Lost And Gone For Ever? (3)

Really Grim At Rossett Green 

If you continue along Hookstone Road to its ultimate end, you come to the A61 Leeds Road; go straight across at the lights and you are on Leadhall Lane.

Trundle a long for a piece and you will find yourself at Rossett Green. As you approach this former hamlet it becomes clear that this is a well heeled area.

Despite this, the old village c/w Post Office ...

... still had a good bus service in 2005.

Rossett Green was tacked on to the Pannal Ash route as per the map below.

For a while (e.g. in 2018) the services was operated on tender by Connexions Buses ...

... but with no headline mention of Rossett Green. Transdev Harrogate Buses have re-taken the route but now only run to Pannal Ash ...

... no longer looping via Rossett Green.

But weep not, dear reader, What about route 110?

In 2005, this service approached the area via Leeds Road (A61 - top right) then turned down the posh Leadhall Lane  before running in a mega loop via Pannal and Burn Bridge then back via Rossett Green. It ran hourly Mondays to Fridays ...

... with a feeble four trips on Saturday and nothing on Sunday.

Church Lane (see map) has a few cottages ...

... and even the occasional bus stop.

But the 110 turned off before the "traditional" Pannal village at a stop called Main Street Corner, leaving the main street unserved.

Westminster Drive seems an unlikely source of bus revenue ...

... but it leads down to the conjoined hamlet of Burn Bridge. The 110 did not quite make it to the bridge over the burn and the Black Swan pub, as it set off back up the hill to Rossett Green.

It doesn't take a Public Transport honours graduate to see that the 110 was not a money spinner, so no surprise to see Connexions running it on tender.

But not for long. Not only has the 6 vanished but so has the 110, leaving a huge swathe of Harrogate's High Income Hinterland with no buses at all. There are, of course, plenty of cars!

But it is a big area to have NO public transport whatsoever.

A Particular Problem At Pannal

The Church is at the top of Main Street (roughly the limit of route 110) ...

... at the lower end of which you come to the station, also on the line between Leeds, Harrogate and York.

It was converted into The Harwood Hotel when, presumably, the gabled windows were up-fettled.

Looks like it was given a complete new roof and posher windows?

It is now the Co-op! 

Not too many yards further on we intersect with the A61 Leeds Road. Here are the bus stops for the 36, timed at Pannal "Spacey Houses" (old map, bottom right). 

This is another hamlet that has all but disappeared, leaving a few refurbished cottages on the A61 ...

... and, between there and the station, the quaint and minimalist Pannal Post Office, named Crimple** Valley Fresh.

So, if you live in or near Main Street, or even in the new housing on the opposite side of the A61, public transport is a possibility, as is grocery shopping and the post office. But for the further reaches of Burn Bridge and Rossett Green there is a fair amount of foot slogging to be done.

Tough if you are old and creaky and you don't have a car.

fbb repeats the "blue passage" he wrote a couple of days ago.

It is, of course, clear that, commercially, none of these places could justify a financially viable bus service. But that doesn't mean they shouldn't have one! IF the UK had a proper transport policy (stop sniggering out there!), and if you added up the environmental cost of cars, white-van-man deliveries, road maintenance, cost of accidents, mental stress of isolation etc. etc., then a subsidised bus service would be by far the cheapest and the best option.

But WE (the public) always seem to think "someone" should have a magic money box - but not us!

** The Crimple Viaduct spans the valley between Pannal and Hornbeam Park stations.

Magnificent!

 Next Ukraine (not political) blog : Fri 18th March