Been a rather unusual day somehow but anyway here is my review for today's outing.
Left the house late which meant I didn't have time to dilly dally so had to walk fairly quick but I made it to my bus stop with time to spare. Unfortunately it was raining a little bit when I left the house this morning so I did get a little wet.
0941 21/X21 Newton Aycliffe - Peterlee for Sunderland (ANE 4811)
Not the best start as I was hoping for an ex demonstrator example but got stuck with this although I thought at least this one has WiFi... Which on this journey wasn't working which annoyed me especially for how long this journey is. 4801-4811 aren't the fastest buses in the world and this is not only annoying to me but other road users as someone stuck behind us on the A167 was blarring the horn and ended up making an illegal overtake to get past us. Other than being rather slow it was a rather smooth comfortable journey. In case anyone is interested the X21 carried 19 passengers between Peterlee Bus Station and Sunderland Park Lane with 7 passengers including myself transferring from the 21.
1135 E1 Sunderland, Fawcett Street - South Shields (SNE 22738)
Never done any of the E routes before so thought I'd get one of them up to South Shields rather than get the 20/20A. I asked for suggestions the other day as to which E service I should to Shields and Dan suggested the E1. This journey started off fairly quiet for passengers. There was some good views out of the window but was difficult to see as it was a bit foggy. When we got closer to South Shields the journey got busier and the remainder of the journey was chavtacular including loud annoying children. Another person who jumped on this bus was a ticket inspector (or whatever the fancy name for them is) who checked the passengers tickets including my own. Quite liked this bus and the scenery but didn't enjoy some of the passengers.
Got really annoyed when I jumped off in South Shields as one of the new Enviro's was just leaving, thankfully I managed to photo two of them during my short time here. One thing I didn't know when I planned this trip was that there would be road closures due to a pride parade taking place meaning the only stop I knew in South Shields was out of use which got me in a bit of a panic as I don't know the area at all. Thankfully I managed to figure out where the 20/20A was stopping unfortunately there was no 20/20A in over 20 minutes which was annoying me but not as much as this old man who spent the whole 20 minutes moaning including threatening abuse when he got back to Sunderland in the travel office. Gave up waiting for the 20/20A and jumped on the 50 instead.
1253 50 South Shields - Chester-le-Street (GNE 5260)
Thankfully this was more pleasant than my last ride on the 50 where the bus was shaking like mad. Was still shaking over bumps but nowhere near as bad as the last time thankfully. Quite enjoyed my journey on this which is going to make some of you think I have gone totally mad as I know how much some of you hate them. Didn't fancy staying on all the way to Durham so I decided to jump off at Chester-le-Street and just as we were arriving in Chester-le-Street a President blinded up for the X22 to Durham was going down the Front Street in the wrong direction and looped round by Tesco then pulled on to its usual stand...
1351 X22 Chester-le-Street - Durham (GNE 6018)
I was the first to board and there was no-one else on-board so I'm guessing this must have replaced something else (possibly a breakdown occurred somewhere). By this point the sun had come out and boy it was hot on this bus even with the window open. This journey was okay apart from the sweat pouring down my face at least I got into Durham a few minutes earlier instead of staying on the 50.
1422 7 Durham - Darlington (ANE 7537)
Thankfully an Enviro 400 turned up on this journey which was good as there is loads of windows upstairs to open whereas the Pulsars have only 4 to open which can be unpleasant on warm days. For once I managed to bag the front seat. Annoyingly for the next week the temporary traffic lights are back at The Honest Lawyer which is going to totally destroy the reliability of this service over the next week so I have that to look forward to. Other than the roadworks I rather enjoyed this journey and was nice to finally do the full route on an Enviro 400 and it didn't disappoint me and made for a good journey and the 7 is a nice route and is rather nice getting to sit at the front upstairs to get a good view of the scenery.
Went to Darlington following the reporting of 2843 being branded operating service 4 which had unfortunately been removed from service before I got there.
1630 5A Darlington - Home (ANE 1509)
Having being left annoyed that 2843 had been removed from the 4 I headed home. As ever quite a smooth journey on this Pulsar. Not a great deal else to say really about this journey as I spent half the journey on my phone browsing the internet.
Well that's the review for today, I will try and make up for the poor amount of time and photos taken in Sunderland and South Shields, I will try and revist these areas again soon. The photos will be uploaded tomorrow after the craziness of Explore ends.
I am unsure if I will be attending the rally tomorrow especially as I haven't heard back about going up on one of The Eden's buses, so if I don't make it up there hope you enjoy yourselves tomorrow and enjoy the rest of your evening.
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