On The Buses, Not Starring Reg Varney
Part One - The Idea, The Plan, The Fool And His Bus Ticket
Ever have a daft idea?
Sometimes, when you have a strange thought it's a good thing to think it through before telling anyone, because once you say it out loud, people have a habit of saying, "Yes Simon, that's a great idea, why don't you do it?" See, I've always had the impression that the public transport network in Milton Keynes is, well, shall we say a tad unreliable? Yes, let's say that. From previous experience, buses have turned up late, been driven by people who think that 10mph is perilously close to Warp 1 and therefore a massively unsafe speed to be travelling at, or they've just not turned up at all - but am I being unfair on the bus network? Am I just being a misery guts? Probably, it's been mentioned before, but this is where my idea came in. It's taken 179 words to get to the point, but here it is. I wondered if it was at all possible to visit every single estate in Milton Keynes by only using public transport during the course of a single day. After all, how hard could it be? Surely there's only about 80 or 90 estates and there's always loads of buses trundling around the City Centre, so on paper this should be easy! Yes, no problem on paper, but unfortunately, buses drive on roads instead as they can take the weight better, and pretty soon I realised just what I'd got myself into. There now follows a paragraph break for dramatic effect. There'll be a few more of these, so don't think I'm doing this as a gimmick.
Preparation is everything.
Right then, if I was going to do this properly, I needed to plan ahead. After all, I didn't want to hop on a bus at The Point and get dropped off in Hazeley with no idea when or where the next bus was going to be, that'd be just silly. No, I needed a map of Milton Keynes and a bus timetable, that'd do the job. The map was no problem, as I'd managed to find a copy of the very latest edition of the official town plan, the one with the tagline "Roundabout 40 (clever mention of Milton Keynes' 40th birthday, I like that) and still in love (not too keen on that part)". The timetable was a bit trickier, though. None of the shops had the book with all the bus times in and neither had the library. What they did have however, was a load of leaflets full of timetable updates and stuff, so I grabbed those instead. Armed with the bus times and the map, it was time to work out the route, and that was when I discovered that the original plan was going to be a no-go. Turns out the buses didn't actually visit every estate after all. Right in the far western edge of the new town for example, Tattenhoe Park and Snelshalls East and West are completely ignored for the time being, and they're not the only ones, so that put paid to any chances of me visiting the whole lot. Still, how many estates were there anyway? Well, actually there's a "grand" total of 132. "Speechless" wasn't quite the right word as there are letters in it, so instead I settled for " " because it seemed to be far more apt. Up to now, I thought a clean sweep of the town was tricky but definitely possible, but there's no doubt about it, these revelations were definitely sprinkling rabbit droppings in my Coco Pops.
Impossible is nothing (thanks, adidas).
Time to look at alternatives then. Oh look, here's one. How about if I aimed to visit 100, plus the five railway stations dotted around the town? That should easily take up a day, I thought, so I got to work planning the day's travelling. It wasn't very interesting, so I won't bore you with all the details, suffice to say that if I was really lucky, then potentially I'd be making no fewer than six visits to Central Milton Keynes. Great. Don't blame me, blame the bus routes. The trickiest bit would be getting the bus for Milton Keynes village, but seeing as it's the place that gave its name to the town that's sprung up around it, I thought I really ought to at least try and include it somewhere in the journey. Mind you, do you know what a nightmare it is to get there on the bus? Honestly, there's only one that actually goes through the village. As if that's not bad enough, I'd have a fair old walk to get to the stop where the bus'd pick me up. That'll be interesting. That minor worry aside though, the plans were in place and the timetable checked, and now there wasn't really much more to do other than get myself down to Wolverton early one morning and hop on the first number 2 bus of the day (that's the route number, not an advance criticism of the service). Strangely enough, that's exactly what I decided to do and from now on I'll be relating the whole story in the present tense in an attempt to build up the mounting tension and excitement. It might work, it might not, but it's my article so I get to choose.
The big day, or something.
Getting up at quarter past five in the morning is just silly, it really is. It's mid-March, summer's gradually approaching, but I'm up so early the sun hasn't even bothered to come up yet. That's just wrong. What's more, at 6:00 there's a taxi waiting outside my house. Luckily, I booked it otherwise I'd be wondering what it was doing there, and before you can say "Are you sure this is a good idea?," I'm being whisked off to the Wolverton Agora in preparation for the first bus at 6:30. By this time, daylight's just starting to brighten things up a little - the weather forecasters predicted rain and all sorts for today, so Mother Nature decides to pee on their barbecue and show them who's boss by giving me a bright, sunny start to the day without a cloud in the sky.
Wolverton becomes the Number One area in Milton Keynes.
So here I am in downtown Wolverton, the taxi's driving off with ?4.50 of what used to be my money and behind me, market stall holders are putting their wares out on display. And it's a bit chilly. I've got twenty minutes to kill before my first bus so I do a spot of aimless wandering like you do, but as there isn't much to see apart from the Agora and a large number of red brick houses, within a short time I make my way back to the bus stop. While I'm waiting, two Number 13 buses stop here, which is odd considering they're not listed on the timetable. However, there are a few people getting on and off, so at least they know what's going on even if I haven't got the foggiest. Finally, just before 6:30, the number 2 trundles in and my first bus of the day has arrived. Ah well, no going back now - it would've been a damned sight easier to have sat at home and pretended I'd done the route, but on the bright side, it's a day out isn't it? I cough up for the unlimited one day ticket (at ?3 for the day, it's safe to say this bad boy's going to pay for itself many times over) and it's one down, ninety-nine to go. Piece of cake! Well, that's the plan anyway.
Reproduced with awfully kind permission from MeltingPot Media. ©2007 Simon Darnell.
