I went on a trip on Tuesday which included four Centrebus journeys.
I started in Rothwell, Northamptonshire, and took Stagecoach MAN 22833 on the 19 to Corby. This was a terrible bus, it seemed underpowered - sounded just like a Dart not a MAN, has it been re-engined with a smaller engine? - and the noise from the gearbox / diff / drive shaft / axle at speed and and under load was deafening.
Then I moved to Centrebus. The first bus on the RF1 to Uppingham, an E200, was late - it appeared to have left Melton Mowbray nearly an hour late on the previous journey but made up a lot and was only about 15 minutes late leaving Corby and arriving at Uppingham. Then I got a Solo on the 12 to Stamford and an E200 on the 9 to Oakham, the latter with a new driver being supervised. Finally the original E200 on the RF1, by now on time, from Oakham to Melton Mowbray.
Uppingham, Stamford and Oakham are all lovely places and I had about an hour in each. Very middle class and well kept, Stamford especially has a great deal to see. A pleasant green near the castle in Oakham was a good place to enjoy some lunch. And the rides were through surprisingly lush and rolling countryside (except north of Oakham), with extremely pretty villages (but not Edith Weston!) and the odd glimpse of Rutland Water. I had not been to this area for many years.
Now I bought a Centrebus Network day ticket for £8 which I thought was quite reasonable for four journeys. However at Uppingham I noticed a poster saying that for this week only all journeys starting or finishing at Oakham or Uppingham would be free, courtesy of Rutland Council. All my four journeys met this criteria - indeed one of each permutation. And at Uppingham when I got on the 12 there was a man from the council, complete with clipboard (but no peaked cap), interrogating passengers and drivers about whether they were doing this properly and whether it would encourage them to travel by bus. The only other passenger boarding the 12 at Uppingham had just paid and the driver was told to reimburse him - there seemed to be some confusion although Centrebus clearly had been told about it. My first driver on the RF1 had mentioned nothing. The same man with (presumably) the same clipboard was later at Oakham where he met my arriving 9 and departing 12 with the same agenda. Had I been given my four free trips, as I should have been, then I guess the council would have reimbursed Centrebus rather more than £8 - and the council would have considered the venture more successful by 4 trips - a win-win-win!
The RF1 is normally hourly with a three hour round trip time and three buses out. At present, for about 3 months, a bridge on the road between Oakham and Uppingham is closed so they are running via a diversion making a three hour round trip impossible, so during the peaks they do the closest they can and during the day it is every 90 minutes, sticking to the three buses but with longer breaks at Melton. First you would have thought that someone - the council or Network Rail - should be funding an extra vehicle to maintain the frequency. Then, on the day, one bus was missing, in that it would appear that the 11.24 from Corby had terminated at Uppingham at about 12.30. The same bus (if BusTimes is correct, which it may be because my first bus claimed to be 555 but was actually something else) then resumed from Melton Mowbray about 15 minutes late around 14.20. The gap in service had been spotted by the man with the clipboard at Oakham and left a 3 hour gap in what should be an hourly service. Not the way to attract customers! Nothing on the Centrebus website / twitter about the missing bus - or, come to that, the free travel - in fact nothing this week at all. Not really good enough - I got the impression of an operator just about keeping its head above water.
From Melton Mowbray it was Arriva to Leicester on a DAF/Wright decker, walk to the station, and a train (222) to Kettering. I had 12 minutes to walk (uphill!) to Horse Market for the 18/19 to Rothwell which I just managed only to find no bus. The scheduled vehicle - the very same noisy MAN - was running about 25 minutes late on its previous journey due to road works in Rothwell. So we left 25 minutes late, only 5 minutes ahead of the next bus which for some reason had not been similarly delayed. These road works were horrendous and completely absurd, with three way traffic lights delaying three roads for some scaffolding in one of them and the traffic light timing making no allowance for most of the evening peak traffic being in one direction. It took our bus nearly 30 minutes from joining the queue on the A14 exit slip to getting through the village. I got off at the first stop, walked up the hill and explored the village centre (quite pleasant) and got back to my car just as the bus finally headed off towards Corby about 45 minutes late.
www.centrebus.info
www.facebook.com
find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk
