A return to Clacton and a latte please

Saturday 25th July 2026

I enjoyed a day trip to the electoral hotbed of Clacton-on-Sea with Julian Peddle (Centrebus and associated companies Supremo) on Wednesday. Despite the number of candidates standing in next month’s by-election (a motley band of 34 hopefuls) we didn’t see any campaigning, not even a waste bin.

Mind you, we were only in the town for around 25 minutes as our main objective was to see the expanding presence of Central Connect in this part of the county including yet another new bus route (the 78 between Clacton and Brightlingsea) as well as what Julian describes as the Country’s ‘Most Useless Bus Lane’ in Colchester.

Another highlight of our day’s travels was also sampling Café Connect – the new initiative from Central Connect that combines coffee and bus information in central Colchester.

So read on for a montage of Essex bus travel experiences.

Julian had planned a ‘Tobermory style’ tight schedule offering a five hour round trip from Colchester to Walton-on-the-Naze to Clacton-on-Sea to Brighlingsea and back to Colchester.

Following the sale of the former Hedingham and Chambers operations in the county by Go-Ahead to Transport Made Simple, and its Central Connect branded operations, last October, the company’s presence has greatly increased in this part of Essex along with First Bus and Arriva.

Indeed, three of our four bus journeys were with Central Connect, the first being route 105 which links Colchester with Walton-on-the-Naze which, aside from gaps at school times, provides an hourly frequency with an end-to-end journey time of just under an hour.

The route takes in some lovely villages and Essex countryside with the biggest community served being Thorpe-le-Soken.

The bus arrived into Colchester from its previous journey with a good number alighting and eight of us boarded for the 11:21 departure with three more joining us during the journey so not an overly busy run.

We reached Walton-on-the-Naze’s Columbine Centre on time at 12:18 and after just a short walk to the nearby Walton Church bus stop caught our next bus – a route 7 to Clacton-on-Sea due to leave also at 12:18 but running slightly late thus enabling us to get ahead of our planned schedule (not thinking we’d make that connection when planning the day).

The very friendly driver efficiently got all 10 of us on board and we headed off via Frinton-on-Sea to Clacton.

Route 7 runs half hourly between the coastal towns and in addition there’s the slightly more circuitous route out of Walton-on-the-Naze on hourly route 9 which also continues to Calcton-on-Sea, so the towns are well connected. Six more passengers boarded as we headed towards Clacton, mostly in Frinton.

From Clacton-on-Sea we caught the fairly new route 78 to Brightlingsea.

Introduced in February, this BSIP funded route provides a two-hourly link between the two towns – a connection that had previously been missing from the network.

It’s a one bus operation with a timetable helpfully stretching from 06:20 to 22:00. Although the Brightlingsea bound journeys are shown in the timetable as Monday to Friday, the service does run Mondays to Saturdays as confirmed in the panel for the opposite direction.

The route takes in part of Jaywick as it leaves Clacton before serving the villages of St Osyth, Great Bentley and Thorrington Cross. Overall journey time is around 50 minutes – with a loop working at the Brightlingsea end of the route. We caught the 14:20 from Clacton-on-Sea with four other passengers, one alighting in St Osyth and the rest in Brightlingsea with one other making a short journey within Brightlingsea.

After five months operation this was a slightly disappointing number but chatting to the driver as we alighted he was more positive about the route’s potential.

Interestingly we passed by a number of parked up Stephensons buses in a yard – a company which has expanded considerably in service changes and tender renewals starting next week.

Our fourth and final bus of the round trip was First’s route 87 which provides the link from Brightlingsea into Colchester via Thorrington, Alresford and Wivenhoe before a rather convoluted tour of the University of Essex campus.

Buses operate every half hour and continue beyond Colchester for another 15 minutes to Great Horkesley treading on Arriva’s local network’s toes somewhat by replicating that company’s half hourly route 2.

We took around 10 passengers from Brightlingsea with a reasonable number boarding along the route including in the University campus even though it was holiday season.

It’s obviously a good route for First Bus providing for a number of different travel markets.

Back in Colchester, before we embarked on our five hour tour, we energised ourselves by paying a visit to the recently opened Café Connect in Queens Road.

It’s on the site of the old bus garage and bus station in the town.

This is a Central Connect initiative providing a facility for disseminating information about the bus network to the public but also gain a handy income stream towards the cost of its provision as well as offering a useful facility for the company’s drivers, including toilets.

The baristas are trained not only to make lattes, cappuccinos and flat whites as well as tasty snacks, but are also clued up about local bus services including those provided by other operators making for an excellent source of information.

The café is located on the ground floor of a new three storey office building but the downside is it’s not facing the road being located down a short passageway on the southern side of the building.

That’s because the building is part of a much wider initiative providing a resource for hot desks, co-working, networking and facilities aimed at young and growing businesses. Known as the Digital Forum it facilitates “regular tech talks, workshops and networking meet-ups designed to help you learn, connect and grow within Colchester’s creative tech community”. There’s onsite support to help with mail handling, printing and workspace setup and, of course, a coffee shop thereby giving Central Connect a ready made base of customers wanting refreshments.

The only drawback is, because these hot desking tech entrepreneurs need the right environment to be creative and innovative – and are paying for their desk space – it means non Digital Forum customers just wanting a coffee before their bus journeys are asked to sit out in the passageway leaving all the desks and sofas inside for the tech brigade to use.

On a lovey summer’s day we didn’t mind as it was nice to peer down the corridor and imagine the good old days of bus diesel engines being cranked up for their day’s work. But, in the winter, it might not be so pleasant.

However, the coffee and toasted sandwiches were great, as were the staff and it’s a brilliant initiative from Central Connect to look at ‘outside of the box’ type solutions to providing town centre staff facilities and bus information for passengers as well as a place to wait and enjoy a coffee before a journey. I see Central Connect are opening their second Café Connect in Norwich bus station a week on Monday which, of course, is ideally located for passengers,

We both came away impressed and wish the venture well. It certainly made for a stark contrast with the approach taken by another of the city’s bus operators to information provision.

And, of course, it’s not unique. Lothian Buses opened its CoffeeHub inside the Shandwick Place TravelHub in Edinburgh in August 2019 and is still serving coffees and pastries along with bus tickets seven years later.

The final treat Julian had laid on for our visit to Colchester was to sample what he describes as the country’s “most useless bus lane”. It sits alongside the Northern Approach Road, which, as it’s name implies, connects the relatively new junction on the A12 to the north of the city – where the large Park & Ride site is located – to the railway station and city centre. Colchester General Hospital lies just to the east of the road.

It opened last October being described as a “rapid transit bus and cycleway” having two segregated lanes each for both buses and cycles and sits to the west of the main A134.

When the Google car visited, part of the route was still under construction.

It’s used by Arriva operated Park and Ride buses (3-4 an hour) as well as routes 43/X43 (Bury St Edmunds, eight journeys), 81 (Dedham, six journeys) and 93 (Ipswich, seven journeys) with a few peak hour journeys on local route 11. It was funded through a £99.9 million Housing Infrastructure Fund grant to facilitate a residential area to the west but Julian’s main criticism is the infrastructure is way over the top for what’s needed – not least as the A134 Northern Approach Road doesn’t suffer from congestion and a lovely wooded area was obliterated to make way for it.

We took a ride up and down it (to the Park and Ride site)…

… and bizarrely half way along encountered a red traffic light for a junction which held us for a minute or so while traffic on the adjacent main road was enjoying a green phase, thus negating any priority benefit for the bus.

A fascinating day and my thanks to Julian.

Roger French

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