26 Jul 2015, 9:27 pm
#729
(26 Jul 2015, 8:34 pm)aureolin Thornley not being in the Durham district boundary has always baffled me, given that the likes of Bowburn, Coxhoe and Kelloe are. Not to mention Bishop, Newcastle and Gateshead!
It's only been in the past year or so that there's been a reliable bus service to the village. The change to the 22 last October was a good one, as reliability was a big problem when it did a convoluted circuit of Peterlee before carrying on to Hartlepool. It takes something major like the big meet or Christmas festival to make it seriously late, now. A year ago it was common for services to be so late they were abandoned - not much fun on a wet day, stuck at Durham bus station, surrounded by buckets and with an anxious and increasingly angry child (in the days before he cottoned onto his bus love. 45 minutes in a bus station is his idea of a good time, this year). A few years ago, the bus was only hourly - cost me £15 in taxi fare when it didn't turn up was afternoon when I'd had a hospital appointment and needed to get home for school pick up.
I've seen that the use of the service has improved since it became Sapphire branded. I think it's in a catch 22 situation of being expensive because no one uses it and no one uses it because it's expensive. It's not like there's enough in the village to not have to leave for anything. Even people who can ill afford it run cars or club together for the supermarket deals run by taxi firms.
