Go Gower

I’ve fond memories of living in Swansea, working for South Wales Transport, in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It’s a great part of the country and the Gower Peninsular is a spectacular area to visit with its secluded bays and picturesque scenery. In those days SWT had an outstation in the peninsular’s south west corner at Scurlage running principally two routes: one from Rhossili via the southern bays and road to Swansea, and the other from Llangennith, Llanmadoc and Llanrhidian in the north west along the northern route.

The Gower’s bus routes are now operated by New Adventure Travel, the company bought earlier this year by ComfortDelGro; I recently revisited to see how things are shaping up. It’s great to see a much improved bus network with a range of travel opportunities; but there are some snags, as I found out.

There’s an impressive website overseen by an organisation called BayTrans with lots of helpful information. http://www.swanseabaywithoutacar.com may be a bit wordy for a website, but it does what it says on the url; giving information about bus routes, tickets and best of all a map. Sadly it’s a bit short on detail, but that may be deliberate to avoid costly updating if things change.

Impressively copies of the colourful brochure ‘Adventures in Gower … without a car’, complete with colour map, are available at the high profile information desk as you arrive by train inside Swansea Station.

Although no bus times are included in the brochure there is a separate A5 sheet listing departures  from Swansea’s impressive Quadrant Bus Station (revamped since my day – it originally opened soon after I arrived in 1979) to the main destinations in Gower, as well as along the Mumbles coast. Sadly it doesn’t show times for return journeys, so is somewhat limited in its usefulness, but on the plus side it was available both at the rail station and from the Travel Centre manned by First Cymru in the bus station.

The brochure gives incomplete details about tickets including a day ticket for buses on Gower, an off-peak version available just on western parts of the routes and another one covering First’s buses all over Swansea city. Regretfully what looks like a new ticket, promoted on a poster I spotted in the bus station, covering buses in the city and the Gower isn’t included in the leaflet. Prices shown in the brochure as at April 2018 are now out of date, which is a shame, but there is a warning prices are “subject to alteration”. It also explains family tickets are available and there’s reference to the more extensive Explore Wales/South Wales passes but no further details of these are included.

The most useful page of the brochure is the coloured map depicting the routes operating on Gower including what must be a costly to operate, but highly useful, shuttle bus (route 115) which connects the southern (118 and 119) routes around Rhossili, Port Eynon and Horton with (route 116) the northern destinations of Llangennith, Llanmadoc and Llanrhidian (shown as brown on the map).

It was also impressive to see little route maps posted at many bus stops along the route which also contained departure listings, although not full timetables.

Bus stop flags within the Swansea city area could usefully include route numbers for the Gower routes – I understand, commendably, this is now in hand and will be very reassuring for visitors.

Some careful thought has obviously gone into the timetable compilation; I reckon there are 28 connectional possibilities during a weekday on the Rhossili route alone as well as links to the northern hourly route at Llanrhidian. It means you can easily get from one part of Gower to another despite the limited number of buses; or see much of it within a few hours, which, after carefully studying the timetables on New Adventure Travel’s website  I managed to do in a morning, albeit after an early start.

It was a shame copies of the actual timetables are not more readily available; either at the rail station or the bus station; both seem an obvious distribution point for those of us without a car. Having travelled on an early morning bus from Swansea down to Rhossili and enjoying a bit of stand time at the terminus, I was pleased to spot a handful of rather damp inflicted timetables by the windscreen of the bus so grabbed one to help monitor journeys for the rest of the morning.

This was just as well, as although two of the connections I observed worked perfectly, the third between route 115 and my returning 119 bus to Swansea fell apart with the former disappearing on time leaving two other passengers and myself with a distinctly disconcerted wait for twenty minutes for the late running 119, which the driver explained when he eventually arrived, had got delayed due to following a tractor which didn’t strike me as being entirely the cause. I’d tweeted N.A.T. enquiring whether the bus was on its way, but sadly no response was received.

The problem with connections that work on paper is that in practice, they may not work. Indeed, when we arrived back in Swansea still twenty minutes late and with only five minutes stand time before the next journey back to Rhossili and a good number of passengers waiting to board; the bus inevitably left even later and connections planned for that journey, and more, later in the day would also fail. That’s not good for encouraging passengers and giving confidence connections will work. I couldn’t help think that on a busy day with lots of traffic clogging up Gower’s narrow roads, it would be quite common for timekeeping to be disrupted and the knock on effect to these connections.

But, compared to forty years ago the journey possibilities are quite amazing. Sundays in particular has a greatly improved service compared to how I remember things. Even on a visit about five years ago, I recall there being only a limited number of departures on Sunday, albeit packed full of visitors.

This time, it was a little disappointing to see buses relatively lightly loaded on a sunny weekday morning in the school holidays in the middle of August, so perhaps a more effective distribution of New Adventure Travel’s timetables would help supplement the colourful brochure from BayTrans.

Roger French       23rd August 2018