I haven't been on one of the 685 Enviros but the seats look really comfortable, to me they look like the seats in Arriva's old single decker Scania's forgot what exactly what you call them but they had the fleet numbers 2## and where based on Tyneside for most of their lives and some ended their lives on the X1/X2 and some were briefly based at Bishop Auckland depot.
Anyway back to today, started my day on the 7 with an E400 being my steed to Durham which turned up about two minutes late but no biggie but got later as the journey went on and then we just stopped when we got to Croxdale thanks to temporary three way lights at The Honest Lawyer this put me behind time. This also affected the X21 so it being late meant I had to drop my plan of catching the X85 to Hexham and ended up boarding the 85 in Newcastle.
Instead of the X21 I got lumbered with the X12 which was on-time, WAS on-time but fell behind time as we picked up some of the custom from the X21 and 7627 is the slowest thing in the world! This meant I didn't arrive in Newcastle until sometime after 1020.
As I got off the X12 I was greeted by Marcus and Adam who said hi then went off somewhere else.
On the 85 the OAPS gave me daggers between Newcastle and Hexham for one thing I didn't do and a design fault.
Went round Carlisle getting photos of the new Solo SR's and other buses. Was originally going to get the 1507 685 back to Carlisle but I wasn't queuing in the right place and people looked hacked off with me about it then I saw Sean had sent a PM asking if I was still about so I decided to stay for another hour and see if Sean and Dan were about. Hung around by the bus station getting a few photos then Dan went for some scran before we jumped on the 685 back to Newcastle.
4663 was our steed back to Newcastle which made us happy as it has fabric seats rather than leather also 4663 probably has to be the best Omnicity in the fleet and despite ending up running late the service picked up time as we got closer to Newcastle and I know this as Dan was giving a running commentary on how close the service was to running to time and talking about his connecting Metro honestly the suspense, it was like watching an episode of The Cube or something, obviously I didn't really care if the 85 was running a little late as I had over 40 minutes to wait for my next bus. But eventually we got to Newcastle and I left Dan for him to catch the Metro.
Had some time to kill so I went into HMV to kill the waiting time and also got a few more photos before catching the 21 to Durham.
I am typing this on the 21 as the 21 isn't an exciting route but it is fairly quiet on here even though there is a fair few passengers on-board. Although illegally parked cars on Chester-le-Street Front Street is giving us problems at the moment.
My log of journeys today:
0805 7 Newton Aycliffe - Durham (ANE 75??, sorry can't remember which E400 this was)
0921 X12 Durham - Newcastle (ANE 7627)
1045 85/685 Newcastle - Carlisle (ANE 4660)
1607 685/85 Carlisle - Newcastle (ANE 4663)
1902 21 Newcastle - Durham (GNE 6065)
2015 7 Durham - Newton Aycliffe (ANE 1516).
Thanks Adam, Marcus and Sean for having a bit of chat with me today and thanks Dan for making the 685 back to Newcastle a little more bearable.
Thanks for reading, I'll probably see some of yous tomorrow in Durham. Enjoy the rest of your weekend.
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