Wednesday 30th August 2023
I left yesterday’s blog somewhat disappointed at missing out on a Breezer open-top bus ride from Baslow over to Castleton, but the upside was it gave me more time to explore the other open-top bus route introduced this summer for Peak District tourists – Stagecoach Yorkshire’s Peak Sightseer.
This came about after Derbyshire County Council’s desire to use Bus Service Improvement Plan (BSIP) funds to kickstart an open top route was thwarted by Hulley’s of Baslow commercially registering its Breezer route within a few days of the tender invitation being issued.
Going back in time the National Park had been exploring whether there was scope to introduce a one-way loop style network of tourist bus routes in the Peak District along similar lines to the successful ‘New Forest Tour’ operations but had concluded the Park’s road network didn’t lend itself to that style of service.
When the County Council received its BSIP funding it included an objective of making more of the bus network through the National Park to improve accessibility for tourists and mitigate some of the parking challenges in the busiest part of the season. The team at Stagecoach Yorkshire had been involved in discussions with the Council, the National Park and visitor attractions in the Park including, in particular, Chatsworth House which is keen to reduce the number of visitors arriving by car as it struggles with parking availability in peak season and during Autumn events when overflow car parks are too muddy to use.
After Hulley’s registration, development work continued on a complimentary proposition which would serve areas not covered by Breezer and crucially would include a good chance of becoming commercially viable thus using BSIP funds as intended to pump prime an initiative rather than be a subsidy crutch.
This led to the Peak Sightseer route which began on 1st July based on Chatsworth House running on a figure of eight one-way loop taking in Baslow (for connections to Chesterfield and Sheffield), Calver, Hassop, the tourist honey pot of Bakewell (for connections to Buxton, Matlock and Derby) as well as the nearby picturesque village of Ashford in the Water.
Before launch a programme of work included creating a brand identity (Best Impressions), driver training to a dedicated team of six drivers (Tracsis) and visits to every attraction, shop, pub, and accommodation providers along the route to raise awareness and generate interest.
Plaxton’s were commissioned to convert two of Stagecoach Yorkshire’s buses to part open-top and a third open-top was acquired from sister company Stagecoach East Midlands and three Tridents loaned from Stagecoach North East to get the service running not least as the conversions at Plaxtons have taken longer than anticipated (the second is still there).
That’s why so far only one bus has appeared in the splendid Peak Sightseeing livery with the others using temporary Peak Sightseer logos.
Peak Sightseer runs half hourly between 09:50 and 18:15 on a daily basis, and like Breezer, includes journeys at the start and end of the day in Chesterfield where the two buses operating the service are based.
Fares on Peak Sightseer are a very reasonable £6 for a day ticket with under 19s, concessionary passholders and Wayfarer ticket holders paying £4 with a Group of up to five people charged £15 reduced to just £10 for those with a valid ticket to Chatsworth House or grounds.
I caught the 11:29 journey from Baslow with half a dozen others and another six or so passengers already on the bus. It was a very breezy ride through a tunnel of trees as we headed north up the A623 to Calver …
… where we turned back south down the B6001 to Bakewell with some great glimpses of the Derbyshire Peak countryside …
… before passing the hamlet of Hassop, where the route crosses itself on the above map and is the site of the former railway station, now a popular Tea Room and the start of the Monsal Trail.
The Monsal Trail is a seven mile footpath and cycleway over viaducts and through four well-lit tunnels along the former trackbed of the Midland Railway to Miller’s Dale Station and Chee Dale.
I’m told the owners of Hassop Tea Room are delighted with the custom Peak Sightseer is bringing and on both my journeys passengers alighted or boarded there.
We continued on to Bakewell where the traffic was heavy through the town slowing us down …
… and it was noteworthy to see the town’s car parks over brimming with cars.
Onwards along the A6 to the delightful Ashford in the Water which is also served by the busy TransPeak bus route between Derby, Matlock, Bakewell and Buxton so useful for passengers who want a quick journey back to Bakewell rather than travelling around the Peak Sightseer one-way circuit – something I thought of as a group of passengers boarded our bus in Bakewell travelling to Ashford in the Water.
We then took the A6020 round to Hassop again crossing over the B6001 and headed to Chatsworth House via the village of Pilsley.
We arrived into Chatsworth House about ten minutes late despite the driver having his foot hard down for much of the route to combat the traffic delays in Bakewell.
The five minutes stand time in Chatsworth was helpful, although encouragingly there was a good number of passengers waiting to board when we arrived.
One of the Peak Sightseer buses was on stand by at Chatsworth House to help with any serious late running and also acts as a relief point for drivers on their breaks.
Passengers were noticeably all very happy to be riding the service and you could sense their appreciation. I’m told there’s been some fantastic feedback and very encouraging numbers travelling. The drivers have really got into the spirit of the new service with one running a Peak Sightseer Facebook group answering questions and sharing posts to other community, walking and tourist groups as well as going out on his days off topping up leaflet racks.
The service runs daily until the end of September and then amazingly will continue at weekends through October, November and December thanks to the BSIP funding and support from Chatsworth House as the weeks up to Christmas are its busiest season and they hope the bus route will help alleviate its parking problems. Matt Kitchin the enthusiastic managing director at Stagecoach Yorkshire and the chief architect of this new initiative told me “it might be one of the last buses back into the garage on Christmas Eve which will be pretty surreal.”
Many thanks to Matt for providing the background to this pioneering route as described in this blog and good luck with plans for exploiting the potential for a commercially sustainable tourist type service of this kind in the Peak District next year and beyond. As Matt concluded “you never know, we might see a network of open toppers in future years à la New Forest.”
That really would be brilliant.
Let’s hope so.
And that brings to an end my three day Open-top Bus Blog Bonanza. I had planned to also bring you a report of my trip to Clacton on Sea last Friday to have a ride on Hedingham’s new Clacton Breezer open-top bus route. Sadly my visit coincided with the Clacton Air-Show and the Breezer wasn’t running. So instead here’s a couple of photos of the Red Arrows, which were running, and I’ll try and work in another visit to Clacton next month before the service ends.
Roger French
Blogging timetable: 06:00 TThS and Su DRT extras.
BusAndTrainUser 
The Clacton Breeze appears to be just the service 1 using an open topper. It might make sense to combine the 1 & the 134 into one open top route Running from Pont Clear via Clacton to Holland on Sea. Perhaps extending it from Holland on sea to Valley Farm & Highfield Grange to serve those two large holiday parks
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Service 1 is a bespoke open top route for 2023, due to run daily until 30 September (although there seems to be a severe driver shortage at Hedingham so wouldn’t be overly surprised if it finishes earlier than that). On the airshow days, the open topper was used on the special park & ride service, with a standard bus on the 1. The 134 is not open top this summer.
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It is a shame Stagecoach weren’t prepared to work with Hulleys on the Peak open top services as had originally been discussed.
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Who originally discussed? Hulley’s attempted at all costs it seems to deter Stagecoach from operating such a route. As usual Hulley’s wanted it all for themselves even though they can’t operate what they’ve got. At least one operator was successful here and its made the other look stupid to even more people.
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That isn’t the case (that Hulleys wanted it all for themselves) but I’m not at liberty to say more. Cooperation was possible, but neither side seemed keen.
It always was going to be the case that the bigger operator moving in to an area traditionally served by a smaller one would throw the resources in to dominate.
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Had a day out on the Breezer during July, unfortunately there were clearly some staff/vehicle issues meaning that there only appeared to be one bus out in the morning, followed by a lengthy period where the timetable and route went out of the window (presumably to recover the service). Fortunately neither I nor my fellow day trippers were that bothered, and sat out the issues watching the fun and games on Bustimes.org in the pub in Bakewell! By mid afternoon things were certainly looking better and it was a joy to run out to Ashford, Pilsey, Chatsworth, then over the tops to Chesterfield on a beautiful sunny summer evening. Drivers were great and everyone appeared to be having an enjoyable time.
My only issue with the current setup is the lack of integration in terms of routing and fares. Appreciate that Hulleys commercial registration rather complicated matters, but in the future it would be good to see some connections made with the Hope Valley Line into Greater Manchester and South Yorkshire. Ideally there wouldn’t be a standalone fare structure either, meaning integration with Wayfarer, etc. Appreciate however that if loadings are still decent at £6, then any acceptance of multimodal/multioperator tickets will have to be funded from elsewhere which is very much easier said than done at the moment.
Overall, a bit of good news in what is generally a bleak picture. Well done Stagecoach/DCC.
MP
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Sounds like a well-planned operation. I checked to see if the rail connections at Chesterfield station
are reasonable: they are, and I found that, with an early start, one could have a nice day at Chatsworth and ride the PS (as it’s numbered for ‘bustimes’) with a quck visit to Bakewell, and still be back at St Pancras well before midnight.
Bakewell certainly is a traffic nightmare in the tourist season, and if the success of the Peak Sightseer leads to a bus network, then – with good publicity, and maybe some bus priority measures – people can be persuaded out of their cars. Perhaps part of that publicity could be a national website where one can – quickly and easily – check places with good, frequent public transport, and also, perhaps places where there are special events (such as air-shows) where public transport will be disrupted …
Half-hourly is a great freqency to start off a scheme like this. I wonder why there is no stop listed for the second time the PS crosses its own route at Hassop; maybe the drivers will stop there, but better if it’s official. That could be the first step to a network – good for a quick visit to the tea-shop, anyway.
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I wondered about the second stop at Hassop. Going past however it’s obvious there is nowhere a stop could be sited as there is no pavement. I did suggest they could call in to the bookshop car park, maybe they’ll change that for next year.
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What these blogs show is that these operations need to be properly resourced and if they are they’re not cheap to run. Also getting the staff on board and them not just seeing it as a pain the ass to be fitted in between school runs is vital. Looks like Stagecoach are having a good crack at this, hopefully it will be next season. Running it deep into Autumn seems a good idea, a lot of historic houses are very busy.
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It’s actually odd they don’t run it for another two weeks, as Chatsworth is open until 7th Jan, then closes for a couple of months.
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And clearly, sensibly operating PART open tops. Wilts and Dorset/ Morebus showed the way years ago, enabling their vehicles to operate all year and allow for the not unknown British climate to occasionally rain. Even when vehicles have been converted as a result of “bridge bashes”, at least rebuild 30% cover for that odd (!) “rainy day”.
And why do companies like Hulleys put out service information/cancellations on Twitter, which not all have, when it should be on a normal website and accessible for all?
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This is a really good initiative. However the main problem for me is that there is a good integrated transport ticket, the Derbyshire Wayfarer, that is not valid on this service. I appreciate there is a discount for wayfarer holders, but it does undermine the leaving the car at home message. The Wayfarer is valid on trains from Sheffield and Burton on Trent to Chesterfield, plus the main route from Chesterfield to Bakewell and Baslow and is well used by those using public transport to access the White Peak.
Looking at the rear of the liveried bus, it is a shame it resembles an HGV rather than an open top bus.
Great to hear about the enthusiasm of the driving team and that Stagecoach are pushing something to grow the market.
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As for the rear of the bus, I had to really search for a registration number. At first, it didn’t look as though it had a numberplate at all!
NotAnon
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The Peak District National Park and the County Council should do a fact finding mission to Eryri (Snowdonia) and study the Sherpa bus networks, and the car traffic control measures.
Peter Brown
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Thanks for the background info on this, Roger, as I wasn’t aware of the details, even as a Derbyshire resident. I’m aware of some grumbles about using BSIP funds for visitors to the county, especially as locals’ ENCS passes aren’t valid for free travel. It is disappointing that Wayfarer holders have to pay a supplement.
When I saw a couple of journeys a couple of weeks ago, they were both full on top and friends have told me that services are generally busy.
To anyone thinking of trying to ride Peak Sightseer this coming weekend, don’t! It’s Chatsworth County Fair, which attracts literally thousands of cars. Even if the bus is running, the road up to Chatsworth House is closed.
Frankfrog
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Great to see services expanding in a National Park, and with the support of the National Park Authority. Quite a difference to the situation in North York Moors, where the National Park seem determined to avoid dialogue with the (excellent) Moors Bus.
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I was down at the family caravan in Seawick, St. Osyths for the Clacton Airshow I can pretty much tell you the Claton Breeze (Route 1) on Airshow days follows Route 6, making a combined half-hourly frequency from Point Clear (Orchards Holiday Village) which surprisingly came in handy due to the frequency of route 7 from Seawick had been reduced, James
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It is right that the first open toppers in Weymouth were accepting the £2 max fare and allowing concessionary passes this summer. This should be standard. As should car congestion pricing in our national parks and high pricing for car parks.
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