Recent content by Slower Travel

A bit different to the usual reports, but I've started an audio/podcast version of my Slower Travel blog. The first four episodes tell the story of the trip my wife and I made over a couple of days from Edinburgh to Whitby. The first one - the 253 from Edinburgh to Berwick - languished on my...

Woah, steady on! The Grove is only across the road. It has the finest array of pub taxidermy and weird stuff in the north (and the beer's top notch, too) :D There was a proper wipe-your-feet-on-the-way-out boozer bolted onto Crewe bus station until a couple of years ago, too.

I've just discovered that the #14 bus from Southend goes to the mysterious Foulness Island. The island is owned by the MOD, and visitors need special permission to go there. Needless to say, it's now on my list :lol: Are there - or have there been - any other services in peacetime which...

On the face of it, the X6 between Poole and Bournemouth is an odd one. The 5 or 6 miles between them gets stretched out to 30 miles gallop through Dorset, reaching as far as Verwood before heading back for the coast. My assumption is that it used to be two different routes which merged...

Until 2017-ish, there was the 22 from Bolton to Stockport, which took a good couple of tedious hours to complete. Come to think of it, there was also the 278 until earlier this year. That took the 5 mile journey from Reddish to Manchester on a convoluted route via Wythenshawe, taking about 2.5...

Special mention to Chywoone Hill in Newlyn, too. It won't be the steepest, but it's narrow, long, lined with houses and inevitably has a load of cars parked on it. Great views over Mounts Bay as well, but terrifying on the way down :s

Bacup in Lancashire is only served by Rosso buses. Pop (Wiki): 13,323. There's bound to be somewhere bigger than that, though (Gourock has a couple thousand fewer people, by the looks of it).

Alderley Edge now only has the 130 from Parrs Wood to Macclesfield running through it. Population is about 4,500.

I don't know if it's like this all the time, as it's the only time I've ever been on it, but the #10 I took from Wigan to Leigh a few weeks back was a decker. However, the #10s going in the opposite direction were all singles. Never seen that before.

Stagecoach had 'We ❤ Manchester' on their out of service buses for quite a while after the terrorist attack at the Arena. In fact, I saw one on the night of the anniversary a couple of weeks ago, too. Not buses, but I saw an 'It's Coming Home' at Stockport railway station after the quarter...

Even better again, you can get a through ticket from Derby to Stockport on the TP and the Skyline 199 and shave over an hour off the journey. Route same as above apart from: Skyline 199, Buxton - Stockport; 1705 - 1820. The 192 runs every 5 minutes from Stockport and takes about 30-50 mins...

Apologies, I don't really know my arse from my elbow with all these initialisms! :lol:

There's also: Greater Manchester (System One...about £7) Merseyside (Solo...£4.50-ish) West Yorkshire (WY Metro...~£6.50) Then there's the Wayfarer ticket, which covers bus, train & tram travel in Greater Manchester, parts of Lancs & Cheshire, a good chunk of Derbyshire and into Leek in...

I'm heading for a day in the hills over the weekend, and stumbled across a bus which I don't think can be beaten for brevity: https://bustimes.org/services/flx-hebden-bridge-railway-stn-hebden-bridge-hope-s It's the FLX, which only runs once per night from Hebden Bridge railway station to Hope...

Graham Smillie's site deserves a good mention. https://grahamsmilliephotography.wordpress.com/ He's a photographer who has taken a sideline into writing up bus journeys as well. Mostly around the Liverpool area, with, as you'd expect, plenty of pics.