Tuesday 29th August 2023
This summer has seen not just one new open top bus route in the glorious Derbyshire Peak District but two: Hulleys of Baslow’s Breezer and Stagecoach’s Peak Sightseer.
These initiatives come thanks to Derbyshire County Council inviting tenders earlier this year for a Bus Service Improvement Plan funded open-top operation aimed at the area’s buoyant leisure market and in particular those tourists wedded to their cars in this hugely popular National Park.
Instead of submitting a tender, Hulleys decided it would put on a commercial service linking Baslow with Grindleford, Hathersage, Bamford and Hope (all railway stations on the Sheffield to Manchester line) with the tourist hotspot of Castleton.
One open-top bus provides six return journeys a day on a 90 minute frequency with links at Baslow to and from the company’s route 170 for Chesterfield, Chatsworth House and Bakewell. The first journey of the day shown in the timetable from Chesterfield looks like it’s the open top bus itself taking up service in Baslow while I assumed the second one is an advertised ‘spot’ connection in Baslow from a journey on the 170 which leaves the railway station at 10:45 and Chesterfield NBS 12 (if you know what that refers to) at 10:50.
A day ticket costs £6.40.
I popped up to Chesterfield last Thursday to take a ride beginning on that connecting route 170 at 10:50 although you have to be psychic to know what the ‘C’ at the top of the journey means.
I emailed the company asking for confirmation it meant what I’ve just described and a second time asking if concessionary passes are valid on Breezer but neither received the courtesy of a reply.
In the event my plans spectacularly failed as the 10:50 journey on route 170 was cancelled due to a breakdown so to save the day being ruined and ensured I got to ride the Breezer I forked out for a taxi to Baslow just in time to see the open-top bus being taken off service in Baslow for the rest of the day after its first return journey to cover for the missing bus on route 170 instead.
I gave the company a ring to find out what was happening and was told the open-top service wouldn’t be running that day due to the breakdown.
Passengers waiting to board the bus when it arrived in Baslow were visibly disappointed at not being able to travel to Castleton and abandoned their plans, as did I.
But it left me with time to study the promotional leaflet displayed online (illustrated above) which raised a few queries in my mind but which may be just my misunderstandings.
The online map (above) and in the leaflet seems to show the Breezer continuing south from Baslow to Chatsworth House and indeed there’s references to that attraction in the leaflet including two photographs. But there’s no mention of it on the bus side nor is it included as a timing point in the timetable so I assume you’re meant to change buses on to the 170 in Baslow – but buses on that route leave at 28 minutes past the hour (returning into Baslow at 10 minutes past the hour) so the timings aren’t particularly convenient for a Castleton to/from Chatsworth House ride.
Also on rereading the timetable heading I also realised it doesn’t actually state the service runs daily during the school summer holiday from late July to 3rd September.
Later in the day I caught Hulley’s other bus on route 170 from Baslow back to Chesterfield and had to do a double take thinking I was back in Sevenoaks.
Open-top bus riding can be disappointing sometimes. But luckily my day in Derbyshire wasn’t completely ruined as I was able to enjoy Stagecoach’s Peak Sightseer which I’ll relate in tomorrow’s blog.
Roger French
Blogging timetable: 06:00 TThS and Su DRT extras and for this week only …. An Open-top Bus Blog Bonanza on MTW.
BusAndTrainUser 
Poor show again from Hulleys. The whole Breezer saga has been a bit of a farce, not to say that the introduction of Sightseer has been free from woe either. Shame really as both these services showed such promise.
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There have been a few versions of the timetable, that actually seems not the very latest, but from memory the C meant a guaranteed connection.
NBS is New Beetwell Street, the main location for bus stops in Chesterfield for services in this direction. Stand 12 is where Hulleys services have traditionally called.
It’s a shame you missed it, as the route is far more scenic that the Peak Sightseer which spends a lot of time on tree lined roads. I’m told things could have been different with the two services, whether the full story will come out I don’t know, but I do wonder if we’ll see a change for next year. Either way, the BSIP funding has caused some problems in the area rather than doing good.
Hulleys have a lot of ambition in terms of running innovative services, but have grown a lot in recent years and seem to be suffering as a result. I do hope they can weather these problems and come out the other side stronger.
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Think you’re hitting the nail on the head. Hulleys changed ownership in 2020 and have to expand the business through taking on more tenders, and through a succession of commercial enterprises. Of course, it is great to have entrepreneurial spirit but they seem to have been undercooked in terms of driver resources on a number of these – remember the abortive X1? Perhaps they might be better served by a period of consolidation, get the driver numbers stabilised, and then see what is achievable.
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Well I have to say that I had a weeks holiday in the peak district in July and overall found Hulleys to be running well and to have decent drivers. The one time we didn’t board their bus it was the Evora on the long route from Baslow to Sheffield but the driver warned us before boarding that several sets of roadworks were likely to delay the bus big time so the direct TM travel route was probably a better option. So instead of a smart Evora we rode on a rancid scruffy TM Travel ex Lothian decker with a surly miserable driver who had a major chip on his shoulder about Peak Sightseer! The open top ride from Chesterfield all the way to Castleton was magnificent, then followed by a trip on the Sunday only service to Sheffield over the Snake pass which was lightly used but with a friendly driver and again on time. To be honest Stagecoach Yorkshire were excellent throughout the week, sc East Midlands were also pretty good. The disappointing operators were Kinch, Trent Barton and TM with missing buses, shocking punctuality and in the case of TM a scruffy unkempt fleet. Andy G.
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I was given the same excuse that the bus had broken down the day i went earlier in August. looking at bustimes.org i think the route has been ‘quietly’ dropped. The open topper is shown as having moved 3 times in August and none of those were on the Breezer service.
i too failed to get a response to an email. poor for this respected company. I literally walked in to the garage and the bus was there. I was told it would not be running that day or the day after.
Not good when you have travelled a fair distance to travel on it.
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The cancellations are actually due to driver shortage rather than vehicle shortage as I understand it. If this happens the open topper often gets allocated to the 170 service, presumably so that some of the Breezer passengers get a chance to ride on it.
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That awful apostrophe in “Bank Holiday Monday’s”!!!
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They seem to have a track record for unreliable services
Their office seems to keep very limited hours it shows it as open 9.00 to 16.30 Mon to Fridays only
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The day I went to have a ride on the breezer service, Saturday 5th August, I was told by the driver on the connecting 10.45 am service from Chesterfield Railway station that the breezer no longer runs despite the online timetable showing it as running??
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I did manage to ride on the Breezer on Father’s Day. This was when they were still running hourly officially, but had given up on that optimism in practice. Four other passengers than me from Castleton, plus one local journey from Hope to Hathersage. A nice ride in some places, and a very low bridge at Hope so a shame you were unable to experience it, Roger.
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The whole company has become a sham. The change of ownership has ruined a perfectly good and well respected company. I too have tried to get a ride on the breezer 4 times, none of which have been successful and I only live locally in Matlock. I can see if is hugely disheartening for those that have travelled from further afield or made special plans. The drivers don’t have much high regard for the owner either. If you show an interest and strike up a bit of a conversation with them, it can be interesting what comes out! I believe the story on this one was to keep stagecoach away so hulleys tried to scupper all plans for a tendered service which was the reason for registering a commercial one. Ultimately that hasn’t worked for reasons I’m not sure of. Their driver turnover seems exceptionally high and not replying to calls or emails is nothing new, have a look at reviews online! Whilst this is a tourist service, their normal services leave a lot to be desired. They took over our route to Ashbourne and improved it slightly but then reduced it. They reduced the Ashover bus too but that’s not one I have caught before. Most recently they have too reduced the Bakewell bus, the nice way through Birchover. It’s a shame as occasionally that was a nice route to take but there’s less journeys now and it takes a lot longer as they’ve routed it right into Middleton through Youlgrave so the wife and I probably won’t get much chance or choice to use it again.
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Although some of Hulley’s services are commercial, the ones serving Matlock are subsidised, so the revised routes and re-timing will have been agreed with the County Council.
Frankfrog
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I had exactly the same experience, cancelled without any mention on social media. Calling the company confirmed I was stranded in Hope due to the Bus ‘breaking down’
I later saw it covering a 170, I guess it’s a lack of buses.
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The County Council (& the National Park authority) should take ownership of this issue and implement a publicly funded transport plan for the park as per the original BSIP intention. Hulleys clearly don’t have the competence to run their service.
Peter Brown
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IT appears to be a commercial service so there is no real regulation of it other than the traffic commissioners and they are an ineffective waste of time
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A commercial registration designed to deliberately thwart the BSIP funded tendered service. What a lovely company!
Peter Brown
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That isn’t the case, but there seems to be a lot of misinformation and people out to bash Hulleys.
Also got to remember that service registrations have to be agreed by the LA.
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It is such a shame – I travelled up from near London and wanted to try this open top service out. I got the train to pick it up, but the bus never turned up. Eventually another Hulley’s service came along that was heading to Sheffield which I boarded. Speaking to the driver, he said they barely ever bother running the open top, and that it only occasionally comes out at weekend. Very disappointing state of affairs, especially considering the effort I’d gone to to try the service out.
In the end I rung up Hulley’s to complain, but the lady at the end of the phone seemed completely nonplussed about the whole affair, and even seemed surprised I was complaining.
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How on earth this company are swerving the attention of the county council, regards to their gross incompetence of tendered routes and the TC is outstanding. The customer service is non existent and the service offering gets worse and worse. They’ve cut the Youlgreave service again and bolted it onto the 172, also reduced. Bet that’s popular!
Whatever happened to the X70? That seemed like their best chance at building up a decent market. They just seem to like making changes every 5 minutes which I’m sure is just driving people away.
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I have got to say I’m disappointed for you Roger but as someone with a bit more knowledge of the industry, did you expect anything different? Unfortunately Hulleys isn’t what it was and has spiralled into an unreliable, poor excuse for a bus company. The management clearly have no actual management skill as has been proven with the constant failings. It does amaze me that Derbyshire County Council appear oblivious to just how poor this company is in that it has continued to award further public money to them for additional services in the evenings on certain routes when they can’t even run the core daytime operation correctly. It makes you wonder if there’s an insider turning a blind eye or some sort of backhanded agreement going on as there’s no way you would give them extra work given their continual substandard performance. Why are they even running that service from Bakewell Rowsley Matlock in the evening at public expense when it’s not a route they run normally? I’m sure there were leaflets on the sixes saying they were running until about midnight from Bakewell now so seems pretty wasteful.
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A plea please – can contributors come up with something more original than ‘Anonymous’ as a posting name? There are clearly two different people commenting on the same topic here with the same name.
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Roger – just tried to post and I am now ‘anonymous’! Where have the old name/e-mail fields disappeared to?
Dan Tancock (author of the last anonymous post!)
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WordPress report there’s a bug in the system for the design format I use. They’re trying to fix it and I keep chasing them.
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Roger, my message was left at 1243. I’ve been keeping a close eye on the comments as I’ve been let down multiple times by their bus services. I can’t see anywhere to write my name unless I do it in the comment section? All the best.
Iain Greenwood
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Everyone …. Roger DID mention the problem …. last Friday!!
The wonders of modern technology …. when it goes wrong we are all flummoxed!!
greenline 727.
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Went up to the Peak District around a month back to ride both services, but when the headway was reduced to 90 mins, the timetable, as you say, failed to state that the Breezer ran throughout the week, so I assumed that they’ed abandoned the idea of a daily school holiday service.
So had a trip on the Sightseer instead, only to pass the Hulleys open topper around the Chatsworth area, looking as though it was out of service. When I posted my blog about the trip, someone commented that the Breezer had indeed not been on service that day!
With the sightseer being quite excellent, I can’t see the Breezer coming back next year, unfortunately!
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The Breezer failed to operate last Saturday too. Bus in the depot all day with a distinct lean. Once again nothing posted on Social Media
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The bus did operate last Saturday but unfortunately it was a closed top Enviro 400 (number 16 ) due to a breakdown.
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Yesterday was August Bank Holiday. The Hope Valley was rammed and so.was First 272 which is the main Hope Valley service. And the Breezer ? Nowhere to be seen. This is an operator playing at buses and failing. Re an earlier post, the Stagecoach service turned up when it should on a wet day last week, with a driver clearly enjoying her job, and was doing ok in terms of custom- 14 pax on a round trip at £4 to 6 a head should wash it’s face.
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I suspect they do not have the staff to operate all the services, the last set of account showed 55 staff perhaps 50 drivers to cover about 16 routes that does not sound enough
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The 272 was massively disrupted by the Hope Show. Some were over 2 hours late, on a run that should only take an hour.
Hulleys did try and run the Breezer, albeit with a closed top decker, but with traffic that bad there wasn’t much they could do.
The Stagecoach open top may well have turned up, but a lot of their local services don’t, as they’d rather allocate drivers to this vanity project than to their core network.
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I can guess who this anonymous is… Stagecoach are short of drivers and are currently using agency drivers to fill the shortfall however it’s availability of buses which is causing the most lost mileage as far as I’m aware. The delay to the new Holbrook and Rawmarsh buses has meant cascades haven’t been able to happen replacing withdrawn vehicles, and other buses are spending longer off the road due to reduced availability of parts post pandemic. It’s not unusual to see a few drivers sitting around in the depot who should be out in service but have no bus to use.
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It’s not like we have the option to not post anon at the moment…. I post under my name on Twitter when challenging Stagecoach about the state of our local service though.
It’s odd that the MD has interacted with me on the topic and has only stated lack of drivers, nothing about vehicle shortages.
It’s also not just the Peak Sightseer I’ve complained about – Stagecoach have taken on a fair few extra runs via BSIP despite not having resources to do so. It’s either bad planning, bad luck, or preferring higher reward new services over existing ones that while important to the local communities aren’t so profitable.
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The Breezer gives far superior views to the Sightseer but seems plagued by unreliability. We have attempted to ride it 5 times this summer with only a 40% sucess rate!
I’m hoping for better luck next year!
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I went to Baslow on Wednesday 16 August hoping to catch the 1550 or 1720 departures on the Breezer but neither appeared!
I decided instead to do two round trips on the Sightseer but the newly converted open top Scania in the very attractive livery, featured in their publicity, arrived with a broken entrance door glass, which couldn.t continue in service. I understand that the nearside drivers mirror, which had a long mirror arm, had caught in foliage, causing the mirror to collide with the entrance door glass, breaking it. In my area, Enviros allocated to depots operating routes plagued by uncut roadside vegetation are fitted with a shorter, more appropriate, mirror arm, to avoid this problem. It was suggested that this vehicle regularly suffers this problem.
On a positive note, the driver dealt with the situation in a very professional manner and suggested to his depot that the spare bus parked at Chatsworth House be sent to Baslow and it duly arrived, after only about ten minutes, allowing the service to resume, late. We encountered traffic congestion, caused by temporary traffic lights at Calver and further delays negotiating Bakewell, making us even later. The driver advised passengers that he would not be operating his penultimate circuit from Chatsworth House, to allow him to operate his last trip to Chesterfield on time. Whilst at Chatsworth House, the second bus passed us and it was a shame that passenger were not transferred on to this bus, which would have allowed me to complete my intended two circuits.
I get the impression that the timetable may be rather optimistic in certain traffic conditions.
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Unfortunately the general public don’t see ‘Hulley’s’ or ‘Stagecoach’, they see that a bus hasn’t turned up. This will reflect on the industry as a whole at a time when we are trying to get people back on the buses. This will dent the confidence of everyone who has been unable to board, everyone they tell (locally and more widely), those who read the general media (not specialist like this) who pick it up.
Derbyshire have tried to show initiative here, Hulley’s have done the opposite. If you are going to run a service like this, you need to ensure you have the resources. They haven’t.
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In my opinion what this does show is that there is no effective regulation of commercial bus services. Bus companies can and do as they please with no real comeback if they continually fail to operate the registered services
The only real regulation of them lies with the Traffic Commissioners but unless serves are near to total collapse they never do anything
There are the so called Enhanced Partnerships but in reality this are just talking shops and has no regulatory powers
Will things improve? Well the track record of most bus companies and LTA’s say’s no
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I went to Chesterfield for a weekend to ride the Hulley’s service and found it on a local route, so enjoyed scenic housing estates in Holymoorside. On Bustimes it was tracking as an E400 but was indeed the Trident.
To my surprise it did actually produce on the Breezer on the Sunday! And we almost rode it for free, tried to buy a Derbyshire Wayfarer on it and the driver didn’t have the option so let us on for free before realising we were making a long journey so changed his mind and sold us a £2 single each instead!
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I used to work for this awful company. I left before the open top service started but we were short of drivers even then. You’d get the boss messaging everyone all the time expecting us to have nothing else better to do on our days off then come in. Some drivers were being offered silly money. It’s not shortage of drivers it’s the way you are treated and the long shifts sometimes only taking something small to tip it illegal. You either ran or milage was dropped. Most of the time you could never contact the office for advice. Stressful place to work. Happy to say I’m now at a company that conducts itself a bit more professionally shall we say and I have less to travel.
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As a local, it is clear to see that Stagecoach have had support way beyond the BSIP for their service that hasn’t been afforded the Breezer. They’ve had videos produced by the local tourism people, all the local rags have sent reporters out, heck, it was even being promoted for the open top bus competition before the service had started – while the Breezer wasn’t even up for the vote.
There is no doubt the Breezer has tailed off of late, but you do wonder whether the company would have pushed harder to keep it on the road had the same level of publicity been afforded it.
It’s also interesting that the review of the Peak Sightseer has plenty of info fed by the Stagecoach MD, while there is no indication Hulleys were contacted in advance to discuss the circumstances of the registration. This seems to have led to some who have a grudge against Hulleys manipulating the truth over how the services came about.
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You have to wonder why one would hold such a grudge when this was not the case with this once respected operator? They appear to have failed locals and those further afield on multiple occasions.
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Previously they were in what is best described as managed decline. Mostly operating LA contracts with the odd commercial run. Nothing much to get excited about.
With their new ownership things are being tried, innovative services and things to appeal to enthusiasts. This gives them much more of a profile, and with people more likely to moan in bus forums.
I don’t seem them struggling massively more than any other operator, but it seems more visible when they do.
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NBS = New Beetwell Street in Chesterfield
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