figured that, to be sure of at least getting the 14:36, I could give skyline until around 13:00 and then I would have to walk to the railway station. And then, while I was idly pondering the maps and departure boards at the bus stop, Macclesfield emerged!

Listed on the bus stop timetable was a 12:40 service 58 to Macclesfield. The map suggested it went through somewhere called the Cat & Fiddle, which stirred a distant memory from radio traffic reports in times of bad weather. Consulting the Derbyshire website, I could scarcely believe that compared to the seventy minute slog to Stockport, this option would have me on the West Coast Main Line in barely half an hour! And still in time to catch the 13:36 train one stop up the line!

I consider myself to have a good grasp of the geography of Britain, so I am ashamed that I had no real idea of just how close Buxton is to Macclesfield, and the outside world in general. I had not appreciated how much I would be cutting the corner by heading to Macclesfield rather than Stockport, and until this option bopped me on the nose Macclesfield had never entered my head as somewhere on the shortlist of places to visit! It certainly was not on the list of places I had expected to see when I walked out of my Derby hotel just three hours previously! And yet Macclesfield was the answer!

But Buxton wouldn't let me go without a fight. skyline eventually turned up twenty five minutes late, but I sneered at it with disdain as I waited for the now imminent service 58. Only the 58 didn't come! 12:40 came and went, 12:45, 12:50, 12:55 and still no sign. I was now resigned to a walk to the station to catch the train, and then the 14:36 from Stockport. Such a let down after such anticipation!

And then finally, just as I was about to give up and start walking, along it came! Another Bowers Solo, I boarded along with the two other waiting passengers, and then we sat there for five minutes while the driver had a phone conversation with his controller. He rang to alert him to the delay, but this turned into a lengthy debate about how it had happened and what could be done about it. None of which was getting us any closer to Macclesfield. But eventually we set off.

It was now 13:10, and I knew that my favoured train would be in Macclesfield at 13:49. I knew also that the bus journey would take half an hour and therefore I didn't have much time and I had no idea how to find Macclesfield station once I got there. So the scene was set for a nail-biting finale, but before any of that my breath was taken from me by the stunning scenery that lay around us as we climbed out of Buxton!

Normally I know when I'm going to be in for a scenic ride, and I set my anticipation levels accordingly. By contrast, I saw nothing to look forward to in the trip to Macclesfield. It felt like a cop out, shuffling sheepishly out of the side door of the High Peak. I was not prepared for the Cat and Fiddle!

What an amazing road, what a panorama, and all condensed into less than thirty minutes! What a surprising end to my bus travels for the day, and what a climax!

Before we got to the best bit, I was able to take this photo looking back over Buxton, from which you can see the northern extremity of the fog bank that I had endured for so much of the morning:

After the unexpected excitement of the Cat and Fiddle, our descent into Macclesfield took us right past the railway station (although in the best traditions of bus-rail integration in this country, it was kept as low profile as possible). So my connection was easy, I had had a great adventure and it was barely lunchtime!

The £15 upgrade to First Class was a no brainer and I enjoyed four hours of relaxed snobbery, cruising south in spacious, luxurious accommodation, reading my book and listening to the occasional despairing announcements from the Train Manager to the sardines in Standard Class, not to block the aisles or pile their luggage in the vestibules.

The Peak District fascinates me. It has some of the most dramatic scenery you will encounter in this country, but all in close proximity to real life. Distances are short, it is easy to cover a lot of ground in a short space of time, and especially for a Sunday the frequency of bus services is astonishingly good, with some really useful connections.

Although passenger numbers were modest on the buses I used, there were walkers and sightseers as well as locals. All the drivers I encountered were friendly and helpful.

All the ingredients are there for an amazing tourist product, yet the whole thing seems so much less than the sum of its parts. It seems to me to be crying out for a decently branded network, indeed the network is virtually already there, but if I wasn't a persistent transport geek I would never have worked out that stringing the 108, 42A and 58 together would get me from east to west in a morning, or that everything comes together in Ashbourne at 10:30. I still have no idea if there was a ticket that I could have bought that would have saved me buying three separate singles and given me the flexibility to go where I wanted. There certainly should be.

In my humble opinion the network cries out for some simplification, decent branding, ticketing and promotion, and surely the passenger numbers would go through the roof as they have done on Coasthopper in Norfolk or Jurassic CoastlinX53 in Dorset and Devon.

But despite that, I loved my morning bus adventure in the Peak District and I can't wait to be back!

Les is More

While the bus industry counts many entertaining characters among its staff, the same is equally true of the customers. While the vast majority are polite, unassuming and go about their business with nothing more than a "good morning", "please" or "thank you", there are those who become part of folklore.

Meet Les.

One of our less well known activities is to operate the network of free buses into Sainsbury's at Ferndown on behalf of Xelabus, a commitment that allows us to think of ourselves as a Dorset operator at least on two days of the week! As you can see from the timetable this is a fairly complex network of five interworking local routes into the store.

Les is in charge of route SA4, not that anyone ever calls it that.

It's not clear by what process Les came to be in charge of SA4, although his military credentials suggest that he probably just lined up the other customers outside the store while waiting for the bus one day, and after a bit of square bashing claimed the title by default. But no-one messes with Les.

Les knows where everyone gets on. He stands near the front of the bus and keeps a note of who is travelling and who isn't. Most of the clientele is of a certain age and - despite falling into the same bracket himself - Les helps them on and off with their trolleys. Two trolleys in particular he keeps with him at the front of the bus, as he does not feel it is safe for them to be parked with their owners.

Les keeps the drivers in order, making it his business to show new ones the route and explain the stopping arrangements. Once the passengers and their shopping are loaded ready for the return journey, he decides when it is time to leave.

I met Les for the first time around a month ago, when I deputised for the regular part-timer we were using on the route one Wednesday. Les was both helpful and engaging, making sure that everyone got the service they expected while chatting away to me about his life and times. I think I scored points for recognising that his accent was from the East Midlands, and this led to a series of anecdotes about his upbringing around Melton Mowbray and subsequent army career.

Today we introduced a new driver to the Ferndown clan, as Martin is going to split his time between wooing his regular bunch of senior devotees on the S2, and wooing a whole new bunch of senior devotees in East Dorset.

Mostly it fell to me to show Martin the way, but when we arrived at Prunus Close on the SA4 all that changed. "Can I leave you to show him the ropes?" I enquired, and was met with a stern look and an assertive "well that's what I normally do" in response. I snuck to the back of the bus with my laptop and got more work done in a 25 minute tour of the back streets of Ferndown than I sometimes achieve in a whole day in the office!

I did interrupt my work long enough to take what passes for an action shot on the Sainsbury's bus...

Here we see Les in his rightful position at the helm, while in the background the door of yet another sheltered housing block is thrown open to yield our next intake of passengers. Inside the bus, the ladies model the latest in Ferndown hair fashion, but none are as smartly presented as Les's "bag for life", immaculately folded on the luggage rack.

All was not well today however. On arrival at the store Les revealed that it had been my job to count the number of passengers getting on, but as he had not briefed me on my responsibilities and I had failed to keep a tally, he was faced with the impossible task of deciding whether everyone was present for the return journey without knowing how many he had to count back on!

Moreover, there is a faint whiff of scandal in the air. It emerges that one of the passengers doesn't talk to Les, as he once offered to help her on with her trolley and she admonished him that she was quite capable of taking care of herself. A rift was thus created which simmers on in the background.

But there is no real doubt that Les is the hero of the SA4, and the route would be much duller without him!

Where?

At Velvet we only employ the elite of PSV drivers, a premier band of experienced driving professionals equally at home doing laps of Velmore as reversing a coach up an Alp in whiteout conditions.

Or so we'd like to believe.....!

Today I found myself discussing a possible forthcoming one-off job to the town of Haslemere with two of our drivers. It would have been three, but we know how to play to our employees' individual strengths so we'd sent Steve off to get the teas.

Sadly, mention of the name of this Surrey town - a mere 40 miles away - drew blank looks from both my colleagues.

Not to be defeated, one of them pulled out his iPad and searched for the place on the map. Unfortunately he substituted a 'z' for the 's' and declared it to be "near Oxford". Leaving aside the question of whether the 30 mile distance between the Buckinghamshire village of Hazlemere and the dreaming spires counts as "near", left to his own devices he would have set off north in his bus and presumably spent the day scouring the suburbs of High Wycombe desperate to find some passengers.

The other driver present joined me in laughter at his colleague's schoolboy error. When the chuckling had subsided he thought about it for a moment, smiled as a moment of enlightenment arrived in his brain then declared, "Haslemere... That's in Herefordshire isn't it?"