What connects Orpington and Oakham?

Tuesday 1st April 2025

Answer: Both places saw a bus route denoted by the letter R withdrawn over the weekend.

In TfL’s continuing drive for efficiencies to save a few vehicles here and there (it all helps with Superloop expansion), from Saturday, it rerouted the already circuitous half-hourly route B14 (Bexleyheath-Sidcup-St Mary Cray-Orpington) to take over another localised circuitous loop just north of Orpington – the half-hourly R6 (St Mary Cray-Wotton Green-Burrfield Drive-Orpington).

It means route number R6 has been removed from TfL’s network bus map (that’s if TfL bothered to produce a bus map). Luckily Mike Harris does and has just updated it too.

I took a ride on the R6’s last day as a separate entity on Friday and was impressed by the high number of shoppers travelling locally into and home from Orpington.

I just hope there’s room for them all on the B14 – which does have newer, slightly bigger buses – and let’s hope passengers on that route get used to more meanderings as they head to and from their employment, shopping, college, health centre etc, and it’ll all be worth the saving of one vehicle working.

R6 timekeeping on Friday wasn’t helped by roadworks near St Mary Cray railway station.

It took 16 minutes to travel 500 yards. Not good when the end to end journey is scheduled for just 25 minutes. Looking at Google maps yesterday morning, delays looked even worse so not a good start for the B14’s extended routing and passengers all the way through to Bexleyheath. They’ll be unimpressed.

It was good to see timetable cases had details of the new B14 timetable along the former R6 route with an explanation of what was happening in a yellow notice and many of the bus stops had their R6 E-plates replaced with B14, except mysteriously two or three have escaped the switch. I hope the E-plate changing team will be coming back else it’ll be a longer term oddity.

Meanwhile in Rutland, the first stage of the Council’s plan to replace almost all the County’s bus routes with DRT (Demand Responsive Transport) began yesterday with phase one impacting Oakham.

Route R2, which previously ran between Melton Mowbray and Oakham via a whole host of delightful Rutland villages on a scenic circuitous route, which puts the B14 in the shade, has been withdrawn in the off-peak. Passengers now have to ring or book online and try their luck at DRT bus availability for their journey.

The erstwhile timetable until last Saturday comprised 6/7 return journeys roughly every two and a bit hours with just over an hour’s end to end journey time.

It was operated by Centrebus and I was delighted to be joined by that bus company’s owner, Julian Peddle, for a ride on the route a few weeks ago so we could savour one of the endangered species of Rutland’s dying breed of scheduled bus journeys.

We caught the 11:30 from Melton Mowbray to Oakham. Six passengers boarded with us in Melton’s Windsor Street travelling home with their shopping. They all looked like they were regulars on the route.

Five alighted in Wymondham with the sixth travelling all the way to Exton, where two boarded, one of whom travelled to Borley and the other into Oakham.

I returned to Melton Mowbray for 11:30 yesterday to see how the new regime was fairing on its first DRT day.

Rutland has contracted its DRT operation to neighbouring Lincolnshire’s long established Call Connect set up. As is my usual practice, I tried to book the same journey we’d taken from Melton to Oakham in advance (ready for yesterday) on Friday afternoon. But the Call Connect app was having none of it.

I rang the number advertised on the Council’s website for Rutland’s Transport Team only to find it unobtainable – it turns out it’s displayed wrongly with one too many ‘7’s.

I rang Call Connect and was told there’s a glitch in the software so no journeys could be booked in advance but I was reassured it should be OK for Monday.

Never wanting to risk not booking a DRT in advance, I checked online again on Sunday evening and found a smart new “Rutland Buses” website had been uploaded…

… with a link to an explanation about the new Rutland Call Connect Zone 1 covering former bus route R2. From yesterday it has a morning and evening fixed peak return timetabled journey known as RZ1 operated by the same Lincolnshire Call Connect bus that provides the off-peak DRT style flexible offering in the marked zone.

Bland’s route R1 runs direct between Melton Mowbray and Oakham every 70 minutes (and on to Uppingham and Corby) continues unchanged and is one of the County’s few routes destined to escape DRT in the coming months.

As you can see there’s a link to a “RZ1 flyer and timetable” which explains more about the new Rutland version of Call Connect and the RZ1 fixed peak hour timetable…

In more good news the booking glitch was resolved on Sunday evening (although the website was still explaining not)…

… and I was able to book a journey from Melton Mowbray to Oakham using the new Call Connect flexible service.

On my first try on the app, asking for a departure from Melton at 12:00, it simply referred me to the scheduled departure on the R1 at 12:15…

… but when I changed the departure time to 12:30, instead of still telling me to catch the R1, the software accepted a booking and gave me an initial spread of possible pick up times between 12:20 and 12:40.

Bland’s 12:15 departure in Route R1 was waiting in Windsor Street and a few minutes after it had left…

… and just before 12:20, Steve turned up with the Rutland Call Connect liveried Mercedes Sprinter minibus.

Steve is a veteran of Call Connect with much experience of that long standing DRT operation. Before that he’d worked with Thames Transit in Oxfordshire. He’s been hand picked to begin the Rutland operation so he could bring his experience to this new style of operation for passengers in the county.

It’s just him with the one bus operating in zone 1 and he had just finished one of his two half hour breaks across the 12 hour day before picking me up. With no other passengers booked we took an even more direct route to Oakham than the R1 manages and arrived 23 minutes later at 12:43 where Steve had been booked to take two passengers home to villages along the former R2 route.

An R2 had previously departed from Oakham to Melton Mowbray at 12:35 so perhaps not surprising two regulars were travelling at this time – but this week having to book their journey, of course. No just turning up.

They were waiting in the bus station as we arrived and headed off with Steve on his next run.

It’s difficult to obtain definitive information about Rutland Council’s future plans but I understand Zone 2 is due to start in August with one bus and Zone 3 in September also with one bus. It’s possible these will see DRT replacing routes R5 and R9 which can be seen on the map below.

Don’t be fooled by all the coloured lines – routes R4, 29, 184 and 185 are school buses.

On our day out, Julian and I also took a ride on Bland’s operated R5 (Uppingham to Stamford every two hours). The 14:30 journey only saw four passengers (three from Uppingham with one to Barrowden, one to Ketton and one to Stamford and the fourth passenger from Edith Weston to Stamford)…

… but when I took a ride on the R9 (Stamford to Oakham hourly) the 13:15 left Stamford with a full load of 16 passengers.

Mind you, it was market day and the return journey carried five from Oakham and another journey yesterday had three on board.

If the R9 is destined for DRT it might make sense to keep a scheduled fixed timetable on market days or I can see passengers being driven away in despair. Back in history this section of route (Stamford to Oakham) was part of a long established trunk route between Peterborough and Nottingham – now a shadow of its former glory.

Whether DRT will turn round the fortunes of Rutland’s meagre bus offering or hasten its further decline, time will tell. Readers know my views.

Roger French

Readers wondering what’s happened to the March Miscellany round up can be reassured it’s running a few days late and will be published on Thursday. Also, watch out for BusAndTrainUser LIVE – next Saturday at 12:00 at the South East Bus Festival at the Kent County Showground, Detling near Maidstone. Full details here. Hear all the positives and negatives captured over seven years of blogging.

Online blogging timetable: 06:00 TThS together with a LIVE blogging session: 12:00 South East Bus Festival on 5th April.