So I guess I'll start the trend of the posting my days out, which are usually with Sid The Bus Babe, although I do sometimes meet up with other enthusiasts too! I did have a location in mind that I wanted to travel to and the day kind of revolved around that!
This was yesterday, for anyone wandering.
45 - Rowlands Gill - Newcastle Eldon Square - (10:37 - 11:14):
A nice pleasant start to the day with a ride on 5413, although the brakes were quite annoying to say the least during the decent to Winlaton Mill, where it filled up with passengers. I noted 4899 on the 47, which was a nice blast to the past! Except for that, the ride was pretty standard as I have made it many times before!
At Newcastle, I stopped at Northumberland Street for my lunch in Eat 4 Less, which I highly recommend if you are after a cheap lunch, it's basically just McDonalds except with baguettes, paninis and toasties!
X70 - Newcastle Eldon Square - Consett Bus station - (11:30 - 12:24):
A fantastic ride on a Scania Omnidekka that I think was 6123. It sounded amazing as it went through Marley Hill and around that area, as I had a driver that I've certainly had before that loved nothing more than to use the accelerator to the max! I noted 6133 at Gateshead Interchange which did look fantastic and 6127 on the X71 at the Team Valley. I was slightly disappointed that I was not on the X71 as it prefer it to the X70 as it goes through Medomsley which which is a fantastic place to be in any bus! I was fairly busy all throughout the route which was a big surprise to me especially at around midday.
After missing the 12:15 15 by 20 seconds(it was late), I stopped off at Consett and took a few photos there. I saw another enthusiast but I decided not to go over to him as he has his headphones in.
15A - Consett Bus Station - Durham Bus Station - (12:45 - 13:25):
I then hopped on the 15A (which is my preferred out of the two routes from Consett to Durham) to Durham, it was a nice ride for scenery, but I would have much preferred an Olympian, Omnidekka or even a Trident of any sort, as the Volvo President's are certainly not my favourite. At Lanchester, I saw the 15A which was going the other way in the stand with an engineer at the wheel, I didn't really see what was going on, but soon bus drove away towards Consett. After some more rural driving after Lanchester I arrived in Durham.
I took a few photos there for a while, taking the diversion because of the Miners Parade (or something like that) to my advantage.
208 - Durham Bus Station - Low Pittington - (14:00 - 14:25):
For the main part of the day, I had a nice plesant ride on 541 on a short 25 minute ride to Low Pittington, a place I spotted a while back when I rode the 265 for the first time. It proved to be a fantastic place for photos with wildlife( rabbits, mice, squirrels) everywhere which added to the scene. I caught a nice photo of the 265 which I have uploaded to Flickr and some of the 204 and 208 which also stopped there. The actual journey on the 208 was nice except for the fact that it was full to the brim and it went through what seemed to be a never-ending housing estate at Belmont.
208 - Low Pittington - Durham Bus Station - (15:03 - 15:28):
The return service was a lot more quiet which coincidently made it 5 minutes early coming into my stop, which wasn't much of a problem to me but for it being an hourly service somepeople could easily miss it.
When I got back into Durham, it was a pure catastrophe! Due to this miners event, the road from the exit of the bus station was closed which meant that buses were coming in and out both ways from the bus station, and having to reverse in the stands for the buses, which meant that certain services had to wait in their stand, causing mayhem in every sense of the word, I managed to get the fast cats bus on the 20A. I initially wanted to get the 44 but i missed that so I got the X22.
X22 - Durham - MetroCentre - (15:34 - 16:09):
A quite frankly disgusting ride on the X22 as somebody was sick on the upper deck of the bus which stank out the whole bus. The bus was Chester-le-streets 3872(a Dennis Trident). Somebody did clean it up at Chester-le-street but it still stank. The bus also sounded like it was about to overheat which it unsurprisingly didn't however that didn't justify one of the worst rides I have probably ever had on a Dennis Trident.
47 - MetroCentre - High Spen - (16:33 - 17:12):
A nice way to end off the day on 6118 which is my favourite of the new Red Kite Gemini's. There were some very annoying teenagers that got on but that didn't stop me from enjoying the ride home.
And that sums up my day out yesterday which I thoroughly enjoyed, please feel free to correct me if I have got anything wrong so I can correct it,
Thanks,
Jack.
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