Today's Comfort - Part 3

 A Very Ordinary Bus Company

Adventure Travel was established in 2008 and at that point, was called ‘New Adventure Travel Ltd’. Providing high-quality coach hire and land transport solutions, the company started with just 4 vehicles but has now grown to be one of South Wales’ leading transport providers with over 150 vehicles. With depots in Cardiff and Swansea, we cover a large area with bus service routes, getting customers from A to B.

The brand on the buses was NAT and a blue and white livery was adopted.

The blue remained after the later  rebrand.

There was a bit of an onslaught on Cardiff City with routes with a large "X" on he sides and X route numbers. The "X" was, reputedly, for Cross City and certainly not for Xpress!

Largely, Cardiff's city bus saw off the competition although one such route now remains. 

We will return to this "C1" branded route in due course. The route number becomes two letters in the logo Cross  C1ty.

In mid-2018, the business was acquired by the international transport conglomerate, Comfort Delgro. 12 months later in mid-2019, the business rebranded as ‘Adventure Travel’. For a while the blue and white remained.

To draw attention to the significant changes that had been enacted as a result of new owners, new management and a new approach to passenger transport in South Wales. A new magenta brand was announced, although it was adapted into ‘Bws Blackberry’.

Magenta?

Buses were brought in from Metroline London to cover an increasing schools bus business ...

Here is the bus above now with Metroline ...

... and before the London takeover it was, of course ...

...with First London!

Despite the red buses for schools, it is fair to say that, under ComfortDelGro ownership, Adventure Travel has become less of an adventure and more of a reliable well presented company with smart vehicles ...

... of assorted sizes!

The company operates the TrawsCymru T6 ...

... with which readers may not be too familiar. It is something of a marathon between Swansea and Brecon with a running time of nearly two hours. This is just a snippet of the Monday to Saturday timetable ...

... which offers an hourly services for most of the day.

Certainly ComfortDelGro would appear to be positioning itself for a strong bid for a chunk of the aspirational nationalisation franchise policy of the Welsh government.

Maybe their on-line publicity could do with a bit of tweaking, however, as we shall see tomorrow.

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This blog snippet is about:-

 C onsidering  C reation

Quirky Answer : Conventionally you would say that nothing was created on the seventh day when "God was pleased with what he had done and so he rested". Maybe it is better to say that God created rest, a day free of pressured work, as a gift to mankind.

But surely the idea of an infinitely powerful God, a 'being' existing outside of our universe and unlimited but our restrictive laws of physics, might need a day off - well the idea is ridiculous. Of course if you are misled by silly cartoons ...

... or even but great art ...

... into making God into a human, then understanding Creation is hard.

Obviously those Biblical "days" are remarkably close to modern scientific thought, ridiculously close considering they were first written down about 3,500 years ago.  And, certainly, the Bible makes no attempt to describe these God-days as periods of 24 human hours. The actual Bible words are "evening and morning", surely a poetic or philosophical description of "a period of time". 

An infinitely powerful God does not need a human definition of time in which to do his stuff.

However long a God-day might be, creation was ALL GOOD.

Odd, is it not, that Adam and Eve are very white skinned Europeans? More misleading art?

But it didn't stay that way and things are certainly not "all good" today.

God's eternal answer is revealed at Christmas.

Quirky Question : What tasty item led Adam and Eve to disobey?

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 Next Comfort blog : Thursday 4th December 

Today's Comfort - Part 2

Did You Spot Citylink?

Yesterday we met Citylink Ireland, but readers will be more familiar with Citylink in Scotland.  The brand was created in 1985 to absorb express services operated by companies in the Scottish Bus Group. 

Competition with Stagecoach led to a joint venture under privatisation until quite recently.

Under ComfortDelGro ownership the Stagecoach bit was bought out by the slightly more senior party, so it is all now under the ultimate authoriy of the Singapore based conglomerate.

By way of revision, Citylink operates some stunning frequencies on the 900 between Glasgorw and Edinburgh ...

... plus an equally stunning headway from Glasgow to Edinburgh Aiport.

Services from the two big cities to Aberdeen and Inverness have been improved progressively over the years, but the delights of Citylink are the routes to the Highlands and the Western Isles.

These combine luxury coaches with what are, effectively, the local buses, as here with the sevice between Inverness and Skye.

The fleet is regularly updated with some stunning motors.

The batch below was celebrating the 40th birthday!

If you have never done a tour with Citylink, then you really should. You will see some glorious scenery in excellent comfort, with reliability and good value fares.

The Other Biggie - Metroline

This was one of the companies set up in preparation for the privatisation of London's red buses. It was a management buyout and expanded by acquiring several smaller companies that materialised in the early days of the big change from the gargantuan London Transport.

The lure of big bucks in the pocket led to its sale to ComfortDelGro in year 2000. Further acquisitions followed including Armchair, Westbus and three First Bus depots. Current operation includes part of the Suoerloop network.

Keep Westbus in mind!

In a rush of blood to its corporate head, Metroline won a contract for a large heap of Bee Line routes in Manchester. The win was largely at the expense of Stagecoach which threatened to sulk! Bus watchers are of the view that Metroline overbid and may struggle to make money.

Unlike in London, there is no mention of the operator name on the vehicles.

fbb was very excited to find a Metroline page on-)ine packed with helpful stuff for passengers (?) ...

... which proudly promised timetables!

There aren't any! 

Transport for Manchester posts them for its area, if you can find them; whereas Transport for London maintains its usual cloak of secrecy.

Independent Web site providers do better.

And Westbus?

Confusingly you will find pictures of this operator's vehicles, but beware; there is (more correctly, was) a Westbus in Australia, also part of ComfortDelGro. 

The UK Westbus, as its name suggests (?), runs coaches ...

... and has been around for yonks in various guises.

Whilst it may have run buses in the past, it is now a high spec coach operator ...

... with some smart posh deckers.

ConfortDelGro has one other urban bus operation in the UK, an operation that is more "normal" that the others - but still a bit of an adventure.

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This blog snippet is about:-

 B elief and the  B ible

Quirky Answer : There are 66 'books' in the Bible, of which 39 come before Christmas in the Old Testament; 27 are in the New Testament which sort-of starts with Christmas. There are 929 "Chapters" in the Bible, but some, like Psalm 117 are very short.

That's it - but you could hardly call it a "chapter" - it is a single verse Hebrew song. Psalm 119 is defined as the longest "chapter" and it is a VERY long ditty at 176 Bible verses, all about how good and important the Scriptures are for peoples' wellbeing. 

But it does go on a bit!

There are 23,145 "verses" (i.e. small chunks). Some are very small as in "Jesus Wept" (John's Gospel, Chapter 11 verse 35), others are much longer. 

The divisions into Chapters and Verses came long after the text of the Bible was written and were added to help readers find their way around. They are not part of the original.

Of the 929 chapters, only four tell the "Christmas Story"; Luke has two which focus, amongst lots else, on the Shepherds ..

Whilst Matthew is a Wise Men man.

Despite the Bible words being very clear on the page, most illustrations get it completely wrong. The shepherds did not see the star and the wise men did not visit the stable.

That's the big trouble with the Bible. Most people only know little bits of the stories and, over the years, those little bits have been modified, prettified and falsfied.

And how come we have turned those four Christmas chapters (out of 929) into the mega knees up that fills our shops, fills our lives, fills our stomachs and empties our pockets from October each year?

To make sense of the nonsense we need to understand more.

And a warning; what we might believe doesn't change anything!

To make real sense of our beliefs we need to understand more.

Quirky Quiz Question : What did God create on the seventh "day"? Answer tomorrow.

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 Next Comfort blog : Wednesday 3rd December 

Today's Comfort - Part 1

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Please be Advised;

DECEMBER BLOGS

fbb will be adding his traditional "Advent Calendar" each day from 1st to 26th December. 

Question : What have asymmetric, amorphous, agnostic and apathetic got in common? Answer tomorrow. (and its more than their initial letter)

As your increasingly ancient blogger is in need of a bit of a break, the Public Transport content of December postings will be somewhat reduced in amount, but, hopefully not reduced in stimulation and excitement.

Hmmm?

Then, again, in a hectic weekend, the external Christmas decorations at fbb mansion have been installed and were formally due to be switched on by the property owner, namely Mr Tubbles ...

... but he just  couldn't be bothered.

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ComfortDelGro

The company is based in Singaapore and is the result of a merger of two big big operators called, surprisingly 'Comfort' and 'Delgro'. The history of the constituent companies is long and complex and just a step to far for a full fbb investigation.

There were Comfort taxis, including the iconic and much loved Singapore "yellow top" cars.

Readers may wonder how this subsidiary got its name!

The Delgro bit included Singapore Bus Services ...

Even that is complicated now, with smart green buses operated by a variety of companies.

ComfortDepGro ...

... Tower Transit (whom we have met before) ...

... GoAhead (we've heard of them) ...

... and a fourth company that looks a bit different!

ComfortDelGro have wider interests in Singaopore ...

... including taxis which are now either yellow with 'ComfortDelGro' branding ...

... or they might be blue!

But the company's interests are world wide. There are operations in China, in New Zealand ...

... and in Stockholm.

Some activity is joint with other companies (as it is in Stockholm). 

But nearer to home is a long distance coach service in the Republic of Ireland.

The name may be familiar.

So here is a challenge for our readers with time to spare (?). Can you identify the UK companies from this list of ComfotDelGro subsidiaries?

More to come tomorrow.

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'A' is, of course, for Advent which is the pre Christmas preparation season. In the "official" Church Calendar, Christmas starts at midnight on Christmas Eve. How different things are in the commercial secular world!

But his blog snippet is about:-

 A ssorted  A ttitudes

The Greek word "A" (or maybe it is a syllable) means something like "there is no ...". So for ...

 A symmetric Bars ...

... there is no symmetry. For  A morphous carbon (soot) ...

... there is no "morph", i.e. shape.

So an  A theist opines that there is no God, a standpoint that needs as much Faith as a believer! 

An  A gnostic usually uses the word to imply a lack of interest in God, but that is simply not what the word really means. Gnosis was a Greek "religion" which is difficult to understand; but the idea is that your faith was based on a philosophical "knowledge" (whatever that meant). So a true agnostic has no "philosophical knowledge" of God,

A better word is  A pathetic. In the past "pathos" meant simply "emotion". So someone who is apathetic has no emotion; i.e simply doesn't care.

Why do the Atheist, the Agnostic, the Apathetic bother to celebrate Christmas?

Of course many millions world-wide celebrate the birth of the Saviour of the world, he who forgives our godlessness and gives us a fresh start. And why do we actually need forgiveness?

That is part 2 of the season which started on Sunday ...

...   A dvent. This month is not just about preparing for Christmas, the coming if Jesus to earth; Advent is also about His return at the end of time. For some that might not be as much fun as for Christmas.

Also there should be an "A" word for those who do accept the vital nature of a true Christian faith.

How about  A dubitable? There is no doubt?

Quirky Question : How many 'books" (chunks with separate titles) are there in the Bible; and how many of those "books" tell us about the First Christmas?

Answer tomorrow

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 Next Comfort blog : Tuesday 2nd December