I’ve not been so active in travelling this year for various reasons – not least the poor weather – and I’ve not made the best of the good weather this week but I did get out for a trip yesterday. This was not the most ambitious but was an opportunity to see some places closer to home and some old and new routes.
I started at Princes Risborough, parking as an ancient V-plate B7TL of Red Line wheezed up the hill to the local school. This vehicle is crossed out on BusTimes but is operating and even ran on the 130 later in the day. I spent a few minutes walking round the town, it’s a typical middle class home counties town, not bad with a few quieter back streets but nothing special. What is unusual here is genuinely competitive commercial bus routes between High Wycombe and Aylesbury. Arriva run the X9, running every 20 minutes although with big gaps in each peak and about to be reduced to every 30 minutes, mainly running via the long-standing route through Naphill but also with a few peak X90 journeys via Saunderton. Meanwhile Redline run the 130, all via Saunderton, every 15 minutes during the day and around every 20 minutes in the peaks, avoiding big gaps in service. Between Aylesbury and Prices Risborough and also for through journeys to High Wycombe the routes compete head-to-head. What is clear is that there is plenty of traffic and with the £2 fare most passengers appear to take whatever comes first. Arriva, being Arriva, also had missing journeys and there was a one hour gap when I arrived so I opted for the first Redline journey that turned up – they seemed to be running to time although most journeys oddly track as S130. I had hoped for one of the new Volvo B8RLE but instead got an E200. This was on time, well presented and clean and had a decent load already on board with passengers coming and going all the way, some alighting at Stoke Mandeville hospital, several college students alighting at Aylesbury station and also several shoppers even though this was before concessionary passes kicked in.
My next leg was with to get the Red Rose 16 to Steeple Claydon. I toyed with the idea of getting the previous journey and spending an hour in Quainton but I didn’t have quite enough time for this if I was go get a coffee and bacon roll so I didn’t – a good decision as it turned out. Instead I wandered around some of the quiet back streets of Aylesbury town centre, some of which is very quiet and quite a contrast with the busy inner ring road. With Arriva’s withdrawal from all the local routes Red Rose is now the main operator locally with a number of buses running around, mainly E200s but also some double deckers on the 9 locally and the 50 out to Wendover. The 16 that I then took was a now fairly rare Scania N94 with East Lancs Esteem body with an RRT registration. I think this was originally 06 registered, possibly with Metrobus although I thought Plymouth also had some of these. It didn’t really seem any bigger than an E200 so I don’t know why they still have three of these, but they still make good Scania noises and just seem more substantial than an E200. We hurried out of Aylesbury with just four on board and then hit a big queue on the A41 before Waddesdon. Four way traffic lights for HS2 works at a crossroads – so annoying. The bus before us was 26 minutes late getting to Waddesdon and then did not go to Quainton, things had improved slightly and we were just 20 minutes late at Waddesdon. A couple alighted and the driver checked the two remaining passengers didn’t want to go to Quainton so we missed that out too, also missing out Calvert and arriving about 10 minutes late in Steeple Claydon. The area around here was covered in massive HS2 and East-West rail works sites, all the working locations seemed vast and with massive compounds and ancillary construction – it does appear to me to be somewhat over-engineered – does it really need to be so expensive?
I don’t find the Buckinghamshire villages around here particularly attractive. Grendon Underwood is a straggly drawn-out village with nothing worth seeing and there is a prison in nearby Edgcott with another apparently approved for construction. Steeple Claydon is more compact but it is a red brick village with few shops and, seemingly, little soul. My next leg was on the Langston and Tasker 18 to Bicester. As I arrived the Buckingham-bound journey was just passing through with about 4 on board and 10 minutes late. Tracking here is a bit hit-and-miss, it was not tracking and the vehicle was not the one shown on BusTimes as setting off in the morning. It was another E200 with L24LNT, another personalised registration, this bus has not tracked since last summer. By the time it returned it was only 5 minutes late but the HS2 works meant several road closures. In the end we went to all the right villages but definitely not in the right order. We did a loop round a large new housing area at Calvert, then Twyford, then Charndon. Next was Marsh Gibbon where the influence of Cotswold stone can be seen in the buildings, finally arriving at Bicester about 10 minutes late.
I didn’t have much time at Bicester, maybe I will return another day, but this is a pretty modern town with a massive amount of recent housing estates and building works continuing. Plus Bicester Village of course, but I have no wish to go there again! My next leg was on a relatively new route, the Stagecoach H5. This hourly service links Bicester with the John Radcliffe Hospital and Headington in Oxford. The S5 links Bicester to Oxford city and I assume H5 is a hospital derivative of that, the same applies to Witney with the H2 to the hospital alongside the S2 fast to Oxford city. I forget when this started but I don’t think it is more than a few years ago that this was introduced, presumably with Oxfordshire funding to build up a new market. Well, I can report it has succeeded, there were about 20 on board at Bicester and I got the last window seat. This was another E200 although I have seen double deckers on the route, indeed there is one today. The start of the journey saw us visit Graven Hill, a new development on former army land on the edge of town, although nobody wanted that stop. Several alighted in Ambrosden, where the H5 is part of a half hourly service to this current army village, but we were still around 10 passengers heading into the Otmoor countryside. This area used to be virtually unserved except for the infrequent Charlton on Otmoor route to Oxford which I recall run by an ex-City of Oxford AEC Renown, with something like one journey a week to Bicester. Now it is hourly. The route goes through Merton, where a skip lorry held us up for about 5 minutes, but does not go through the other villages like Charlton on Otmoor, although there is a stop near the village where a passenger boarded. One alighted and one boarded in Islip, another village which used to have virtually no public transport but now has an hourly bus and a train service. We then went through the old Barton estate and then the new Barton Park estate, a few people alighted here, perhaps having been shopping in Bicester, but most were going to the hospital and a couple, like me, to Headington. We picked up more at the hospital – the H5 does a one way loop via the hospital and then Headington – so the bus would have had double figures heading back across Otmoor as well. This seems like a real success story.
Then from the new and growing to the old and declining. I was going to take the Carousel 275 to High Wycombe, a route about to be reduced further. I could see it was running late so I had time to first take an Arriva X7 to Wheatley. This was an E400, my only double decker of the day. This runs every 30 minutes and is complemented by the X8 which also runs every 30 minutes as far as Thame but missing out Wheatley. Once again there is competition with Redline providing an X20 also every 30 minutes, this is about 15 minutes quicker end-to-end as it doesn’t include Wheatley or Haddenham. As far as Wheatley there is also the Oxford 400 which runs frequently, although this takes longer as it serves the Park and Ride. There were a number of passengers on the X7 and it is difficult to tell who is winning the competition but the fact that Arriva are planning to withdraw the X8 shortly suggests it may not be them. I alighted at Wheatley and spent a few minutes in the village centre before heading off to the 275. The 275 does not go through the centre of Wheatley quite the same way as the X7, taking a slightly quicker route around the centre. I went to the bus stop closest to the village, accessed via a pathway alongside the church. This stop only appears to be served four times a day by the 275 although a couple of journeys on the Redline X20 also go past it and an MCV Evora bodied Volvo B8RLE passed. My 275 was now 20 minutes late and was run by another E200, this time a black one of Oxford Bus heritage, although run from High Wycombe. There has been a debate on the Carousel thread about this route and I was interested to see for myself what the loadings were, this being the journey on which Oxford shoppers would return. There were eight on board at this point and I would assume that all the others boarded in Oxford city or Headington. We continued down the old A40 to near Lewknor and then turned left into Chinnor. One passenger alighted in Tetsworth and three in Chinnor, where we took a very circuitous route around the village finishing in the Kiln estate, built where the cement works used to be. We then continued through the strung-out village of Bledlow Ridge where there are a couple of views of the Chilterns but otherwise it is fairly dull. The driver was very slow and we lost a little more time. The other passengers, four including myself, continued to High Wycombe, so there clearly is a little demand for a through service, although not enough to be commercially justifiable. What these passengers will do when the service only runs to Chinnor remains to be seen. I don’t know if there are any flows from the Bledlow Ridge area into Wycombe, while Chinnor has an hourly bus to Wycombe anyway.
So back to Prices Risborough, again I was open to which service came first. As it happened I just missed a Citaro on the Arriva X9 and this was followed by a 50 minute gap so I wasn’t going to wait for this. A Redline E200 was not far off and there appeared to be a gap in service after this so I took the Redline bus. Again a good load with people alighting and boarding in the section through Saunderton which historically had no service at all, although many passengers were clearly headed to Princes Risborough and beyond. We arrived at the same time as the X9 which had taken a longer route. The evidence here would suggest that Redline are doing better on the High Wycombe to Aylesbury corridor. However if Arriva were to give up there would be a need for the route via Naphill to have at least some service – maybe every 30 minutes via each route would suffice with a little extra in peak hours for the school flows.
A warm day out, mostly sunny and hot in places. Yes I would have liked to be been more adventurous and gone further from home but I had time constraints and maybe I will have another opportunity soon.
I would add some photos but mine refuse to upload...? There must be some rule I am not obeying - I hate IT - update - cracked it. Seems the width of each image needs to be fewer than 5,000 pixels....
Princes Risborough, a quiet backstreet
Aylesbury, ditto, just round the corner from the central squares
Steeple Claydon
HS2 construction works near Charndon
Bicester
Distant view of Charlton on Otmoor
Wheatley
View from Bledlow Ridge
My early Explorer trips were dominated by Olympians, VRs and Nationals and I fondly recall the breakneck runs across Co Durham, 510 engine roaring away, so I'd quite like a trip on one of those.