(12 Apr 2016, 3:18 pm)Jimmi wrote Yesterday I came back from a weekend away in Manchester. On the Sunday I had a spot of bus bashing round the area.
1030 Manchester Piccadilly Rail Station - Stockport Rail Station (Arriva Trains Wales: 175103)
Managed to get here without getting lost this time! For today's outing I decided to follow an idea forum user James101 posted on here when I was asking for suggestions, although a few alterations had to be made. I had a few operator choices to reach Stockport, I decided to catch Arriva Trains Wales for this journey as I hadn't yet sampled their efforts nor had I sampled a Class 175 so I thought this was a good call, pretty pleasant journey, the conductor on this journey seemed very happy and friendly. Was annoyed a few minutes into this journey when I saw one of the new liveried TransPennine Express Class 185's heading into Piccadilly, damn! I then departed to head to my next stop which was Stockport Bus Station unfortunately there was two exits for the rail station both with ticket barriers and I chose the wrong exit! This caused some problems due to works going on in the area and this got me lost and frustrated and Google Maps was not much use as I'm sure it was trying to get me to go through the station which I couldn't do, eventually after a series of wrong turns and swearing I made it to the bus station.
1145 23A Stockport Bus Station - Trafford Centre Bus Station (Stagecoach Manchester: 12191)
This was a Enviro 400 Hybrid. This turned up about 5 minutes late, as I boarded the driver asked if I was heading to the Trafford Centre and advised me that the bus was being diverted owing to road closures associated with the Manchester Marathon, I sat at the front seat upstairs. The first half of the journey followed quite a nice route with a fair bit of shrubbery and a few nice looking houses. The second half of the journey which was the diversion route was a bit boring as the Hybrid seemed a big sluggish on the motorway (M60 I think?) Although the views weren't too bad. After around an hour on this I eventually arrived at the Trafford Centre Bus Station. Got some photos within around the half hour I was here, no Five Guys for lunch today though!
1320 126 Trafford Centre Bus Station - Leigh Bus Station (Diamond North West: 33008)
About 5 minutes late my next bus arrived in the form of Diamond North West's Mercedes Citaro BJ11UWN. Thought this looked pretty smart inside, would argue it looks smarter than the Go North East examples as it has plastic seat backings on the seats rather than just all-over fabric, although the roof was shaking a bit and the weather was reasonably nice today with the sun being out it was quite pleasant outside which was nice however it was not pleasant on a Citaro with the heating cranked right up and I was unable to open any of the windows on this bus, I removed my Vans holdie and hung it on the backwards facing seat in front of me but quite frankly it was so warm on here I would have probably been more comfortable if I was riding this bus naked! I was chatting to an enthusiast friend on Facebook during this journey expressing my displeasures.
Leigh Bus Station
Spent around 50 minutes in Leigh Bus Station getting photos here although I did run into the nearby Tesco at one point. When I returned to the bus station a young lad approached me asking if I was an enthusiast and I said that I was and we got chatting about some bus things mainly about the new Vantage services and he asked if I had been on it yet and I said I hadn't yet but was going to shortly, he seemed surprised when I said I was from County Durham, believe the response was bloody hell! He then headed for his bus. After this two old people turned up and started taking photos of the bus station, no idea why but it made me feel a little embarrassed as I was also there with my camera although mine was better!
1435 V1 Leigh Bus Station - Holden Road (First Manchester: 39242)
Boarded this and sat at a table seat, so I could spread my legs out. I intended to get off at at least one of the stops along the Leigh Guided Busway and I opted for the Holden Road stop where I got a photo of 39244 heading towards Leigh: https://flic.kr/p/FLo1p7
1512 V1 Holden Road - Astley Street (First Manchester: 39249)
Another short trip on Vantage, I feel the timetable on this service is rather ambitious, it seems to be timetabled to take 2 minutes to get from Leigh Bus Station to Holden Road, no chance! Saw another Vantage at the Astley Street stop heading in the opposite direction so alighted here. Waited for a photo of First service 33 but it didn't show although I was pleased I stood on the main road as I saw ex Capital City then later First's Leyland Olympian/Northern Counties K888BFG which is now belongs to Cheeky Chimps as a children's party bus.
1531 V2 Astley Street - Manchester Piccadilly (First Manchester: 39254)
Decided I was now sick of jumping on/off this service so just ride this straight through to Manchester to give me more chance to form an opinion of these buses, as I said before with the Transdev 36 Gemini's I love the big bulky seats these have upstairs and they seem to have a pretty smooth ride. Fortunately this was a pretty quiet journey so I got the table seat again so I could stretch my legs and make myself at home and even took my shoes off, my excuse for that was the fact that when I was out the previous day I got soaked and my jeans and the insides of my shoes were still wet when I left the hotel on this outing, even though I tried drying them out with the hairdryer in my hotel room, hoodie was soaked as well although I bought a new Vans hoodie the previous day so I just wore that instead. Once I got to Salford I got the upstairs to myself so got some upstairs interior shots.
After my journey on the V2 back to Manchester I got some photos around different parts within Manchester City Centre.
Well I enjoyed sampling some buses in a different area and getting photos in the area over the whole weekend. I'd like to thank James101 for giving me ideas for which routes I should do. Finally thanks to everyone who has read this review. Over the next week or so I'll be uploading the photos from Manchester to my Flickr.
My next planned out may be Berwick, Wooler, Alnwick, Amble and Morpeth, possibly on Saturday? We'll see...
Good review Jimmi
I've been up to Wooler on the Glen Valley Tours/Travelsure services (can't remember the number but there was a Glen Valley Solo SR on the Berwick-Wooler section and a Travelsure Nimbus dart on the Wooler-Alnwick section), and they connected nicely at Wooler and they are both canny routes - not much at Wooler though. Before that I got the 418 to Belford which is deffo worth trying and I had and had a very lucky connection to the X15 to Berwick.