Monday 29th October

There’s something not quite right on the Cambridge Busway.

That’s apart from a driver shortage impacting the reliability of Stagecoach services.

I arrived at the Cambridge Station stop this morning for the 11.47 Route D which uses the Busway towards St Ives as part of a combined 15 minute frequency with Route A as shown on the timetable on the Stagecoach website.

Except the bus stop ‘real time sign’ showed a Route D departure at 11.51 (not 11.47) while the departure list in the shelter showed an 11.51 departure as Route A (not D) and the sign on the shelter showed Routes A and C (but no D) stop there even though C doesn’t.

Confused? I was. And even more so when I then spotted a timetable for Route A on the shelter showing only an hourly service.

Then the insecurity set in when 11.47 (and 11.51) came and went; the ‘real time display’ disappeared; and no bus had appeared.

Next the sign showed a Route A departing at 12.02 which at least married up with one of the timetable displays in the shelter and the website, so things were looking up.

Except 12.02 came and went, the display disappeared and still no bus.

Then we had a departure showing a Route A in ’13 mins’ indicating there’s a good chance this bus is actually coming (the one due at 12.17) and my assumption the previous displays had defaulted to timetabled scheduled time as no ‘real’ information had been received by the system. As both departures were obviously cancelled this is a particularly unsatisfactory way to communicate what is already an unsatisfactory situation! Open Data this is not.

No update information had been tweeted by Stagecoach East so at 12.06 I tweeted them to find out what was happening as my day’s travel plans were rapidly meaning Plan A bring aborted as well as the backstop Plan B and the backstop to the backstop Plan C.

As there wasn’t the courtesy of a reply and I detected understandable consternation among waiting passengers as we all watched frequent departures on smart Park & Ride buses from the same stop which only added to our frustrating wait, I tried another tweet at 12.17 as that departure wasn’t in sight.

in the event a rather full single deck finally arrived at 12.21 (the previous departure – if it ran – would have been at 11.32) and shortly after that Stagecoach East enquired if the bus had arrived.

As someone astutely observed; Twitter is supposed to work the other way around with bus companies providing the answers rather than asking the questions.

A couple of people kindly tweeted me letting me know about a useful app I could download showing the location of both Stagecoach and Whippet buses around Cambridge but as a non frequent visitor to the city there’s a limit to how many apps I want on my phone. I had been using the Stagecoach app too; but like the real time sign, it had defaulted to showing scheduled time for the cancelled buses on the ‘nearby buses’ screen which is particularly useless – that’s when I could get a good enough signal …..

Later in the day I arrived at Huntingdon station and was puzzled to see the same phenomenon with discrepancies between timetables on display there too.

The large display on the shelter shows departures on Route B to Cambridge at 01 and 31 minutes past the hour …..

while a smaller display on the bus stop shows departures at 08 and 38.

The real time display seemed to be agreeing with 01 and 31 which is also reaffirmed by the website.

I’m sure all of this can be explained by different publication dates and out of date information not being taken down but it does highlight how confusing it can be for passengers and emphasises the challenge ahead with grand plans for Open Data …. as well as confirmation that driver shortages are back with us again in some parts of the country (maybe pinch a driver off the frequent Park & Ride to avoid two consecutive buses on the A/D being cancelled?).

Roger French 29th October 2018

Wednesday 17th October 2018

‘Snap is premium inter-city travel, on demand, using the UK’s best independent coach companies. All for pocket money prices. Snap was founded in 2016 by Thomas Ableman, former Commercial Director of Chiltern Railways and Product Director of National Express and has carried over 100,000 people since launch, with outstanding customer feedback (9/10 on line reviews are 5-star).’

That’s what the Company blurb says, so I thought it was high time I gave this 5-Star coach experience a try.

I’d been keeping a curious eye on Snap’s website for much of last year but entering London and Brighton as my ‘on demand’ preferred travel origin/destination it would always come back saying nothing was going my way.

I knew Nottingham to London was Snap’s test bed route so decided to give that a go but I could only ever find inconvenient (for me) afternoon/evening departures northbound from London.

The website implies I can be matched with other passengers going my way, but my experiences indicated it was more whether my travel would fit in with confirmed journeys already planned to run.

Snap was in the trade press a few weeks ago promoting a deal with Oxford Bus to sell tickets on that Company’s London service as well as news of a service expansion to Bristol where coincidentally the Young Bus Managers Conference was being held on 17/18 October so it proved an ideal opportunity to give Snap a go. (I know I’m not young and no longer a bus manager, but they let me attend conferences as a grand sounding ‘Patron’).

This time Snap’s website had been updated to include a drop down menu in the From and To fields confirming all the available options which also now include Birmingham, Cardiff, Leicester and Worcester and even including journeys between them and not via London.

You can choose any convenient time to travel but I’ve found the algorithm always comes back offering trips st times where booked coaches are already confirmed as running. No doubt if I was a group booking there’d be flexibility.

Prices are attractively cheap for most journeys with higher fares applying on obviously busier journeys as bookings increase. My Bristol fare departing London at 0900 was quoted at £5 when I booked last Wednesday … until I saw an offer of ‘first trip free’ so signed up for the promo code and saved myself a fiver.

There are a number of pick up/set down options available – my Bristol coach offered St Pancras International or Baker Street from London with four drop off points near Bristol city centre.

The adventure began this morning at St Pancras as I hadn’t even realised there are six coach bays underneath the platforms accessed via the corridor between the Left Luggage and Toilets.

It’s not the most salubrious waiting area but with a text letting you know your driver is on the way and a link to a vehicle tracking website, you could hang around in the station’s extensive shopping and refreshment area until just before departure time – although you’re asked to be there ten minutes before departure.

In the event this morning’s boarding experience was anything but 5-Star as our driver didn’t arrive until 0935. Had it not been possible to track the coach struggling through London’s morning peak hour traffic such a long wait would have been very disconcerting.

All eight of us boarded promptly being ticked off on the drivers smartphone screen listing and we were away at 0939.

Our 2017 vintage Scania 33 seater coach provided by Anderson Travel was certainly 5-Star. It had a real wow factor as you boarded coming complete with leather seats; tables for four; a midship double galley with ovens, microwave, drinks facility and the usual usb sockets and Wi-fi.

It drove smoothly and as we crawled along the Euston and Marylebone Roads towards Baker Street (where we picked up four more passengers) I could tell this was going to be an impressive ride quality.

Our driver apologised for the late arrival and after Baker Street made an explanatory announcement that ‘it had been one of those mornings: problems with the traffic, problems with the coach and problems with the phone’. Still, I think we were all pleased to be on our way at last and we were reassured a revised anticipated arrival time in Bristol of midday was on the cards (rather than the originally scheduled 1131).

So, as instructed, I sat back, relaxed and thoroughly enjoyed the ride down to Bristol where we pulled up in the city centre at Rupert Street at 1219 – 48 minutes late.

In the event not only did I have a completely free and luxurious ride (the seat was ten times more comfortable than a Class 800 train) but I arrived much quicker than had I gone to Paddington this morning as problems with overhead wires meant no trains could run until repairs were completed around lunchtime.

Snap is an interesting idea. Thomas Ableman rightly describes the company as a Sales and Marketing platform. It aims to excel at getting customers and allows operating companies to concentrate on what he says they do best – operating coaches. As befits the way of the ride sharing world, passengers are asked to rate their journey between 1 and 5 immediately on completion by text and this helps Snap ensure they contract only the best operators.

Thomas points out that compared to the downturn in bus travel and the more recent downward trends in train passengers, inter-city express coach travel is on the up – quoting both National Express and Megabus enjoying growth. To successfully join in this growth, Snap’s challenge must surely be raising awareness that they exist. Unlike the established players, Snap doesn’t have high visibility branded coaches plying the motorways and into town and city centres.

My Anderson Travel coach had a small Snap vinyl near the front on both sides but it only acted as reassurance to those of us boarding than being anything meaningful to anyone else.

But, as Snap’s overhead are a tiny fraction of National Express and Megabus it doesn’t really matter if the company grows at a fairly slow pace from one travel market to another as demand increases from word of mouth and use of low cost social media and it continues to match demand and supply with dynamic pricing.

For non-time critical passengers on tight budgets who happen to be travelling where Snap have a platform, it’s an irresistible proposition. Luxury travel, smooth ride and excellent bespoke reassuring communications.

It’ll be interesting to see where Snap goes next. I’ll happily give it another go if a destination and departure time look convenient – mainly for the novelty of such luxury road travel at a ridiculously cheap price – so I hope Snap’s venture capital investors are equally happy too. I’m told firmly that they are.

Roger French 17th October 2018

Monday 15th October 2018

I’ve been spending a few days travelling by bus around West Yorkshire. Always a pleasure for me as, aside from brief spells with London Transport in my student days, this was where my first ‘real’ job ‘on the buses’ began (in Wakefield) over forty years ago so I’ve always found an affinity with the area. It’s a lovely part of the country too.

First a few positives.

Bus stations. Everywhere in West Yorkshire is endowed with a well appointed prominent bus station. From the huge Bradford Interchange to the small cosy affair in Ossett. Even Wetherby’s bus shelter and ‘Bus Stop A’ warrant a ‘Bus Station’ designation especially when ‘Bus Stop B’ round the corner is included.

Castleford has the most recent rebuild completed a few years ago and very smart and functional it is too including all the facilities you’d expect.

Heckmondwike gained a smart ‘Bus Hub’ a few years ago: a few individual bus shelters around a rather nice piece of grass rather than a fully fledged Bus Station. Presumably a Hub because there’s no single roof span covering the waiting area. I see Morley also gained a Bus Hub earlier this year.

All the major locations have a Travel Centre with timetables (although sadly never a full set for the local area) and in some cases maps. There’s also a Customer Assistance kiosk which is a euphemism for where high-vis wearing security staff are based and who relentlessly patrol the waiting area supposedly giving reassurance to passengers and keeping out those with no thought of catching a bus but just wanting some shelter from the elements. Notwithstanding their reputation for having a serious aversion to photographers I managed to sneak out a few photos to illustrate why West Yorkshire gets Five Stars for its bus stations.

Bus maps. There was a rumour a while ago West Yorkshire Combined Authority (METRO) were going to jump on the ‘save money at all costs even if it means ceasing the production of helpful bus maps’ bandwagon (TfL being the founding member of course) so I was delighted to see a full set of METRO’s seven area maps were produced as recently as May 2018. Another Five Stars awarded.

Not only that, but I picked up a full set of all seven from Pontefract bus station – the first bus station I visited on Friday afternoon. I spotted maps in all the other Travel Centres but sadly not a full set. It really should be the default – to always offer a full set with extra supplies of the local area.

Tickets. There’s a Five Star comprehensive range of tickets available across West Yorkshire not only from METRO (including travel on buses and trains; buses only; trains only); peak and off peak versions and all available from Travel Centres and smart new smartcard machines in bus stations including the issue of a first card for just £2 as well as top ups.

There are some great fare offers too. I used the METRO Weekender which for just £8.20 gives unlimited bus travel from 6pm on Friday and all over the weekend to midnight on Sunday. A real bargain.

Arriva, First Bus and Transdev Blazefield also sell their own ranges of operator specific tickets at very reasonable prices. Some say this makes it all too complicated but I say it gives passengers a choice. Indeed on Friday I opted to buy one of Arriva’s m-Tickets as I knew I’d only be using their buses that day.

One thing I would like to see is greater clarity on what services tickets can be used particularly those crossing boundaries into neighbouring counties. It’s clear drivers don’t really know either so I happily used my METRO weekender into and from Skipton and Bolton Abbey (both in North Yorkshire) on Saturday.

A few suggestions.

Branding. It’s a bit of a mess. As usual with PTEs, METRO seem very protective of their brand ‘boring’ for bus timetables. For years they were produced to a standard design that featured strictly black and white colouring only, so it was nice to see some flashes of colour on a display in Leeds bus station but it’s still far from inspiring.

But if Transdev Blazefield can produce and distribute colourful attractively branded timetable leaflets for each of their high profile branded bus routes, why can’t Arriva do the same for their MAX and Frequenta brands (as well as the high profile Sapphire branded 110 between Wakefield and Leeds). Similarly First Bus are missing out on getting the best out of their high profile branded routes including the X84 Leeds-Skipton, the new X6 Leeds-Bradford and X63 Bradford-Huddersfield.

As it is there seems to be much welcome investment in attractively branded buses (including new colour coded groupings from First Bus for its Leeds city routes based on a green livery as a nod to the former Leeds City Transport) but there’s no follow through to other ‘touch points’ including the all important printed bus timetables as well as online. It’s all very well having nice branded buses, but that’s only part of the story.

Even more disappointing, there are far too many examples of branded buses on the wrong routes. Far too many.

Arriva in particular needs to up its game on bus allocation and both they and First Bus need to take a leaf out of Transdev Blazefield’s book and really invest in getting branding right and follow it through to leaflets and their distribution (I even spotted a CITYZAP leaflet in Pontefract and Castleford bus stations).

It was good to see Transdev Blazefield’s recent branded departure stands in Leeds bus station have now been copied by First Bus. More please.

Network. The West Yorkshire route network is certainly comprehensive; almost too much so. I sampled a range of routes during my visit including long inter-urban, short city/town routes and circuitous rambling routes which seemed to go on for ever; the ultimate destination always seemingly another round-the-houses away. A cursory look at the bus maps for Leeds, for example, shows just how complex the network is.

It’s laudable to give passengers many travel options and have buses diverting off their trajectory to serve small communities, but it’s important to keep a balance so as not to put off longer distance travellers with too many bifurcations. I’m not convinced that balance is right in parts of West Yorkshire.

I’m also sure there’s scope to introduce some speeding up with more direct routes or brand new routes.

First Bus now have a very limited stop X6 running between Leeds and Bradford taking advantage of some of the area’s urban ‘motorway’ type roads. There’s the infamous CITYZAP of course and Transdev Blazefield have recently speeded up their Aireline 60 towards Keighley by using the faster A650. Arriva have a couple of fast peak journeys from Heckmondwike to Leeds but it’s a drop in the ocean of what the potential could be. Much more of these please.

I’m also convinced there’s a place for a simplified map showing only the high profile inter-urban and branded bus routes run by the three operators across West Yorkshire. This really would show the great travel opportunities available in addition to the well used rail network and I’m sure would generate travel for the bus companies.

Frequency. Some evening frequencies are very poor relative to daytimes. It’s commendable to have 10 minute frequencies to encourage daytime passengers to ‘turn up and go’ but it’s a real turn off to switch to half hourly in the evenings; and in some cases quite early evening too. Routes 36 and 110; yes I’m looking at you but only as just two high profile examples!

You only need a breakdown or untoward problem which inevitably leads to the following bus getting delayed coping with a double load and passengers can face up to a miserable hour waiting. They’ll soon be lost as customers in the daytime too after such an experience.

That’s it for now; but more Yorkshire travels are still ahead.

Roger French 15th October 2018

30th September 2018

The turnaround of fortunes for First Bus in Cornwall is quite remarkable. You can’t fail to be impressed by the huge investment in new vehicles, eye catching colourful branded liveries, smartened up bus stops, shelters and bus station waiting rooms and an attractive book packed full of timetables of lovely bus routes to sample, maps to devour and tickets to buy.

It wasn’t that many years ago most bus industry observers (including me) had written off First in the county as bus routes were culled, second hand aged vehicles portraying a very down at heel image the norm, while competitor Western Greyhound had rapidly expanded at First’s expense running routes from Penzance to Plymouth.

The years of remote regional management based in Bristol did nothing but hasten First’s decline as the locally based nimble footed Western Greyhound grew relentlessly.

The sad demise of Western Greyhound and more recently First ceding its Plymouth based operations to Stagecoach have seen both Go-Ahead owned Plymouth Citybus and Stagecoach expand into east Cornwall.

Now it’s fascinating to see those operators using second hand buses, in some cases with confusing branding (Go Cornwall v Citybus v BlueFlash), while it is First Bus under a reinvigorated locally based management which undeniably has the best image as it rebuilds its reputation in Cornwall.

You only have to spend an hour or so in Truro, as I did over the weekend, and watch new bus after new bus, including many double deckers with decent loads entering and leaving the bus station, to realise the scale of this massive turnaround.

I’d like to think all this wasn’t solely in response to Cornwall Council being giving franchising powers with grand plans to link buses into the planned half hourly train service between Plymouth and Penzance as a grand whizzo modal integrated package and this is First at their innovative commercial best, taking the initiative to grow local markets and working with their partners at GWR.

Scratch beneath the shiny new surface and there’s plenty still to be done, like getting the basics right as well as better timetable coordination on common corridors (west out of Truro for example – two routes both leaving at 05).

I just hope the revenue growth can keep up with ever demanding margin expectations in Aberdeen. In the meantime bus passengers in Cornwall haven’t had it so good for a very long time.

Roger French Sunday 30th September 2018

Saturday 22nd September 2018

I’ve been travelling by bus around the Outer Hebrides over the last few days. What an amazing bus adventure it’s been. Scenery to die for. Never mind Coastliner 840 across the North York Moors being voted Britain’s most scenic bus route – come up to the Isle of Lewis and Harris for some seriously stunning bus scenery. And as I found on Shetland, considering the extremely low population density throughout the islands, the bus network is pretty impressive. Many English and Welsh councils could learn a thing or two.

I last visited the Outer Hebrides as recently as May when I’d planned to travel from Castlebay in the extreme south, on the island of Barra, through to Stornoway in the north, on Lewis. The journey involves five connecting buses crossing four causeways and using two ferries taking around nine hours to complete, all in a day.

However I came a cropper just under half way as I’d failed to check the tide times for the ferry between North Uist and Harris. On around hundred days a year the ferry has to operate to an amended schedule because of low tides making it impossible to make connections for the through journey in one day. I’d inadvertently chosen one of those days and ended up spending the night stranded in Lochmaddy on North Uist (luckily finding a bed in the only hotel there) before catching the morning ferry across to Skye but vowing to return and make another attempt at the journey later in the year.

This time I decided to travel southbound and carefully checked not only the bus, ferry and tide times but also the variable times for the flight back to Glasgow from Barra airport where uniquely its beach runway means flight schedules are also dependent on tide times.

All seemed good for the third week in September and as I’d also received a number of recommendations for other interesting bus journeys on Lewis and Harris I decided to make a four day leisurely trip and soak up the true Outer Hebridean Western Isles experience.

As on Shetland there are a number of bus (and coach) operators involved in bus service provision and timetables are well planned by the Council to provide excellent connections to small isolated communities off the main roads from the ‘spine’ routes. The timetables are all online and while appearing fiendish at first due to all the connection options and different day/schoolday/seasonal variations, after a while you get the hang of them and appreciate the detail they contain.

What I missed most of all is a network map – it would have been so helpful to plan out each day’s trips. The rudimentary printed timetable booklets available in Stornoway have a basic map on the cover which would have been a godsend if available on line. Even more taxing is that place names are in English on the timetables but in Gaelic on OS maps.

All the bus routes are numbered with a W prefix presumably to denote the Western Isles.

Unlike Shetland there’s no integrated ticket or day rover ticket so it worked out quite expensive to make a number of journeys each day even though the fares obviously must be subsidised. The Travel Scotland smartcard seemed to be available but there was no information about this.

Stornoway is by far the largest town; indeed the only town, with a population of around 8,000. It has a five stance bus station and impressively a Travel Shop open six full days a week with a very friendly and helpful lady. There’s a waiting area inside too, and toilets ‘please pay 30p at the counter’.

Timetables are displayed in the Travel Centre window and there’s an electronic display showing scheduled departures but nothing on four of the five bus stops. There seems to be an aversion to using timetable cases all over the Outer Hebrides which is a great shame yet commendably bus stop plates show neatly placed route numbers even in the middle of nowhere. Bus shelters are very common but all are inevitably weather beaten and many are defaced with poster remains. They don’t look inviting at all.

After catching the lunchtime W5 for the short 15 minute journey from Stornoway airport to the town centre (only £1.20) my first afternoon jaunt was the two hour circuit on circular route W2 to the western coast. Buses operate both ways round about 4-6 times each direction with a couple of evening journeys on half the circuit so not bad for the small communities.

There are two connecting services (W3 and W4) on some of the journeys. I sampled the W3 the following morning to the tiny community of Bosta on the west coast island of Bernera across the ‘Atlantic bridge’.

What an incredible remote bus terminus, and a bonus of a fascinating reclaimed Iron Age house close to the beach which had been discovered during bad storms in 1992. We’d picked up Elizabeth, the guide for the house, on the journey up to Bosta (our only passenger on the journey). She’s a real gem; giving me a half hour’s personalised commentary on how the house inhabitants would have lived in the Iron Age.

Evelyn the W3 bus driver was also a star and having pre-booked my return journey at 1215 from Bosta the previous day she duly came back just over an hour after dropping me and Elizabeth off and took just me back (stopping for photo opportunities along the way) to the connection with the W2 (meeting buses running in both directions) enabling me to return to Stornoway.

My next trip was heading south for a half an hour’s ride on the island’s main north-south spine route W10 as far as the road to Orinsay where it connects with a W9 serving small communities towards the east coast.

Four of us made the connection with one, the driver’s mum, travelling all the way almost to Orinsay. It turned out the bus driver had moved up from Crawley where he’d worked for Metrobus and had considered a transfer to Brighton & Hove. I don’t blame him for opting for driving around Lewis instead of Lewes.

On the return journey (another one that needed pre-booking the previous day) I had to swap buses at a bit of an interchange point in the middle of nowhere so the right driver did the right school run and we duly picked up half a dozen primary school children dropping them off safely at the gate of their homes.

The driver told them I was a bus inspector from London who’d come to see how well they behaved on the bus (I played the part with gusto) and we had an uncharacteristically quiet journey for a school run! Another connection back at the main road on to a northbound W10 and it was back into Stornoway again.

Through return tickets are available for these connecting journeys and the next morning I was able to buy a single ticket to cover the full journey south on route W10 to Leverburgh and even break my journey two thirds of the way down at Tarbert.

I did this to try out the recommendation of taking the Friday only late morning trip to Hushinish and back on the W11. What a fantastic bus ride to this remote west coast beauty spot. Truly stunning scenery; lots of twists and turns on what is about a ten mile long no through road alongside mountains and lochs. And just me on board paying £3.20 return.

Bizarrely the road passes through the grounds of Amhuinsuidhe castle which is privately owned although the owner apparently lives in Switzerland. Another interesting sight off the coast is the island of Taransay where the BBC1 series Castaway 2000 was filmed that year and begat all the other reality TV programmes that followed, and launched Ben Fogle’s career. We even picked up a passenger for part of the journey back, but advisedly left another waiting in the bus shelter …

Tarbert is a bit of a node for buses and also has a well stocked Visitor Information Centre displaying timetables in the window, an area for buses (and their drivers) to congregate and a timetable case devoid of timetables bus shelter.

After lunch in Tarbert I caught the early afternoon school bus (schools finish early on Fridays necessitating different timetables – careful planning is needed) W12 to the east coast spot of Rhenigidale.

Another gorgeously stunning journey and only £3.80 return. We carried just four children home but picked up a passenger on the return journey who was connecting for the W10 northbound back to Stornoway.

Whereas I returned to Tarbert and used the rest of my through ticket back on the southbound W10 hugging the west coast with its beautiful sandy bays down to Leverburgh Pier and that tidal ferry to North Uist. Naturally there’s a handy connection to the ferry which takes precisely an hour to cross. It actually docks at the extreme south of the small island of Berneray.

It always impresses me how quickly Caledonian MacBrayne ferries turnaround getting vehicles on and off in just ten minutes.

It’s also impressive to see the bus connect at Leverburgh for northbound passengers ….

…. and for me heading south, within a couple of minutes of getting off the ferry, the bus arrived to take me for the short ride to my overnight stop at Lochmaddy.

That was after a quick bus change on route to ‘right end’ buses and drivers with their respective homes for the night.

My fourth and final day caught the W16/W17 spine route south from Lochmaddy on North Uist over the causeway to Benbecula another causeway to South Uist and one more causeway to the tiny island of Eriskay for the ferry to Barra.

It’s almost a two and a half hour bus ride and it has to be said the scenery is nowhere near as stunning as on Lewis and Harris, but plenty still to see including a bus change in Benbecula which happens on every journey (one bus company runs the southern bit and another the northern end).

The nail biting part was whether we’d run out of seats as when I boarded at Lochmaddy the sixteen seater was already well loaded with luggage as well as passengers.

These minibuses aren’t designed for holidaymakers with luggage and as we got more and more full with just one seat spare, luggage ended up on laps and blocking the gangway and doorway.

We made it in good time to Eriskay slipway giving me time to note another timetable-less bus stop but then finding a set of timetables posted behind the door in the ferry waiting room – not an obvious place to look when you come off the ferry!

A fairly swift 40 minute ferry crossing across to Barra with the added bonus of dolphins swimming alongside us and a shared taxi ride for the short journey to the nearby airport brought my Hebridean adventure to an end. Although the beach take off with Loganair is a fitting finale.

Finally if you’re inspired to also make the trip to these beautiful islands a few words of advice.

Allow contingency time for the flights to Barra or Stornoway. They’re very weather dependent and prone to delays. I allowed nearly three hours on my return flights to connect at Glasgow airport (where I’m writing this now) just to be on the safe side.

Check and recheck ferry times. Especially those affected by tides!

Get to bus stops early particularly for inbound connecting routes from the outlying areas. One bus ran 15 minutes early!

Don’t expect a bus ticket on every journey – one driver hadn’t even connected up his electronic ticket machine!

If you’re limited for time it’s better to explore more of Lewis and Harris than the southern islands (scenically speaking).

And finally finally a plea to the Council: please please produce a network bus map and introduce a day ticket available on all routes.

So that’s it, my flight down to Gatwick and home awaits and I’ll be back next Spring to complete those routes yet to be ridden.

Roger French 22 September 2018