Well my last big outing around the North East was a total bust, so read on to see if this one was a success or another one that crashed and burned.
0842 7 Newton Aycliffe - Durham Bus Station (ANE 1514)
0936 X21 Durham Bus Station - Newcastle, John Dobson Street (GNE 6037)
1110 308 Newcastle, Haymarket Bus Station - Blyth Bus Station (ANE 7458)
1247 1 Blyth Bus Station - Ashington Bus Station (ANE 1763)
1341 X20 Ashington Bus Station - Regent Centre (ANE unidentified ALX400)
1437 X22 Regent Centre - Newcastle, Haymarket Bus Station (ANE 7505)
1450 X12 Newcastle, Eldon Square Bus Station - Durham Bus Station (ANE 7609)
1617 7 Durham Bus Station - Newton Aycliffe (ANE 7534)
Managed to get ready a bit early yesterday morning so I managed to catch an earlier 7 so this gave me a bit more time to play with. 1514 was my steed for my journey to Durham, this journey picked up fair few passengers on its way to Ferryhill where a fair few jumped off although a fair few jumped on, one of the passengers was a oldish woman who was texting or something on her phone for the remainder of the journey and she had not turned off the keypad noises so all I could hear for the remainder of the journey was beep beep beep beep! Irritating as...
My next journey was the X21 which as it was the first express to Newcastle after 09:30, so as you can imagine the age range of most of the passengers on-board especially once the New College Durham students departed, I sat at the back upstairs as some of the seats on the Pronto Presidents are uncomfortable and a oldish women sat on the opposite side then guess what I heard... Beep beep beep beep, yes it was the woman with the phone who was on the 7, grrr! As I posted in the GNE Latest thread there was a large number of passengers on-board with some standees, instead of heading along the A1(M) we ended up going through Birtley instead which ended up making the journey longer with the 21 that left Durham 5 minutes in front arriving before the so called express service which seemed to stop at almost every bloody stop on the way to Chester-le-Street, Pronto doesn't seem to be a word to describe this journey.
After doing a bit of spotting in Newcastle including the enthusiast hot-spot around Eldon Square Bus Station where I managed to snap the freshly repainted 6001. Oh and I was only there around 15 minutes so I was not taking up residency there! [emoji14]
Was wishing to head up to Blyth to catch some of the recently MAX refurbs so I headed to Haymarket where I went to see if there was anything intresting heading to Blyth and I saw DAF DB250/Alexander ALX400 7458 which is the only example of this batch remaining in the fleet with this example previously being with Classic. The first half of this route is rather boring, but gets more intresting once you get towards Whitley Bay, one amusing sight on this journey was I got to see an Optare Metrorider which is a "Butty Bus" had I not been a bit pushed for time and there was a bus stop a bit closer I would have got off for a photo. Seats were a tad bit uncomfortable on this bus.
Went past Arriva's Blyth depot where I spotted a withdrawn MPD and ALX200's 1795 and 1796 at the back but sadly when I walked back there was a car parked in the street, grrr! After some snapping I decided to head to Ashington as I didn't fancy riding a Pulsar or a VDL Gemini so for a change I headed on the 1 to Ashington. Not the best bus although I have been on worse MPD's than this.
As I arrived in Ashington, MAX X15 branded Enviro 400 7512 was sat on the stand blinded up for Sapphire service X22 so I made sure to get a photo of that and also got Lolyne 3859 on the 434 and Volvo B7 7446 on the X20 to Alnwick. Then I headed back to get the X20 towards Newcastle. Ashington has a bad reputation on this forum, and this review is not going to do the place any justice, two people who seemed totally and utterly gazeboed and they were shouting some rather choice words, most of them fall outside of the forum rules so I can't tell you the words that were uttered although many of them were four letter words including THAT word, and they were sat right opposite me so when someone was going to jump off around Ashington I was going to disguise it as me jumping off and head downstairs unfortunately when I saw the stopping light on it hadn't gone off after stopping at the previous stop so that made me look a bit foolish, I sat at the back of the bus downstairs for the remainder of the journey.
On the X20 I saw Quaylink Q1/Q2 branded 8334 on the Q3 so I hopped off at Regent Centre for a photo, hung around 10-15 minutes and thankfully there was no sign of the Nexus bouncers anywhere. Headed back to Newcastle on Sapphire Enviro 400 7505 which in typical fashion for that batch, the WiFi didn't work.
Just managed to catch the X12 back to Durham with the recently transferred 7609 operating this journey and of course the WiFi didn't work! Sadly this journey was another that was carrying passengers that were irritating as... and they looked like the results of inbreeding. To make matters worse the traffic through Low Fell was horrendous, because of this we ended up arriving in Durham around 10 minutes late and in typical fashion I got to see my connecting 7 pulling out of Durham Bus Station, grrr!
So because I missed the 7 I had to wait for the next one which turned up over 15 minutes and because of late running 43 and 24's the 24 ended up on the 7's stand and the 7 ended up on the 24/43 etc. stand. Because of the 24 pulling onto the wrong stand everyone crowded right around me smashing themselves into me and my bag with my camera inside which did stress me out a bit. Because of the delay to the 7 the additional capacity of the Enviro 400's was certainly needed on this journey.
Well that outing got me some of my photo goals (photos are now on my Flickr, link is in my signature) but I had some terrible journeys yesterday's and really didn't enjoy waiting for nearly half an hour for the 7 in the magical wonderful place that is Durham Bus Station because of the traffic in Low Fell and really annoying passengers, so a mixed day out yesterday.
If you got this far, thanks for reading. [emoji2]
A side note, following my trip to Edinburgh back in September which I quite enjoyed, I am hoping to make more trips further afield, however due to gigs being announced sometimes at short notice, I can't really make any of these sorts of trips until around Easter sort of time once we get to festival season and there is more hours of daylight etc. In the future I hope to go to the likes of: Berwick, Leeds, Manchester and maybe the likes of Sheffield. I am heading to Manchester in January and April although these are for gigs. Any suggestions you may have are welcomed.
Bus Related Outings and Reviews