Thursday 9th March 2023 Sorry, East Midlands Railway you were going to be my E, but as today is a rather special occasion, being the very last day of an independently owned Ensignbus before midnight’s takeover by First Bus, I thought it only appropriate to mark this historic occasion with a special feature. I blogged... Continue Reading →
Chelmsford contrasts
Thursday 16th June 2022 Readers may recall when I tried the DigiGo DRT operation from Chelmsford’s Chelmer Valley Park & Ride site at Easter I spotted the temporary 'dealer stock' buses being used by Vectare on that route into the city pending delivery of a new fleet of buses as part of the company winning... Continue Reading →
Island hopping in Essex
Monday 25th October 2021 Following my recent outing to Sheppey and Grain on the north Kent coast, it's time to replicate similar island exploring on the north side of the Thames Estuary along the Essex coastline - said surprisingly to be the English county with the longest coastline, mainly because of all its inlets and... Continue Reading →
First Debden debut
Saturday 23rd October 2021 It’s been a long time since you could catch a bus from the Debden and Loughton area of Essex, on the fringe of Greater London, and travel to the county town of Chelmsford. A locally based correspondent Chris reckons it was pre war when an early Green Line lettered route provided... Continue Reading →
Turned off by turned off touch points in Essex
Thursday 20th February 2020 My travels today once again involved sampling more impressive shiny new buses from First Bus but this time with a few unexpected experiences along the way. Read on for a mixed bag report. First Essex introduced seven new double decks to their X30 Southend to Stansted Airport route yesterday together with... Continue Reading →
Will Clacton be all at sea?
Wednesday 1st January 2020 Head to head competition between First Essex and Go-Ahead owned Hedingham between Colchester and Clacton-on-Sea comes to an end on Saturday. First Essex closed its Clacton-on-Sea base back in July 2018 with Hedingham taking over the town's local bus routes leaving First running only the three-bus-an-hour inter-urban link from Colchester to... Continue Reading →
When a bus route becomes a coach route
Tuesday 31st December 2019 Go-Ahead owned Carousel extended its High Wycombe to Uxbridge route 102 on to Heathrow Airport on Sunday; I took a ride yesterday to try it out. The route is part of the Chiltern Hundreds (routes numbered 101 to 105 - get it?) branded buses running between High Wycombe, Beaconsfield and Slough/Watford/Uxbridge... Continue Reading →
DaRT about in Dengie
Saturday 29th June 2019 Back in April I took a ride on the bus route formerly known as the 'Wiltshire Wigglybus' between Pewsey and Devizes - a traditional rural bus route combined with a Dial-a-Ride flexible option and wrote about it here. Yesterday I thought it might be interesting to sample a similar type of... Continue Reading →