Apart from competitive routes 24 (First Bus) and 524/5 (Western Greyhound - WG), two other operators serve Mevagissey; both providing services to and from Gorran Haven, a little further westwards.
Servioce 471 is operated by Travel Cornwall, based, like WG, at Summercourt.
It runs six days a week fom Gorran, via Mevagissey to St Austell.
It is supplemented by the three Gorran Bus services. This is a community bus route with a smart minibus ...
... that runs service G1 to St Austell and its supermarkets on Wednesdays and Fridays ...
... service G3 to Truro on Tuesdays and Thursdays ...
... and on the third Monday of the month, all the way to Plymouth as G4.
Incidentally, Boswinger (a request stop) is a caravan site ...
... the unmarked grey line on the Cornwall Map. Portmellon (the other grey line and also a request stop) is a small village almost back at Mevagissey ...
Interestingly, back in Mevagissey, these four services still climb up the steep School Hill to provide some sort of service for the original route into the town.
The terminus is in the car park next to the Trevalsa Court Hotel.
Then there are the 24 and 524/5. They never quite reach Mevagissey as they terminate at Trevarth opposite the main town car park that we spotted from on high yesterday.
Here fbb arrived, still running 17 minutes late, with First's route 24. It carried just three passengers from St Austell ...
... and picked up three for the return. Fortunately a generous layover meant the the bus now left on time. It was soon followed by the 525 which arrived early from Heligan Gardens and deposited the obligatory three folk who set off to trudge to Mevagissey proper. With fbb and two others, the bus left on time for the trip back to St Austell as a 524.
At various stages in the route's recent history buses have continued to the centre, but short Solos were the order of the day.
It must have been fun with Summer crowds milling around; pavements? what pavements?
With 14 minutes layover, fbb wonders whether Barbie buses ought to use the time profitably and revert to taking people to where they want to go? Remember that WG is offering two buses an hour against First's one, so he latter needs to offer something better to capture additional posteriors on seats, surely? Of course, the management would need to make sure that buses didn't run 17 minutes late. But, as on the Fowey side of the route there simply isn't enough business for three buses an hour.
One thing is absolutely certain. Cornwall Council's bus map is very wrong!
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The Saga of 102 Concludes
Readers will remember that (Not) First Bus Buses of Somerset/Taunton had a bit of a problem remembering which days their route 102 was running.
After an fbb blog (co-incidentally?) it was corrected ...
... incorrectly. After a second mention by fbb (co-incidentally?) it has been corrected again ...
... correctly. Whilst fbb joins in adulatory admiration of the work of Best Impressions, he does wonder whether this shambles would have happened had the web site been managed by an in-house team based upstairs at Taunton bus station? HTML (the language of the internet) doesn't have to be difficult but they might have to sacrifice a bit of twiddly design in favour of getting the information right.
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Link ...
Link ...
... to an ITV news report on Monday's opening of Northampton's new station. (here)
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Next bus blog : Thursday 15th January
Re Northampton station clip. It would have been nice if someone had offered to hold Patrick Mcloughlin's mac while he drew the curtains to open the official A board
ReplyDeleteIt's not always best to have websites managed inside a company - there's a tendency on company-run sites to fill the pages with waffle at the expense of clear information. What good is 100% accurate information if the customer can't find it in the mess?
ReplyDeleteI see that, unusually, the WG Dart is not caked in mud.
ReplyDelete