Day 20 - A Bus Through The Mountains

Blackpool to Kirkby Stephen

The years following the First World War were boom years for Blackpool. New legislation obliging employers to give their employees a week's holiday every year provided unaccustomed leisure time to millions of ordinary workers, and places like Blackpool where the seaside holiday infrastructure was already in place really cleaned up.

Day 20

The First World War – or rather, the end of it - also played an important role in the history of the bus. The war changed everything, especially attitudes. Men who had previously been happy to defer to their betters were now rather less inclined to do so after observing how the uniformed gentry in charge of the war had casually sent the poor bloody infantry to their slaughter whilst they remained safe and comfortable at the rear. Those 'toffs' which had ventured into the trenches had suffered, worried, laughed and been cut down every bit as easily as the soldiers they led, and the troops soon realised that they weren't so very different to them after all. 

So many of the men who returned from France in 1918 had changed. They were more independently-minded, less inclined to be subservient, more interested in making something for themselves rather than for some rich employer. Some had become skilled in driving and maintaining motor vehicles like staff cars, trucks and requisitioned London buses. They had War Office gratuities to spend and there was a glut of ex-army lorries on the market, some of them ripe for conversion into buses.

Two key factors played their part in what was to happen next. First, when the war started the motor bus was still widely regarded as new-fangled and a largely untested alternative to the horse bus. However, by the end of the war, after years of testing service in the heat of battle, most of the mechanical problems initially encountered by the first motor bus operators had been overcome and the motor bus was now a functional and reliable form of transport. Secondly, the war had the effect of bottling up everyone's spending because there was precious little to buy – and not much in the immediate post-war years, neither. One thing you could spend your money on, though, was travel.

Charabanc

This was a near-perfect world in which to launch a public transport business. There was a ready supply of cheap vehicles for conversion, plenty of men with the necessary skills to operate them, and a growing demand for travel from the public. It's no surprise, then, that many demobbed soldiers chose to begin their own transport business using former Army lorries. Some even adapted them so they could be used as lorries for freight during the week and then have a charabanc body fitted at week-ends so they could offer trips to the seaside. More ex-soldiers found employment as drivers or mechanics for the small firms that would in time develop into local bus companies, long-distance coach firms, or commercial transport companies.

The transport explosion that followed would bring bus services to almost every town and village in the country, and in fact much of today's vast network of bus services – the very network I am now travelling across - dates from this time.

I am not spending long in Blackpool but I want to experience something of what it was like to be a post-war holidaymaker here. To that end, I have chosen to stay in one of Blackpool’s more modest seaside hotels just off the seafront. Even though Blackpool is not quite the holiday destination it once was, the town can still boast around 400 hotels and guesthouses, with many of them clustered around the town's Pleasure Beach. This is where my own hotel is located, in a whole street of hotels, some formed from four or five houses knocked together and many more contained within a single large Edwardian home. 

Seaside hotels abound

Mine is a large, bow-fronted house, narrow with high ceilings and at one time clearly rather elegant but now filled with woodchip and fire doors and multiple brick extensions that spread upwards and out across the back yard. I notice there is a sign in the hallway warning me not to invite members of the opposite sex to my room, though my room is so cramped it scarcely looks big enough for me to sleep in, let alone to enjoy a brief energetic fling.

After breakfast I bid farewell to the wood chip and the candlewick bedspread and make my way out into the drizzle. Today is going to be a long one, and it starts with a tram ride all the way from Blackpool Tower to the tramway's northern terminus of Fleetwood, something I've been rather looking forward to.

I find a tram stop and scuttle out of the thin rain into its cramped shelter where I am soon joined by a party of Hell's Angels in their regulation black leather, chains and hard metal studs. 

“'S'cuse me, mate,” says one coming dangerously close. I notice that his jacket has metal chains attached which look like they've been recently used in a fight. I remembered somebody once telling me that Hell's Angels don't wear black leather because it’s safer if you come off your motorbike but because leather doesn't show the blood if you get caught up in a fist fight. I gulp.

“Y'know when next 'tram's due fur't Pleasure Beach?”

“No,” I answer nervously, trying to sound helpful. My slightly wavering voice clearly puzzles him and he shrugs and wanders off to rejoin his mates while I urgently scan the horizon for a tram. As it turns out, they were just a bunch of mates out on a stag do looking to while away the morning on the roller coasters before the serious business of heavy, deliberate drinking began. They didn’t look harmless, though.

My northbound tram rumbles into view. Disappointingly, it looks like one of those British Rail Pacer trains, the ones which look like a Leyland National bus body nailed to a set of bogies, which is basically what they are. I'd been hoping for a ride on one of Blackpool’s lovely old 1930's balloon-type trams or one from their historic fleet. But it’s not to be and, alas, worse is to follow.

“Ticket to Fleetwood, please.” I ask brightly.

The driver gives me a hopeless look.

“Can't.” he sighs. “Line's closed.”

“What do you mean, it's...”

“Closed! he declaims, with drama. He looks ready to burst into tears. “It's closed, I said. Closed. Vandalism...” 

He trails off. This isn’t what I want to hear. I've come all the way to Blackpool so I can include a Blackpool tram in my onward journey. I have a long way to go today and this is clearly a setback.

“How far up the line do you go, then?” I ask. He shrugs, takes the damp £5 note I have in my hand and gives me a ticket, which isn't exactly the answer I wanted.

“Do you go to Cleverleys?”, I ask, a little urgently now. He mutters bleakly, which seems to suggest he might.

“Can I get a connecting bus from there to Fleetwood, then?” No answer. I ask him twice more and still get no coherent answer. So I leave it at that and find a seat where I can watch him carefully. 

A fellow passenger leans across and tells me that Blackpool's tramway infrastructure is now so decrepit that the entire northern section has had to be closed for repairs. This alarms me even more, particularly as our unhappy driver is now piloting our tram at alarming speed along the seafront in what seems to be an attempt to drive us straight into the sea. I decide to take my mind off the imminent danger by looking purposefully out of the window as mile after mile of blurred seafront hotels and bungalows whizz past, wondering why it is you can never find an escape hatch in the roof when you need one. 

Eventually, the tram clatters to a halt at Cleverleys, a village a few miles up the coast from Blackpool, where I spot a bright orange connecting bus to Fleetwood. I bid a relieved farewell to our mournful driver and dash across the road for my short onward connection.

The Were Ferry - short and sweet

Fleetwood is a busy little port with possibly the shortest, podgiest passenger ferry in the world. It's almost coracle-shaped. This, tide permitting, bobs precariously across the River Wyre from Fleetwood to the oddly-titled Knott End, a place that sounds like it could easily be the setting for a Tom Sharpe novel. 

Quite why it does so is a bit of a puzzle. Knott End is perfectly nice but it’s not exactly a teeming metropolis and it struck me that it seems a funny place to have a regular ferry service to. Perhaps everyone does what I’m doing - catching a bus to Lancaster. If so, then I hope they have better luck than me. I arrive to discover that the bus only runs every two hours, but that the last one left barely 30 minutes ago. So I find I have a whole 90 minutes to explore Knott End. 

I’m finished inside ten.

The streets of Knott End seem empty and eerily silent. Where is everyone? The atmosphere is like something out of a 1950's horror film and I keep expecting to find groups of blond-haired children staring at me with strange luminous eyes. I turn a corner and discover a cluster of village shops, all of which are eerily perfect – a neat little baker’s shop, a greengrocer with displays of vegetables tumbling onto the pavement outside, a post office. Perfect in every way. But no shoppers. Perhaps they all went to Lancaster...

Knott End

I'm slightly uneasy now, so I decide to keep my mind busy by wandering out onto the sands of Morecambe Bay which, with the tide well out, seem to disappear in all directions into the far, far distance. Today just happens to be World Ocean Day so to my mind it’s the perfect day for a walk on the beach, even if it is raining.

Oceans, according to the World Ocean Day website, cover more than 70% of the earth's surface. Morecambe Bay, however, seems to cover a lot more than that. It’s scale is vast and unsettling – it just goes on and on and on, a boundless empty plain of quicksand and rapid tides and the occasional well-publicised tragedy. As far as I can see there are only three practical uses for Morecambe Bay – long-distance endurance sand yachting, for those given to such things, mass beach football with teams of 10,000-a-side or more, or boldly walking out into the middle of the bay until you suffer an attack of the agoraphobic willies and scuttle quickly back to the shore. Having neither sand yacht nor football about me, I decide on the latter.

After what feels like an hour of walking – it was probably less than five minutes – I realise that instead of walking deliberately straight out into the bay I have unconsciously swerved through 90 degrees to walk parallel to the shore. That’s odd. I decide it is probably my brain’s way of telling me to stop. So, pretending to diligently beach-comb in the hope that the elderly dog walkers who are actually much further out than me don’t think I am a total wuss, I gradually make it back to the shore and wait in a nearby shelter for my heart rate to return to normal. My bus eventually arrives and I scurry out of the rain into the warmth of the 89 Stagecoach service to Lancaster.

555 service. Pic: Mark Egdell

Lancaster is where I am picking up the real daddy of them all, the 555 to Keswick which Stagecoach claims to be the most scenic bus service in Britain. They may be right. This is also the only bus service I've found with a whole book devoted to it, a walker's guide listing a dozen or more hill walks which either begin or end at a 555 bus stop. Now, isn’t that is a good idea.

Our road from Lancaster seems to progressively rise and roll almost as if it’s limbering up for the mountains to come. We pass through Carnforth where Noel Coward filmed the iconic railway scenes for his film 'Brief Encounter', then onwards through countryside littered with beautiful villages - Burton-in-Kendal under its limestone cliff, Holme with its First World War memorial in the form of a Celtic cross, pretty Milnthorpe. We are still getting occasional glimpses of Morecambe Bay to the west, too, and passing genuinely grand properties like Levens Hall with its collection of steam engines and regular chilli festivals, and the curiously-named Sizergh Castle. All the time the countryside seems to be gradually growing more muscular with the grey curtain of Lakeland hills to the north beginning to dominate the view. 

Kendal is dripping with rain as we arrive, a weather condition not at all unfamiliar in the Lake District. This is reckoned to be one of Britain's rainiest places. The town is also the home of Kendal Mint Cake which famously fuelled Edmund Hilary to the top of Everest and back, and it also boasts a youth hostel in what was once the town's brewery. Its bus station is considerably less grand though, little more than a canopy screwed to the side of a multi-storey car park.

Kendal bus station. Pic: Westmoreland Gazette

After a driver change we are off again, diving headlong into increasingly fabulous mountain scenery. We clamber out of Kendal on the road to Windermere where we get our first sight of a lake – which is Lake Windermere, obviously. Our bus makes a seemingly-impossible left turn into Windermere's tiny bus station and people begin getting on and off. The roads are busy and the pavements even busier. This is tourist country and they’re out in force even though it is pouring with rain. We've pulled in behind an open-topped sightseeing bus with four people on top valiantly resisting the downpour, their hats pulled tightly over their heads and jackets buttoned to the chin.

Shortly after leaving Windermere bus station we pull off the road at Troutbeck Bridge into the car park of The Lakes School, one of only a handful of secondary schools for youngsters growing up in the Lake District. The driver switches off the engine and we all wait, listening.

Eventually a bell rings in the distance, closely followed by the rising clamour of a thousand dis-incarcerated youngsters. A great tide of youth swiftly overwhelms the waiting bus... well, that’s how it felt. Personally, I enjoy travelling on buses filled with children. Yes, it can get a bit raucous sometimes but all that boisterous good humour has a habit of rubbing off. I like kids.

Not everyone sees the presence of young people on buses as a good thing, though. For example, in 2008, the people of Bolton had become so concerned about anti-social behaviour on their buses that they lobbied their local Public Transport Authority to recruit a team of uniformed officers to travel on buses to make sure everyone behaved themselves. Shame they didn't collect the fares too, otherwise they could have called them conductors.

Kids do seem to bring out the worst in some people. I've heard tales of kids being maliciously abandoned at the roadside miles from home just because they didn't have the right change. In Florida, one kid was even banned because of his apparently life-threatening flatulence. Now, I know kids can be a serious pain sometimes but adult tolerance can be notoriously fickle too. You wonder whether tales like this might have something more to do with the kind of day the driver's having than with the children themselves.

The road to Rydal

Our school children board and it all gets a bit noisier, but the scenery blots out the noise. The views are breathtaking and they just keep getting better and better as we shimmy through Ambleside and Rydal. We are really high up now, with the blue-grey mountains crowding in on both sides squeezing the scenery into stunning, compact little glimpses between the trees and over the lakes. And the view from the top deck is, as you might imagine, uninterrupted and utterly fabulous.

Finally, we make a rapid descent into Keswick, a picturesque little town which was the unlikely setting for yet another bus war once again involving Stagecoach, though this time it wasn't another bus operator it was at war with.

Stagecoach had big plans for Keswick's bus station, which it owned. These involved combining it with a range of new shops and a health centre. The company duly applied for planning permission, but were astonished when the council rejected their application outright. Instead, councillors gave permission for a similar scheme to a local development company even though they didn't actually own the land. Understandably, Stagecoach were more than a little miffed.

Their response caught many by surprise. As the existing bus station was regarded as an eyesore, the company decided to put some pressure on the council by making it even moreso. They brought 20 of their oldest and most dishevelled buses from a strategic reserve they kept in a field in Perthshire and created what appeared to be a bus graveyard in the middle of the town centre. There was outrage, especially as this was right in the middle of the busy tourist season. The town began to resemble a scrapyard and visiting coaches were being forced to park miles away. Local businesses were furious because free-spending tourists were starting to go elsewhere. The local MP joined the fray, accusing Stagecoach of using the town like '... some kind of Wells Fargo stage dump.'

“It is like holding a gun to the town's head,” he fumed. 

Stagecoach's response was that they had to keep their reserve fleet somewhere, so why not Keswick. Eventually, the council backed down, gave Stagecoach the planning permission they craved and the company’s old buses returned to their Perthshire field.

Penrith bus station

My onward connection pulls in just as we arrive and I'm forced to leap not-so-nimbly from one bus to another. This is the X5 to Penrith and it's a coach, the first on my journey so far. I barely have time to find a seat before we are romping onwards towards Penrith along the A66 and through the numerous small villages scattered alongside this busy major highway. The landscape is changing again. With the bulk of the Lakeland Hills to the south of us, Blencathra is now darkly dominating the northern skyline but falls away as we get to the market town Penrith.

We have technically left the Lake District now and are in the Eden Valley, more specifically Penrith's simple bus station where I am to get my last bus of the day, the 363 to Kirkby Stephen. This, I discover with an unexpected sense of pleasure, happens to be a sumptuously appointed mini-coach which is another first, not that I'm counting. Actually, I notice this is also the first vehicle I have travelled on which has a manual gearbox, apart from the museum pieces I used in Birmingham. 

Kirkby Stephen

It’s been a long day and I’m feeling slightly jaded, but the smooth run down the Eden Valley through picture-postcard scenery rich and green one moment and wild and windswept another refreshes me. Before long we are in Kirkby Stephen at the end of what has been my longest day so far.

Long, but far from expensive. When I told the driver at Knott End where I was going, he sold me an Explorer ticket which, for £9.85, has brought me all the way to Kirkby Stephen, a distance of more than 120 miles. That’s not much more than 8 pence a mile which, given that I've been travelling for 8 hours, is pretty good value.

And all that amazing scenery came absolutely free of charge.

NEXT: Kirkby Stephen to Whitley Bay - where I travel back across the Pennines on a bus called Harvey, find my schedule in tatters thanks to the closure of a famous bridge, and eventually bail out of Middlesbrough on an express bus for Gateshead.

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Map courtesy of those awfully nice people at Google