Category Archives: Public Transport

Life, Public Transport, Retrospective

From Cullercoats to Whitley Bay

Well, we didn’t actually go to Cullercoats, but I’m not going to miss the chance of squeezing in a song lyric.

Back in May (I’m writing this in late August, but will fudge the timestamp) we went away, to Whitley Bay, staying almost opposite the famous Spanish City:

Whitley Bay's Spanish City on a sunny day
The Spanish City

We had a easy journey up (though the return one proved to be tedious), notwithstanding me gouging lumps out of the passenger mirror in our parking space, and found our way into the property. The property was a bit of a mixed bag: spacious, but a bit tatty in places, but with a stunning view (including the Spanish City).

We had sunshine a lot of the time, but it was cold for May for a good few days, a hazard of the North East, I suppose.

We wandered about a little, went into Newcastle and Gateshead to see the Baltic:

The Baltic Arts Centre, Gateshead, from over the river
The Baltic Arts Centre, Gateshead, from over the river

The Metro was excellent: between that and the Ferry (and a short cab ride to the Baltic) we got around to Tynemouth, North Shields, South Shields, the city centre, Gateshead, and back quickly and efficiently.

There were a few pubs.

Life, Piers, Public Transport, Pubs

Eastbourne II

We went back to Eastbourne, after 17 years.

This time, it wasn’t Sovereign Harbour, as back 17 years ago we could walk more, so being out of town wasn’t an issue, but this time we wanted more facilities.

So, the Old Town was the place, on a busy bus route, with a park, cafes, pubs, and a huge Waitrose within our much reduced walking distance.

Recent events that I’m not going in to here and now meant we’d considered not going, but it was paid for, our wonderful nibling was lined up to cat and house sit, and at the end of the day, it was in the UK and I was driving, so we were in control, so off it was for the delights of the M6T, M42, M40 with a brief pitstop for a slash and a sandwich, M25, M23, A23, A27, encountering the outskirts of Brighton.

So, with about a 4hr 30min journey time (M25 LOLs!) we arrive, and unusually don’t hit the pub straight away, leaving that for the next day. Just Eat to the rescue (and a superb but pricey curry)!

The next day saw us wander to Gildredge Park, dodging the rain in a cafe, and later excellent food at The Lamb Inn.

Weather overall was a bit changeable and cooler than we might have hoped, but we did get sun in Eastbourne itself, in Bexhill, and in Brighton, where we rode the i360, and I got asked to zip my coat over the “Sample it, loop it, fuck it and eat it” T shirt 🙄 “because there’s kids about”.

Remains of Brighton's West Pier
The remains of Brighton’s West Pier: Not much left now. At the foot of the i360.

This holiday made a contrast to last year’s trip to Southwold: less sunshine, a lot less expenditure, even given this was the south coast. More facilities: all those things my soft,metropolitan elite ass whinged about Southwold lacking existed easily, the taxis, multiple buses, takeaways, wide range of restaurants and supermarket all existed, and made life easier. The cashless transactions abounded- all buses took them, and the De la Warr Pavillion expressed no preference over cash or card for £2.50: Brighton Palace Pier were actively promoting taking cashless admission charges by card (it’s £1!), and generally, cash was the less popular choice.

The one tech fail was Uber, which had poor availability, but even if you had to call a taxi like some Neanderthal, you didn’t need cash to pay, even if I actually did use cash for that- probably the only cash transaction all week.

This made for an easier time for food, drink and getting about, even with the car staying parked all week and the limited walking range and general tiredness, which was nice.

Pubs over here at PubBlog.

Return journey saw more M25 fun, with a brief (as brief as possible) pistop at Beaconsfield Services once the M25 was dispensed with, and nearly 5 hours, not including that stop…

Architecture, Life, Public Transport, Pubs

Jewel

I had some time off work, and we decided to do something with some of it.

Last year, we went to Coventry, this year, even closer to home, with Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter. In one way, it seems daft to stay overnight so close to home, but the hotel was a good price, so the increment over a taxi was less than you’d think, and the bonus of being able to just walk back is worth noting.

Also, we had a number of targets in mind: a bit of sightseeing, a few pubs, and a new dining experience, so we found ourselves on a train to New Street again, and went in search of our first target:

"Ozzy" the bull
“Ozzy” the bull, made for the Commonwealth Games, in his new home.

In what they’re now calling Grand Central, the confusingly laid out resurgence of Birmingham New Street and The Pallasades, “Ozzy” has a new home, after public pressure saved him from being dismantled, and he’s quite a magnificent sight.

Onwards. In previous times, we’d have taken a walk out of town down Livery St, but that’s a bit far at one stretch, and rather convienently, the West Midlands Metro runs from Edgbaston “village” (wankers), through the city calling at BHM before rejoining the original line at Snow Hill, handily passing our hotel near St Pauls, and dropping us on Vyse St by the ornamental pissers.

A short walk took us to The Button Factory for lunch, handily dodging the worst of the rain. Onwards to 1000 Trades for another drink, then a quick weave through the backstreets, emerging near the magnificence of The Gothic.

The Gothic, Birmingham
The Gothic, ex pub, now apartments.

The Gothic is now apartments, having been refurbished by Cordia Blackswan, and now a much better sight than nearly 10 years ago:

The Gothic
What was The Gothic pub in Great Hampton Row, Birmingham, in 2013.

Then, we went to church again, went and checked in to our hotel for a nap.

Then, we had a new dining experience planned. The Blue Nile has been on Great Hampton Row for some time, and we finally got there. It’s Ethiopian cuisine. A new one on me, and the food was delicious and the owner welcoming.

In all, a pleasant day and evening, a comfortable night’s sleep, and a new experience, all pretty close to home.

Life, Public Transport, Pubs

So, the buses are still shite, then.

We took another trip to Willenhall- almost a year after the last one.

We wanted to go and see a good friend, and we had in mind a few pubs: The Robin Hood, The Noah’s Ark, and the refurbed County, but that all got fucked up by NXWM: the 529 didn’t pitch up, and we got on a 41 for a “delightful” tour of Bentley, Short Heath, and New Invention. This, after finishing with a tour of Willenhall’s least attractive sights, dumped us the wrong end of town, an awful lot later than planned, so we only managed The County before going to see said friend.

Once again, we gave up on the concept of a bus home and booked an Uber, because, well, it’s pointless.

Life, Public Transport, Pubs

A Series of Unfortunate Events

It was Saturday, we had no specific thing we needed to do, and somehow, we both independently thought:

Willenhall.

As I mentioned to a friend by message:

Now, it’s not that mental an idea. Willenhall still has a good pub density, even if one of the best has now gone. It’s well served by bus, and not too far if NWWM don’t manage to run a bus service.

It started to go wrong when we missed a 10 in Walsall Wood. This isn’t a huge problem but it was a poor omen. Still, we made the next one, and found ourselves on a 529.

Which is where the annoyances really started, with a young, but not that young, lady playing 3 second long excerpts from every shit song on her mobile, then conducting a loud speakerphone conversation, then watching some vacuous makeup video, while we all got to share in the audio of it all. I was polite, if not charming.

Off the 529 and into the ‘spoons. We needed lunch, and it’s right by the stop.

Kids running around. Someone smelt of piss. Lunch was shit, as was my beer (which wasn’t my first choice anyway). We left for another nearby pub and sat outside, with more speakerphone action, if not so bad. Onwards, and we visit a new, if unexceptional pub– or at least, it’s been renamed and the last visit was c1991. No complaints here, except the lack of wine.

Final disappointment of the day: The County, a pub I fondly remembered for its atmosphere and several real ales, but in the intervening years seems to have become just another run-down urban pub with football and mediocre beer.

Politics, Public Transport, Rants

Unreliable

Regular readers (reader?) will know that I’m a regular public transport user, and given the places I go, this often means buses. I’ve ranted before now on the shortcomings of our bus network and how privatisation has failed it, and now we have to face a new problem, or at least one that is harder to fix now.

The bus services around here, particularly those operated by the Walsall depot- have been increasingly unreliable in recent months, for what was, generally, a quite reliable service- it’s left us stranded in Brownhills, unable to get to Lichfield, and it’s left us stranded in Walsall multiple times.

It goes like this: the bus you’ve gone for doesn’t turn up. Then the next doesn’t. All the live times disappear from any app you happen to use.

My increasing difficulty walking any great distance has meant that this has meant a taxi: at last count I was about £45 down.

This clearly isn’t good enough: I’m only using buses for socialising^W drinking; but time and time again, while we’ve been waiting, we’ve seen people on their way to or from work, and it’s not a giant leap to say most of these will be lower-paid.

So, anyway, I complained to National Express. they said:

I have asked the manager at the operating garage to ascertain what went wrong on this occasion. Our records show that the service did not run due to no drivers available to operate the service, which unfortunately is caused by the UK driver shortages.

Although this is far from ideal service, we are going through an ongoing program to recruit more drivers in order to increase service levels, and we will continue to monitor the service over the coming weeks in order to make necessary adjustments where possible.

I have also noted that you have forwarded your taxi receipt to us. Therefore, I am delighted to reimburse you in the form of a cheque. Please allow up to 4-weeks at the latest for the cheque to be processed by our finance team and sent to your home address.

I’m still waiting for that cheque.

i also wrote to Councillor Richard Worrall, who is vice-chair of the WMCA Transport Delivery Committee. Rchard has been an excellent local councillor for many years and has been a local champion of public transport. He answered my email promptly and personally, too, which was great.

He had this to say:

Thank you for getting in touch and I am sorry, but not surprised, to hear of recent problems. I use the Brownhills services (and others), a lot, and your experience mirrors mine.

You may have seen notices posted recently at bus stations regarding driver shortages and the effect this is having on providing the timetabled level of service, and you will be familiar with the issue, which appears to be that bus drivers and would-be bus drivers are being attracted away by better pay in the haulage sector, so I imagine that will be at the root of our problem.

That said, I shall take the matter up, both with Transport for West Midlands as the public body to represent us, and with NXWM as operator, and then come back to you with the responses I get, hopefully with news of steps being taken to improve matters.

Then later:

I have feedback now and this is my understanding of the position. NB: please don’t shoot the messenger!

1. As I thought, the issues we are experiencing with our bus services are down to driver shortages (better rates of pay in haulage sector, significant numbers of East European drivers leaving the UK to return to their home countries, etc).

2. In order to increase reliability. NXWM are revising their timetables w.e.f. 5 June, which will mean reduced frequencies on some routes so that, the company say, services can be delivered more reliably than now, as they’re matched to actual driver availability levels.

3. In the case of the Brownhills services 10 and 10A, I understand that frequencies will reduce to four per hour.

I think that, as my recent experience in West Sussex shows, this is a national problem, and it actually needs a national solution which, if the Government is serious about promoting public transport (which they’d say they are, but which I rather doubt!), it needs some kind of effective action to recruit more drivers. I will seek to promote some lobbying to this effect through Walsall Council and West Midlands Combined Authority channels.

So, another Brexit Bonus. The pandemic has played its part, obviously, but unlike when this last happened, we’re not able to easily recruit Polish drivers, because we told them all to fuck off home. Meanwhile, the haulage industry, also missing EU drivers, has upped its rates, meaning more competition for drivers.

I do have a bit of sympathy for National Express here: they’re faced, like the rest of us, with rising costs, and they have a driver shortage and no hope of recruiting any in the short term, so they’ve had to cut services and adjust timetables to match that.

Doesn’t exactly give you hope for public transport, does it? We’ve consciously adjusted our behaviour to take this into account, by either not going out, or staying closer to home where the cost of a taxi is lower if we need it.

Meanwhile, I get my socialising disrupted, which is just an inconvenience, but this also hits disproportionately at the lower paid workers, already struggling with escalating food and energy costs, by making their working day even longer, harder, and potentially expensive by hitting their travel options.

Life, Piers, Public Transport, Pubs

Aberystwyth

I’d booked time off, and we’d been hoping I might have been driving again, but no dice (in fact, not a peep out of the DVLA), so the idea of going away, taking family members by car was off. Instead, my better half decided where we went, and convenient and cheap by train pushed Aberystwyth to the front (direct train from Wolverhampton at a decent price, affordable accomodation). Also: there’s a pier we hadn’t been to yet, the last time we managed that was 2019.

So then, a lift to Wolves, and on to a not-too-crowded train, and a surprisingly irritant-free journey later, we step off the train, and into our first pub for lunch.

Aberystwyth is a university town and it shows: many pubs are a bit studenty, and while there’s a few run down bits there’s affluence here too: new-agey lifestyle shops, delicatessens, and a cookware shop selling Le Creuset. There’s good restaurants, but also cheaper-end takeaways. The university obviously brings in money and also provides a decent supply of workers for the bars and restaurants now we’ve told a lot of non-student Europeans to fuck off.

Back to the pier: it’s not pretty, which is a shame as most of the seafront is quite attractive.

Aberystwyth Pier: Clevedon it isn’t.

It took us 3 visits to be allowed out on the “sun deck” at the back, and sun was in short supply. Odd fake trees, too.

The ier from the end of the deck
Aluminium tread plate and fake trees.

A bit of a sad image compared to times gone by, but then I suppose the changes give extra retail space that contribute to the upkeep, and to be fair, The Billiard Bar wasn’t unpleasant.

Other than the pier and all the pubs? Well, nice meals (Greek and Caribbean made a nice change), a nice view, a lovely trip out to Devil’s Bridge by steam train (no sign of the Devil’s doorbell 😉 ), and some well-needed R&R.

The return journey was pretty good too, and even the 529 didn’t completely foul things up…

Life, Public Transport, Pubs

Go West!

I used to claim as a joke that Wales started anywhere west of Gailey, which is of course untrue, but it does all change out west away from the conurbation.

The second of our short breaks following on from Burton took us somewhere quite different: Shrewsbury. They’re both market towns, of course, but Burton’s growth was the Victorian era and brewing, Shrewsbury’s growth was older and based in the fact that it is a easily defensible site that’s almost Wales and as a trading post and coach halt.

Our arrival was via Walsall and then the newly turd-polished Wolverhampton station: to be fair, the refurb has changed the station over the last few years from a dismal, cramped place to a much better place, good given the great connections there. Our last visit was just pre-covid, in 2019, and it is actually looking to be near completion now.

A short, but too crowded train journey (2 coaches on a train from Birmingham International to Holyhead? Really?) saw us in Shrewsbury by the rather magnificent station. A false start with a few closed pubs nearby, and we got a pint, then a pint and a cob, then we went to prison.

More pubs followed.

The next day saw us starting with a pub, but soft drinks only and breakfast. Tim Martin might be an utter prick as regards his staff and his fuckwit political views, but breakfast at a comfortableish table for about half the price of the hotel can’t be argued with. Also, the schadenfraude of them advertising shortages due to supply chain problems gave a bit of hollow “not really funny” amusement.

A brief sit in a park watching the au pairs with the children of Shropshire’s wealthy, then a boat trip around the loop of the river between the English and Welsh bridges took us to lunchtime. More pubs then, a bit of shopping (!), a meal, and bedtime. The next day saw us back at Wolverhampton sadly a bit too early to drop into any pubs there; it has been a long time since I saw the inside of The Posada.

Life, Public Transport, Pubs

Something in the Water

We had planned a trip to Scotland this September, but events knackered that, so with the leave already booked we needed to do something with some of the time.

We’d been planning a trip to Burton-upon-Trent, the historical centre of English brewing for some time: the combination of pubs and a restaurant we specifically wanted to visit gave us an excuse, so a hotel was booked, and we headed for Lichfield (from where there is a fast bus service to Burton that handily almost passed the hotel). We tried the X35 bus to la-di-dah Lichfield- further to walk this end (which is a bit painful and tiring, but avoids a change in Brownhills), but direct and fast, but then just missed the Burton bus as we pulled in, so had to go and find somewhere dry to wait (as Lichfield bus station has no undercover seating).

The X12(PDF) is surprisingly fast and frequent- using the A38 rather than minor roads for the bulk of its journey, so that found us in Burton shortly after mid-day, so we obviously headed to the nearest pub.

We managed an impressive pub count, some planned, some just chanced upon, but sadly didn’t manage The Cooper’s Tavern as the opening hours, location, and our increasingly drunken state by the time we got to The Devonshire Arms didn’t fit with circumstances: a few years ago we’d have walked miles around the town and fitted it in, but that’s not possible these days: the furthest out we managed walking was to Stapenhill Gardens via the viaduct and Ferry Bridge, which are both lovely. Other than that, we made it around some of the town centre pubs, got a look at some of the architecture, and (on our second day, when the rain had stopped), got to sit in the sun a bit.

Life, Public Transport, Pubs

Desi Pubs, Part 3

It was well about time. A blog entry detailing a pub adventure instead of whinging about fuckwittery.

For reasons, we’d left the Desi Pub Tour hanging back in November 2018, with a wander around West Brom on a cold, damp November day. We only had one left from the book, but it was a 3-bus job, and we’d discounted it before as it has limited hours on weekdays.

Saturday it was, then. A trip into Walsall gave us an inauspicious start: the NXWM bus driver didn’t seem to understand a NBUS ticket, giving us a NX Daysaver instead, and the crowded bus had people hogging 2 seats. To cap it, the bus to West Brom that was waiting was a Diamond one that we couldn’t catch, but could have done if we’d had the NBUS…

Things improved though: a NX bus pitched up, we trundled out through Caldmore, got to West Brom, and found the correct bus out through the delights of Oldbury from the surface this time.

16 minutes later, we got to The Fourways and completed our quest. Lunch, and a couple of drinks, back on the bus. A drop in at The Railway gave us a convenient change for direct bus back to Walsall. A pleasant excursion and a small pub adventure complete.