Oadby, Oh Dear!
Oadby was once a quaint little village clustered round the church settled on the road towards Leicester, part of the route from London and named, surprisingly, London Road. The picture above is looking towards Leicester!
Below is the same location today. Only the church and the building just beyond the telegraph pole (above) remain.
It is now the Black Dog pub and painted in light and mid blue.
Oadby was changed beyond recognition with the opening up of Market Harborough Road as a super swish new A6, a 1930s scheme.
The aerial view is looking south and the church is upper right.
Oadby was in the purview of Midland Red ...
... later Midland Fox ...
... and now Arriva. When fbb last visited, the main routes were 31 and 31A serving various housing areas and linking them to the town centre and on to Leicester.
The buses were branded as Sapphire ...
The outbound 31 turns right off the A6 ...
PLEASE NOTE : Weekend Variety will follow on Sunday and Monday. This blog will celebrate the Coronation by completing the Oadby offering - plus a "Snippet" or two!
... but were Sapphire-on-the-cheap without the 2+1 seating upstairs that other Sapphires offered. Anyway, the brand seems to have gone!
So now it's a huge wiggly lollipop of a route, often (but wrongly!) called a "circular".
The 31E is an evening and Sunday variant missing out large chunks of the estates and 31A is now used for an occasional oddity Monday to Friday.
Leicester Council has a City map on its web site which only shows the 51E, so this might help out befuddled readers!
... into Oadby The Parade ...
... and "waits time" at a stop called Sandringham Street.
We pass the inbound 31 stop just along the road ...
... which is called East Street and where an eager anticipatory knot of passengers is waiting for the 31 to Leicester.
Would not "The Parade" be a more helpful stop name for both?
Said inbound 31 appears very soon from Chestnut Avenue. The outbound route continues along the London Road past the church until it nips round back to the A6.
It turns left and heads back towards Leicester ...
... but not for long.
It turns right into Uplands Road ...
... to begin its one-way-round-only circumnavigation of the Oadby estates. Should you choose to join the 31 on Uplands Road for a journey TO Leicester ...
... you will have a 25 minute tour of Oadby housing schemes until you start back to the city centre.
That's how to encourage passengers to go by bus and leave the car at home. NOT.
But at least if it is just one lollipop route, the timetable will be simple to follow.
YOU MUST BE JOKING!
Whatever Happened to Alex Hornby?
The shrinking violet boss of Transdev Blazefield, Alex Hornby ...
... who "stepped down" a few weeks back as CEO ...
... has been appointed General Manager of the aggressively expanding McGills, answerable to big boss-man Ralph Roberts. (Alex is pictured above with Martijn Gilbert and some old bloke with a bushy beard!)
Let's hope Ralph can cope with Alex's exuberance.
Oadby Part 2 blog : Saturday 6th May
Here in Harrogate Transdev recently combined 2 circular routes in north Harrogate into one. Like you, I can't see how that is attractive to the ridership (existing or potential) by turning a 10 minute journey to the town centre into a 30 minute trundle, but Transdev don't seem to acknowledeg the problem
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