On The Buses, Not Starring Reg Varney

Part Three - The Final Tally.

Before things get better, they have to get worse.

So here's the situation. I'm aiming to visit 100 estates and all 5 railway stations, I'm well into the nineties and until nine minutes past two o'clock, everything was going fine. Now, however, thanks to me mixing up the 17 and 17A routes, the plans I had for the rest of the afternoon have been chucked in the blender. Right then, well, I've got three quarters of an hour to kill before the next bus and there's a McDonald's in Kingston. I've stopped there for a milkshake, visited the smallest room and now I'm considering my options. Do I catch the next bus from Kingston to the City Centre and then get the trains out of the way, thereby settling for 90-something estates? I could do that, after all there's no shame in doing 90-something, I could do a proper count-up back at the office and you never know, I might even have done 100 and not known it! Oh dear, God help me, I'm almost getting excited by all this. What are the other options? Well, not many really. To be honest, time's not an issue for me now, I've got this far, at the very least I ought to try and finish the job even if it means a much later end to the day. I check the plan, such as it is, and do you know what, there's only three more buses on the list. Sod it, let's go for it, I'd kick myself if I didn't at least have a go. So, back I go to Middleton then and wait for the 17. Thankfully, it's not long before the 17 trundles into view and trundles straight past me. Yes, it really did. I thought I knew the proper way to hail a bus, but evidently not. Apparently, if you stand at a bus stop in plain view with your arm outstretched while staring at the approaching bus, nowadays that means "Please ignore me and carry on", which is precisely what the bus driver did. What a muppet. However, I'm not easily beaten - let's face it, three of my good ideas have gone up in smoke already since I got off the bus at Kents Hill, and within a couple of seconds I've devised a Plan D. It's not a very good plan if I'm honest, but who cares? I know the bus uses only one route in and out of Middleton, so if I make my way to the junction in time I might just catch it on the way out. Told you it wasn't very good, but it's all I have left. If this doesn't work, that's it - it's all over bar the railway stations.

Middleton of nowhere.

So here I am, wandering around Middleton, looking like someone who doesn't really know where he is, constantly looking around in case the bus appears and to be honest, it's not looking too good right now. I've already walked down a couple of streets that've turned out to be cul-de-sacs and by the time I see the junction, there's no way I'll get to it before the bus goes through - that's assuming that the bus is even still in Middleton! Just at this point, Lady Luck decides to stop pointing at me and laughing just for a second and to my surprise, I can hear the bus arriving behind me. This time he is NOT going to drive past and I'm almost in the road waving at him to stop - it's a trick that seems to work so bear it in mind. Bit on the dangerous side, though. The downside is that he's picked me up after going through Milton Keynes village, so that's one I can't tick off the list, but on the bright side Woughton-on-the-Green and Woolstone are done and dusted... and that's it for the estates. I think I've just about managed 100 (I originally counted 101 along the route, good job I left myself plenty of leeway, eh?), but I won't know for certain until I've finished and have a chance to check. I would check through the route map on the bus, but I can't be bothered. Now, it's all about getting to Wolverton and getting the stations out of the way.

Magic numbers.

Of course, I could tell you about the exciting things that happened on the buses between Central Milton Keynes and Wolverton railway station, but nothing much happened. Well, there were a couple of things I suppose. I had the good fortune to be going through Two Mile Ash during the school run, and the sight of people rushing back to their cars with kids in tow and then piling out of the parking spaces reminded me of old style motor racing when the drivers used to run to their cars before pelting round the track, proper "Gentlemen, start your engines" type stuff. The other thing that happened that might interest you occurred when my bus pulled into Stony Stratford. Off I get, searching around for the number 23 which will take me to Wolverton station and the train part of the journey... and it's not there. That's a bit worrying, after all the route starts here so the bus should be here - and that's when I noticed the driver of the bus I've just left changing the numbers on the front of his vehicle. I did think it was a bit unlikely, but you never know, it's worth a look. Lo and behold, the number 4 magically turned into the number 23 - result! The driver looked a bit surprised when I got back on, but that's not my fault, I'm just doing what needs to be done. He does his bit too, and before you know it I'm at Wolverton railway station.

Station to station.

Considering its place in railway history, Wolverton station's a bit rubbish. It looks like it was put in quickly, cheaply and with little attention to detail. There's a sign saying MIND THE GAP, and they're not kidding - when the train pulls in and the doors open, there's a massive space between the platform and the train! God alone knows how disabled people and the elderly manage to traverse the chasm, it's ridiculous. Anyway, we're off and to be fair, the train's actually quite comfy. LED signs hanging from the ceiling tell you where you are and where the next stop's going to be, there's plenty of legroom and as a result, it's almost entirely unlike what I was expecting. We pass through Milton Keynes Central, only stopping to pick up a shedload of people, and at Bletchley it's time for me to disembark. If this was how trains are nowadays, my next connection is probably going to be a bit like stepping back into the 1980s.

The Tilbrook Thunderbolt.

The final leg of the journey then, and it's via the Bedford to Bletchley line. I used to use this line on a daily basis, and compared to the line I've just travelled on, this is very much an afterthought. It doesn't look much on a map, but it does link the Thameslink line with the West Coast Main Line and apparently, it's getting extended soon. First, it'll get a new terminal at Milton Keynes Central (direct from Milton Keynes to Bedford? How convenient!), and for their next trick they're going to try taking the line out to Oxford. It's going to be amazing, it's going to be wonderful, it's going to be... completely different to what we have now. Make no mistake, the train I travelled on was a disgrace. It looked like it was built in the 1980s, which is no bad thing, after all most of Milton Keynes was too, unfortunately it looked like it hadn't been cleaned since the 1980s either. Now, I've been on the London Underground, so I'm used to grubby transport, but this was grim. Still, on the bright side, at least there's plenty of legroom... if you happen to be three feet tall - anyone taller than that's going to find it a bit cramped. The train itself was delayed in leaving, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was because they were feeding the horses at the front. Finally however, the driver put his feet through the floor, started to jog and the Tilbrook Thunderbolt was on its way. To be fair, once you get out of Bletchley the view's not too bad at all, plenty of fields, a good view of Caldecotte Lake and the train moves at a nice leisurely pace too. If the trains were clean and comfy, this would've been a rather nice end to the day, but there you go, I have to call it as I see it. Mind you, Fenny Stratford station looks a lot brighter and more open than it used to, it looks like they've pulled down a scrapyard or something and replaced it with a rather nice looking housing estate. As for Bow Brickhill, the final stop on the day's itinerary, well... it's still little more than two planks of wood and a bus shelter either side of the tracks. Marvellous, but then at the end of the day, you don't need much more than that. It's out in the sticks, so not much point building anything grand and exciting. I can't help feeling this line deserves a lot better than it's currently got, and hopefully the line extensions will help to rectify the situation. At the end of the day though, it's the end of the day. I've done nearly all I set out to do, I've reached the journey's end and I'm knackered.

On The Buses - Epilogue.

Epilogue I - three days later.

A few days after my jolly jaunt around the town, I did a final tally-up of the estates and discovered that I hadn't visited 100 as I'd hoped. I'd done 108 instead. One hundred and eight. Hell's bells. Considering there are 132 estates, that's not bad going, is it? Add to that all five railway stations in the town and I'd say that's a pretty successful day, all told. Now that I've had time to reflect on the day, I have to be honest and say that I was pleasantly surprised by the buses in general. MK Metro actually did a good job of ferrying me about on ten different routes and when it did go horribly wrong, that wasn't down to them - I misread the route map (schoolboy error or what?), and the 17 was run by another bus operator. As for the trains, they both ran slightly late, but only by a minute or two and the only real complaint I have is with the condition of the Bedford-Bletchley train. I suspect I'm not the only one there either. So, does this town have a good transport network that can get you where you want to go? During the day, it appears that that may indeed be the case, but just by looking at the timetables, once it gets past 6:00 in the evening, it's a bit of a lottery. A whole load of routes simply close down and others are reduced to hourly services. Easily accessible public transport? It certainly would be if there were more evening services, after all, not everybody finishes work at 5:30 these days, some shifts go on well into the night. Still, at the end of it all, I managed to achieve what I thought I wouldn't and that's no bad thing. Maybe I just caught MK Metro and its drivers on a good day, perhaps they're always like this and I've just been unlucky before, but whatever the case they've exceeded my expectations. I don't even care that I missed a few estates out, I'm sure one day somebody'll find a way to do what I did and manage to complete the set. Not me, though. I've had enough. It's your turn now.

Epilogue I - three days later.

I'm adding this bit on at the back end of June, just after the latest round of timetable and route changes, and coinciding with the launch of Inspired magazine. Understandably, things are very different these days. See, it's one thing to use the buses as a one-off, but you get a much truer picture when you use the buses day in, day out. Since the article was originally written, guess what, I've become a regular user of / slave to the bus network (through necessity more than anything else), and these days things aren't always as easy as they seemed on that day back in March. The timetables have been altered substantially and five routes in particular marked up as "key routes" by MK Metro. Rather amusingly, one of those routes is the perpetually maligned 23, the one that went from Stony Stratford in the north all the way down to Bletchley in the south - except it doesn't anymore. The route's been slashed, so if you want to go straight through to Bletchley, you can forget it... and the frequency of the buses has been cut and all - one bus every half-hour, instead of every 20 minutes. I'm also a bit perplexed by the pricing structure. A fifteen-minute journey to the railway station costs £1, but somehow a five-minute journey from there to my office in Crownhill costs £1.50? What's that all about? I've no idea, so I rang MK Metro to ask. Well, I tried to anyway. Three times I rang them, and after choosing option 2 (Fare Enquiries) twice and being told by a robot "We're busy, ring back later" twice, I decided to try option 3 (Any Other Enquiries). The phone rang for about five minutes before I was abruptly cut off - to say I'm unimpressed with MK Metro's telephone enquiry service is being polite. Finally, at the fourth attempt, I did get through to someone, but all I got from the lady at the other end was "I'll pass your comments on" - no "give me your name and address and we'll get back to you", so I've no idea if it'll actually happen. In fairness to MK Metro, what buses they do run have been largely reliable (at least in my experience), but their pricing structure is strange to say the least (how a four mile bus journey can cost the same as a one mile journey I'll never know) and the evening service is utterly non-existent in places. Finding the new timetables was a challenge too - for one thing, MK Metro's website has been taken down as I write this. So, as a final conclusion, I had a good day on the buses, but that was mainly because the challenge was completed before the evening services started. If you ask me, the bus service in Milton Keynes could and should be a lot better than it is. Still, the new buses look nice, so that's progress for you.

Fin.

Reproduced with awfully kind permission from MeltingPot Media. ©2007 Simon Darnell.