I was able to get another day out last week with the good weather, my fourth in the month which is very unusual. I started the day in Bishops Stortford, heading mainly for some routes and places in Cambridgeshire which I had not visited. A few minutes for a short look around the southern side of the town centre included crossing the river and finding a mural showing a Hong Kong tram. I have no idea what the history if this is, maybe somebody is able to enlighten us?
My first leg was on an E200 on the Stephensons 301 heading north into Essex, my destination being the reasonably attractive village of Newport, the fourth location with that name I have visited. My research indicated that this route was very unreliable with long delays common, sometimes mounting through the day, so to get an early journey seemed sensible. The scourge of timekeeping everywhere was the problem on this occasion with lengthy delays at roadworks, first near the oddly-named Stansted Mountfitchett – luckily the latter part of the name never made it to the nearby airport – and more near Quendon. As a result we were about 10 minutes late by the time we arrived in Newport where I had a short wander around the centre of the village. There is a school here and a number of Stephensons school buses turned up, generally Scania Omnidekkas with only a handful of children aboard. There didn’t seem to be many arriving by foot either. My plan onwards from here was to get the Stephensons school route 446 as far as Saffron Walden school, this turned up about 10 minutes late and refused to stop for me at the Coach and Horses stop on the main road in Newport. This was somewhat annoying, it is a public route fully shown as such, and should take all passengers, even though I would have had a bit of a walk into the town from the school. I had indeed used a schooldays only route with Stephensons some 15 years ago from Wethersfield into Saffron Walden so I know they are public. Plan B was the 319 due soon after but this was running increasingly late on its inward journey as a 321 from Haverhill. Unusually this was showing on BusTimes as an Omnidekka, the first time I have ever seen any evidence of a double decker on the routes between Saffron Walden and Haverhill. It did turn up and was indeed an Omnidekka and did pick me up at the Coach and Horses. However at Audley End station I, the only passenger, and the driver swapped onto an E200 waiting for us for the rest of the trip to Saffron Walden where we arrived about 20 minutes late.
Saffron Walden is a lovely small town, named from the manufacture of saffron several hundred years ago. OK, so maybe it knows it is pretty and can be a little pretentious as a result but it has several really attractive old buildings and streets, not to mention the market square, the remains of a castle and a common. Pargetting is a local style of decorative plaster on timber-framed buildings and there is plenty in evidence here. Bus-wise Saffron Walden is dominated by Stephensons, with hourly services to Bishops Stortford, Stansted Airport, Great Dunmow and Haverhill and a town route giving a good service in this rural corner of Essex, while Stagecoach provide an hourly service north to Cambridge. Almost nothing to the west though. I didn’t now have as much time as I intended and would have liked but I have been here before and grabbed a sausage roll as well as a few photos before moving on. My next leg was using another Stephensons E200, onwards to Haverhill on the 320, the quicker of the two routes between the termini, going via Radwinter and Steeple Bumpstead. With the 319 via Shudy Camps and Helions Bumpstead (aren’t they wonderful names!) these routes provide a combined hourly service (the 321 is a school journey combination). They are long established routes and must be pretty heavily subsidised by Essex council as we did not attract many passengers despite being the first bus after 9.30. Given that the destination was in Suffolk this is quite surprising. Leaving Saffron Walden we encountered more road works with a road closure, the alternative route being narrow and having many parked cars. This did not delay us by much but was clearly having a much greater impact on incoming services, hence the delay to my earlier 321 coming into Newport.
As we approached Haverhill I started looking at the bus for my next leg, the Stagecoach 13A to Cambridge, noting that the inward journey was nearly half an hour late. This journey had left Cambridge at 8.15 and was very late by the time it left the city limits. I had seen before that this journey was often delayed. The 13/13A/X13 is a relatively frequent inter-urban service running from an outstation in Haverhill. There is a core service every half hour from Cambridge fairly quickly to the edge of Haverhill, then round some housing areas before reaching the centre of the town and then on to a further loop to the east of town. Some journeys run as X13 and omit parts of the route, only to spend more time in Haverhill, but inward X13 journeys to Cambridge are oddly allowed 30 minutes from Addenbrooks Hospital to the city centre while the 13 and 13A are only given 15 minutes. The published timetable makes it all look even more complicated as the software has not picked up the nuances of the routes in Haverhill. Tracking my bus, an ADL E400 MMC, it had reached the bus station but nearly half an hour late and not continued round the loop to the east so I thought it might be going to return straight to Cambridge, roughly on time, this would be more sensible than two buses running in convoy. Haverhill has a lot of houses but not a great deal else, and few other bus services serve the town. In the bus station I saw the 13 blinded for Cambridge so I decided to stay on my 319 to go straight to Sainsburys. At this large edge of town store I stocked up on lunch and was still able to take the 13A onwards, now on time. We went through Horseheath and the attractive village of Linton, still in Suffolk, then around a couple of villages in Cambridgeshire before heading into the city past Addenbrooks Hospital. As we approached the city centre, comfortably on time, there were more three-way traffic lights at roadworks near the station and so we arrived a few minutes late. Buses heading out of the city centre were delayed much more and I understood more why my incoming bus had been so late.
I didn’t have long in Cambridge as I wished to visit a couple of villages north of Cambridge and go on to the lovely town of Ely. I took a Park and Ride route, the PR5, on a double decker MCV bodied Volvo BZL north from the city centre to Milton Park and Ride and then on to Waterbeach. MCV has a local connection in that Marshall was a local bus body builder which bodied many single decker buses in the 1960s and 1970s and later on the Dennis Dart and even made its own not very successful minibus. Marshall went into administration in 2001 and MCV bought some design rights; MCV is Egyptian and its UK base is near Ely. This electric bus was very quiet and rattle free as we headed out of town along a radial route which has been completely remodelled in recent years with wide cycle lanes but little bus priority. The 2 and PR5 provide eight buses an hour here, via different routes, but the park and ride car park did not look that full so I suspect there is quite a subsidy on these routes, especially with the electric buses. There are clearly carrots to attract Cambridge drivers out of their cars but I’m not sure there are enough sticks, cars are able to go most places around Cambridge with few restrictions except the absolute city centre.
Two PR5s each hour extend beyond Milton Park and Ride to Landbeach and Waterbeach and I took one of these and alighted in the village of Waterbeach. This village has a pleasant green but not a great deal else. The prevalent architecture here uses rather yellow brickwork which is not, in my view, the most attractive style, but presumably uses materials available locally. I took the next PR5 back, another Volvo BZL, as far as Cambridge Science Park. This is a publicly accessible area and I took a short walk in to where a large number of very clever people were enjoying their lunch in the sunshine close to a small lake with other facilities. I felt a little intimidated by the huge IQs as these learned young people passed by and returned to the bus stop for my next leg.
I then proceeded to head back north, this time on the Stagecoach 9. This used to be a trunk hourly service run from an outstation in Ely but this all changed a couple of years ago when Stagecoach virtually pulled out of all services outside Cambridge city – apart from the Busway, the Haverhill routes and the route south to Saffron Walden. They still run one bus on the 9 to Ely and Littleport, providing three journeys roughly four hours apart. A2B Buses have been contracted to provide another bus to make the service roughly two hourly. Stagecoach have just given notice that they are to withdraw even this remnant of the route later in the summer. My bus was another ADL E400, this one an 11-plate, now quite old, and there were probably around 20 aboard when I joined at the Science Park. The route bypasses the park and ride and all the local villages with some fairly prolonged running on the A10 at reasonable speeds, although further north it does divert into Stretham and a stop at the edge of Little Thetford. A few alighted en route but most stayed all the way to Ely and some beyond. At Ely we took a very convoluted route round the town before arriving in the centre. I stayed on here and we took a further wiggly route round the former council estate to the north of the town, where more people alighted, before continuing on the short journey to Littleport. There is a station on the edge of Littleport but otherwise this service is the only public transport. This section was slowly timed and we waited time at a couple of stops, although there is a level crossing which may delay buses at some times.
I alighted as soon as we got to the centre of Littleport and had a look around. The architecture was similar yellow brick and most notably of the few shops in the centre of town, no less than four were barber’s shops. I cannot imagine what the demand can be here for four barber’s shops, unless other services are provided. There is a monument to the father of the founder of Harley Davidson in the form of a motorbike and some attractive corners but generally Littleport is a rather nondescript small town. The 9 is even more incredibly slowly timed to perform a loop round what houses there are in Littleport which gave me almost 25 minutes to walk a few yards to another stop in the town centre to head back to Ely, where we arrived almost 10 minutes early.
Ely is a delightful small city with its cathedral towering over it, visible from some distance. I had visited a couple of times before but only in the morning so I had not been able to take any photos of the cathedral from the western side. This time I was able to do this and walk down the footpath from the cathedral through a park area to the waterfront on the River Great Ouse. This was the end of my bus trip for the day as I took a train back to Bishops Stortford, changing at the new Cambridge North station.
A change from my recent emphasis on trips in the north and great to have managed four bus trips in April, good because holidays mean it will be some time before I have any chance of further days out. Generally things ended up working according to plan although I was annoyed that the Stephensons 446 did not stop for me. Stagecoach dominate the Cambridge area and ran well although congestion is clearly a major issue. Franchising is starting in Cambridgeshire with more supposedly on the horizon, but with a Conservative mayor and a Liberal Democrat council now elected, who knows what will happen. I think I have been to most places now in this area, another trip is fairly unlikely unless we get more exciting routes to travel - maybe the recently announced T7 from nowhere much to nowhere much via nowhere at all - my sort of route!
Some photos:
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Bishops Stortford, complete with Hong Kong tram mural
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Newport, Essex
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Saffron Walden
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Waterbeach
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Huge brains taking on sustenance in Cambridge Science Park
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Littleport, three barbers shops in the picture, the other is just behind
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Littleport, Harley Davidson memorial
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Ely cathedral
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Ely, River Great Ouse
I did it on a cold and clear day in December 1994 when you could see from the Wolds across to the power stations at Drax, Eggborough and Ferrybridge. As in those days, it was a market day service and used a decker from Elloughton depot (though it was a 1981 VR then). 
I was living sort of locally - about the same time, I went into an off license and bumped into Pakistani cricket legend Wasim Akram. Altrincham is the sort of high end place I'd expect to find him, but not in an offy! As for the exploration of the Pennine foothills... again, a bit of jealousy. Looks fabulous.
