24 hours in Penzance: Part 1

Thursday 19th June 2025

I enjoyed a fleeting visit to the far south west corner of Cornwall at the beginning of this week to check out a few developments in the county’s bus network.

Here’s the first of a couple of posts about those travels. (Part 2 follows on Saturday).

First up when I arrived, was a trip to the lovely historic fishing village of Mousehole trying out First’s smart, relatively new, Mercedes Sprinter minibuses which display three colour variations of a bespoke livery for the route.

Introduced in 2023 the minibuses come with 20 seats (including three tip-ups in the wheelchair area) with the inevitable rather restricted leg room and the buses just about coping at busy times on this popular route.

The famous tight turn at the junction of Parade Hill and Commercial Road on the narrow approach road into the harbour at Mousehole has restricted the size of bus operated on this route for generations making it all the more distinctive.

It’s one of Cornwall’s most idyllic terminal points with the bus stand right alongside the small harbour.

First operates a 20 minute daytime frequency (45 minutely with one bus in evenings) with each of the three buses rounding in an hour, including a generous 19 minutes stand time, although challenging driving conditions on Cornwall’s narrow roads can soon eat into that.

I was intending to catch a late afternoon departure (eg 17:00) from Penzance and enjoy an evening meal in one of the small restaurants in the village but my ‘disruption antenna’ was telling me something wasn’t right seeing two of the three minibuses laying over for a considerable time in Penzance bus station.

I also overheard a waiting passenger say something to a friend about a half hourly service operating due to a road closure, so began searching online for some information. Unfortunately my smartphone only had ‘one bar’ for a signal and there’s no WiFi in the bus station, so it wasn’t easy.

My tortuously slow browsing only found First’s and Go Cornwall/Transport for Cornwall’s websites displaying the normal timetable under route M6 but I did see a reference to a road closure all this week on the latter and advising, rather strangely, “we will be operating a timetable for the duration of this closure” whatever that means…

…. and ambiguously continuing to display the normal timetable which was patently not being operated. It added “we will be unable to serve stops between Penzance War Memorial and The Old Coastguard Hotel” but being a tourist, not knowing where either of those are located, the information was less than helpful.

I looked around the bus station but there was no updated information posted although there is a rather impressive full size poster on display showing every departure time of every service…

… even though in the case of the M6 it was wrong for this week.

With a growing number of waiting passengers and no movement from the bus stand I was thinking of abandoning the idea when at 17:08 a driver finally appeared and drove one of the two buses over to stand A where a full load boarded and we set off at 17:16…

…picking up more passengers in the High Street eventually heading out of town with 26 squeezed on board.

The road closure was on the seafront road (Cliff Road) between Newlyn and Mousehole necessitating a diversion via Sheffield and Paul but the majority of passengers had alighted as we left Penzance, mostly in the Alverton area.

On arrival into Mousehole I asked the driver if he had a copy of the temporary timetable and he said he thought it was online but he kindly let me take a photo of his hand written listing and I noticed the last departure was shown as early as 18:57.

I thought that was odd, with the normal evening service as late as 23:05 seemingly abandoned…

… so checked the bus stop at the terminus which wasn’t very helpful either, still showing the normal times, although it did have a Post-It pointing to “NOTE CHANGE TO BUS ROUTE BELOW”..

.. referring to the diversion, but no mention of a revised timetable.

I decided not to risk waiting for a later departure than 18:57 and planned to take that back into Penzance.

When the bus arrived into Mousehole I asked that driver if he had a temporary timetable available and he again kindly lent me his copy to take a photo from and this time it was a typed version and there was indeed an evening service – the other driver must have just given me sheet one of two!

The diversion back into town went direct from Paul rather than via Sheffield which saved a bit of time, but the real issue with the diversion is on Chywoone Hill in Newlyn especially at busy times.

This section of road is used by double deck buses on First’s route 1/1A to and from Lands End.

Its steep gradient, corners, narrow width and parked vehicles make it notorious at the best of times but with the closure of Cliff Road and all traffic diverted on to it, the challenging conditions were a whole lot worse.

These are views from the top deck of a bus on route 1A on another journey I took on Tuesday morning when we followed a bus on the M6.

It’s amazing how many motorists find reversing a challenge; throw in a steep hill and it’s a disaster.

Coming back down the hill later that morning was even worse.

Quite why Cornwall Council hasn’t restricted parking along more of the road during this diversion is beyond me. Look at this car parked to cause maximum disruption.

Once back in Penzance I took advantage of a better mobile signal and WiFi to search the First Bus website for information.

Under “News and service updates” I found nothing under “Service Updates” on the first page but if you click on the “More Updates” tag…

.. you get a listing of “Current Issues”…

…which includes a reference to “M6 Cliff Road, Penzance”, and if you click on that…

… you get confirmation of the diversion, and at last, a copy of the temporary timetable. What a fool I was not to spot that on Monday afternoon while waiting for the bus with no effective mobile signal. Interestingly, as a visitor I could well have used First’s online Journey Planner.

… giving me the wrong times (the normal 20 minute frequency) and no mention of the diversion or temporary timetable. Useless.

It’s also a shame the temporary timetable wasn’t posted at bus stops along the route. Many of the passengers complaining about the lack of information on that busy journey on Monday would have appreciated that, as indeed would I have done too.

Inside the bus, which incidentally was showing the wrong time on its clock – which I always think gives such a poor impression of a bus company, if it can’t even show the correct time on its own vehicles…

… there was a monitor screen behind the driver which could easily have been used to show details of the diversion and reference the temporary timetable. What’s the point of having such screens if all they’re going to show is gobbledygook, as the ones on these buses were?

I knocked up the image from OpenStreetMaps outlining the diversion, shown earlier in this blog, in ten minutes. Why couldn’t something like that have been done and posted at bus stops and inside buses?

This classically demonstrates the problem of remote management and a lack of necessary resources to keep on top of the detail at bus stop level.

However, what is impressive, as it always is, is the amazing skill of the bus drivers in almost impossible traffic conditions.

And, of course, Mousehole is as impressive as always and a great place to visit.

In Part 2 of this post on Saturday, I’ll be taking a closed top bus tour on the former open top bus routes to and from Lands End around the Cornish coast to compare and contrast. And you might be surprised at my conclusions.

Roger French

Blogging Summer timetable 06:00 TThSSu