Day 18 - No Bus to Barnsley

Glossop to Bradford

When I began planning this trip, I’d already decided that my route should take me to Birkenhead, the birthplace of the tram. This seemed entirely logical given I was intending to visit and experience places connected with public transport history. 

It also dawned on me that I should find a way to visit Barnsley, a place with connections with present-day public transport but in a rather different way. 

On the northern edge of Barnsley are a series of sprawling scrapyards which are renowned as a sort of elephant's graveyard for buses. Its where many of the nation's buses go to die, or at least to be cut up and recycled (...oh sorry, I should have warned bus enthusiasts about that bit. Don't worry, it's over now). Agreed, I should be heading north by now and it is a little bit off-track but I reckoned it was probably worth a look and surely I could simply extend my route eastwards to Manchester, then a bit more eastwards to Barnsley and get back on track northwards from there. 

The final journey - to Barnsley. Pic:Jonathan Pye

A quick glance at my well-thumbed Ordnance Survey Atlas of Great Britain confirmed that the two places were, geographically-speaking, well within a page or two of one another, so finding a bus between the two shouldn’t be a problem…

How naïve I was...

The true scale of this innocent challenge began to unfold when I did a quick online search of bus services from Manchester with the confident and, it transpired, totally mis-placed expectation that I’d find at least one reference to Barnsley. I didn’t. There were plenty of other B’s, of course - Bolton, Bamford, Burnage, even the exotic-sounding Besses o’ th’ Barn... But Barnsley there was not.

I searched on, trying a few more websites but still drew a blank. I was puzzled so I looked at the map again. Hang on. Sheffield - that’s a major city and by the look of it little more than a short bus ride from Barnsley. There’s got to be a bus link between Manchester and Sheffield, right…?

Wrong. There wasn’t.

By now I had resorted to one of those complicated journey-planning websites where you write your departure point in one box and your arrival point in another and, as if by magic, up pops a comprehensive itinerary for your journey. The result was the same. Nothing. Quite impossible. No, no, no…

I tried another, and another, and got exactly the same result. No buses. No services, No nothing.

There's an old joke about a traveller in rural Ireland who asks a villager for the quickest road to Dublin, to be told that '”... well now, if it’s Dublin you’re going to, then you're probably better not starting from here”. Getting to Barnsley was proving to be equally perplexing. 

I did eventually find a way. This involved taking a 2 hour bus trip from Manchester to Huddersfield followed by a short, terrifying sprint around Huddersfield Bus Station to enable me to catch the 313 bus, which left 60 seconds later for Holmfirth. I’d then have 28 minutes to catch my breath before I get off the Holmfirth bus at Penistone, then a 40 minute wait before I reluctantly board the 29 for the 50 minute bus ride to Sheffield. The whole journey, using two different operators and three separate bus services, would take about 5 minutes short of five buttock-aching hours. And I’d still have to find a bus to take me on to Barnsley.

This was insane. How can it be so difficult to travel between one city and another?

I looked again at my atlas and noticed for the first time exactly what it was that stood in my way – it was a mass of green and brown inky swirls with the name ‘High Peak’ printed across it.

Of course! The Peak District! Perhaps I’ve been looking at this all wrong. The Peak District National Park is famously and fabulously beautiful and extremely popular with walkers. Surely there must be a bus linking Greater Manchester with its nearest national park. After all, there must be thousands of Manchester-based rugged outdoor types just itching to pull up their thick woollen socks and fill their Thermos flasks with thick Northern tea in readiness for a day on the tops…

Well, apparently not. However Manchester folk get to the Peak District, they don’t get there by bus. There is no bus, peak-time or off-peak, no coach, nothing. 

Snake Pass, Peak District

It was then that I finally I had a little bit of luck.

As I mentioned earlier in my story, on the day that every pensioner in England was given a free UK-wide bus pass a national newspaper helpfully printed an article detailing 10 of the UK’s top bus journeys. I’d kept a clipping of it neatly filed under a pile of socks and fluff under the bed and it was this which now caught my eye (it actually caught my toe, but you get the general idea).

That eye soon fell on one of the ten listed services, the 373, which it described as ‘death defying’ and not for the faint-hearted as it featured a road with ‘…a staggering 1,679 foot drop into the valley below…’ on its route from (joy, oh joy) Manchester to Sheffield!

So there was a service after all! And, blimey, what a service it sounded! Death-defying, staggering drops, everything! I was quickly back at my computer confident that I had finally found my bus. 

Except I hadn't. There was no trace. Nothing. 

No, no, no, that can't be right. I must have done something wrong, put the wrong number in or mis-spelt something. But no. It simply wasn’t there. It must have been a figment of some London-based journo’s imagination.

Eventually, after excruciatingly long and careful research, I did discover a Service 373 - except it didn’t go from Manchester. It went from Glossop, and only as far as Castleton, a picturesque Peak District village, and not Sheffield. Still, it seemed to be the bus I was looking for. OK, then. Lets find a bus service from Manchester to Glossop. 

After all the practice I‘d had this was quickly achieved, but it seemed that only three buses a day made this apparently arduous and unpopular journey, and then only at the crack of dawn. To get to Glossop, I first had to get to Ashton-Under-Lyme… 

“Ah, sure if it’s Glossop you’re going to, then you're probably best not starting from here…”

I thought I’d check what time the Glossop to Peak District bus left and that’s when I had my next bit of bad news. It ran only once a day, which was inconvenient enough, but in fact it was far worse than that. It ran once a day, once a week. On a Sunday. And there wasn’t even a return service. Presumably there's some vast bus graveyard in Castleton where thousands of Glossop buses are parked up, all gently rusting and destined never to move again. They're probably filled with bobble-hatted tourists and mud-spattered walkers all wondering where the driver is, and why a tree is growing up between the rear three rows of seats. It’s bizarre. Why run a bus filled with tourists into the Peak District and then just abandon them there?

Incredibly, such counter-intuitive service planning isn’t at all unusual. In 2009, for example, tourist chiefs in Snowdonia complained that the timetable for one of their main bus services would leave hill walkers – who, let’s be honest, aren’t exactly unknown in Snowdonia – with less than five hours to walk up and down one of the most popular climbs in Wales, all because the first bus to the foot of Mount Snowdon was not scheduled to arrive until lunchtime. This left hardly any daylight in which to safely complete the walk to the summit and back. Surely, complained the director of the Snowdonia Society, with huge numbers of people coming to Snowdonia even in winter, it must be possible to run a bus to the foot of Snowdon in the morning? Well, apparently not.

Would it be different if bus operators thought more creatively and worked with some of the organisations representing their customers? Perhaps Nottingham City Transport’s work with the Campaign for Real Ale provides a lesson in what can be achieved. They jointly produced a “Beer by Bus and Tram” guide, which combined details of all 45 pubs in Nottingham serving real ale with timetables for all the buses and trams serving them. That’s really rather clever; it promotes public transport, it promotes real ale, and it probably promotes road safety, too. As ever with all truly great ideas, the whole is infinitely greater than the sum of its parts.

PVS scrapyard, Barnsley

So once again, I began searching for alternatives. Maybe I should miss Manchester all together and go straight to Macclesfield, then thread a route though Buxton to Sheffield and then to Barnsley? Or Huddersfield? Or should I just forget the whole thing?

In the end, I realised that a detour to Barnsley was just a bit too much, so I'd have to leave the scrapyards for another time. Besides, it was a Sunday so buses would be sparse and the scrapyards would all be closed anyway. So I elected to stay in Glossop overnight and catch the one and only bus to the Peak District the following morning.

The next day dawns wet and I make my way down into the town in a haze of penetrating drizzle. No matter. My bus is due at 10.07 and I'm there with ten minutes to spare. By 10.20, however, there is still no sign of it and I’m beginning to get seriously steamed up. Everything I'd heard suggested that rural bus services could be like this, but when a service only operates once a day, for that one bus to be cancelled is a serious blow.

Just then my bus trundles unapologetically into view, a full ten minutes late and with not so much as a by your leave. My journey, it seems, is back on and we are soon setting off into the drizzle for the spectacular Snake Pass.

Glossop

The Snake Pass is one of the highest in England and offers a stunning gateway to the Peak District. It's well named, too, as the road twists and wriggles its way upwards into the clouds. When we finally level off everyone on board stares out in wonder at the wild and exhilarating moorland which suddenly fills our view. This is what I had come to see – some of the finest views to be had from a bus anywhere in Britain. The Peak District doesn't disappoint.

And the scenery just keeps getting better. Once off the wild heathery moors with its wind-blasted sheep and acres of gentle nodding bog cotton, we plunge down into the tree-lined dales which surround Kinder Scout, a blunt and treacherous inverted pit of wet peat where the Mass Trespass of April 1932 took place, an event which lead to the formation of the Ramblers Association which I suspect several of my fellow passengers may well be members of. They seem a friendly bunch and we chat unselfconsciously about the day ahead, about walks we have known, and about waterproof clothing. The driver mostly ignores bus stops and drops people off wherever their footpaths into the hills leave the road.

Past the dark and glassy Ladybower Reservoir, we arrive in Bamford where the driver drops me at a bus shelter entirely surrounded by hedges and birdsong on the edge of the village. It's a good while before the chirps of the chaffinches give way to the rumble of my 272 service to Sheffield, but as waits go it is probably one of the better ones. 

Ladybower Reservoir

The Peak District soon fades and is replaced by the wide city streets of Sheffield, and it's a sudden transition – open fields one minute, housing estates the next. We pull into Sheffield’s bus interchange which is secreted away behind dismal office blocks which leer threateningly over the parked buses. The scene, and the rain, discourages further exploration so I'll have to leave Sheffield for another time. Pity, really, as according to the inspector on duty my connecting bus to Holmfirth has broken down (oh, great) so I have time to kill.

Eventually, a bus arrives and its onwards to Holmfirth along a steep valley lined with steel-shuttered shops, anonymous factory units and terraces of tiny stone cottages. A little further on I find evidence of Sheffield 's former steel industry, but in full vigour. The Corus works in Stockbridge is everything you'd expect a busy steel mill to look like, vast and dominating. Ugly, too, I suppose, but impressive.

The bus turns out of Stocksbridge into open country, then over moorland tinged green and brown by acres of bilberry and bracken. We are soon tumbling into Holmfirth, famous as the setting for the BBC TV series 'Last of the Summer Wine'. Every street, every corner, almost every house looks familiar, either because it's appeared in the show at some time or it looks like it could have done. One of them was certainly familiar – Sid's Cafe in the town centre – where I pop in for a cuppa. The placed is tiny and filled with old ladies, with photos on the wall showing characters from the TV series doing exactly what I was now doing.

“Ee, look,” exclaimed one elderly lady pointing to one of the photographs. “Compo sat here!”

Holmfirth

Holmfirth is a throng of elderly people today, the air filled with the scent of Lily of the Valley and pipe tobacco. Sunday appears to be the day when local folk exercise their elders and with Holmfirth being so sweet and homely what better place could there be.

There are long queues at the bus stop. 

“I didn't find Nora Batty,” mutters one lady, clearly disappointed.

“Well, at least we saw Auntie Wainwright's,” adds another brightly.

The arrival of the Huddersfield bus puts a halt to further discussion and, bags held high and elbows out, the Last of the Summer Wine spotters shove their way onto the bus to secure the best and most convenient seats. I refrain from battle. It's another double decker so I reckon I'll probably have the top deck to myself.

Huddersfield is love at first sight. This is a great little town, full of those huge, decorative and 'don't bloody mess with us'-type buildings that you associate with Victorian civic grandeur. It also has probably the most impressive railway station in the country, even though the forecourt seems to be a kind of bizarre obstacle course of random fountains which shoot up unexpectedly from between cracks in the pavement when you least expect them. Fun, though.

The last bus of the day takes me to Bradford and it’s another double-decker, though this one has a sort of supermarket trolley-type wheel just by the bus's front wheel. As we arrive in Bradford, its purpose becomes clear as the driver squeezes into a bus-only lane bordered by high concrete kerbs right down the middle of the road. These connect with the little trolley wheels and take control of the steering from the driver, who no doubt sits back and has a quick fag. On a wet Sunday evening when there is little traffic I can't really see the point, but having your own personal road in the rush hour must give you a clear advantage over the rest of the traffic. 

Bradford is your archetypal bluff Northern town with sooty mills and cramped terraces rubbing shoulders with all the grand Victorian stuff like the Alhambra Theatre and the exuberantly-Italianate City Hall. It can also claim a small place in public transport history. 

Bradford introduced trams in 1882. Within a year it had replaced horse power with steam, but the Corporation was clearly still restless. On 20 June 1911, Bradford and nearby Leeds simultaneously opened Britain’s very first trolleybus system, replacing the trams they had introduced barely thirty years before. The city had now clearly found something it liked and they stuck with the trolley bus until March 1972, by which time it was the last trolleybus service operating in Britain.

The 1950’s saw a huge wave of immigration particularly from the Mirpur region of Pakistan and today about a quarter of the city’s population is of Asian origin. Whatever those early immigrants might have left behind in Pakistan - hardship and poverty, mostly - they made sure they brought their cuisine with them with the result that Bradford today is, to someone like me, curry heaven.

I’ve been looking forward to this and I’m not going to let a spot of torrential rain deter me. Besides, Bradford somehow seems a little more authentically Northern in the rain...

NEXT: Bradford – Blackpool – where I endure the grimmest of cooked breakfasts, recount the tale of the very first bus in Yorkshire and discover that Preston's much-maligned bus station is really not as bad as it looks.

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Map courtesy of those awfully nice people at Google