Well today was the first day of the 870 and the 6 running to Barnard Castle.

I had a ride on the 6 from Bishop Auckland to Barnard Castle tonight with 7519 being allocated, things were not without their faults, wrong destination was selected, service is split at Cockfield presumably to avoid the use of Tachographs considering the length of the route especially with the afternoon run starting at Framwellgate Moor, the screen selected was Barnard Castle via Staindrop, this caused some confusion in Bishop Auckland with passengers wishing to head to Cockfield being completely stumped by the destination, driver had to inform the passengers that he was indeed heading to Cockfield. When we got to Woodhouse Close where the Bishop Auckland College students boarded I noticed a car in front which appeared to be driven by some bloke from Arriva and it was just in front of us for most of the journey stopping where we were stopping at stops, I later determined that he was showing the driver the route... Until we got to Staindrop when he turned round leaving us to carry on to Barney with passengers having to give the driver directions for the remainder of the route with Stainton being omitted, a few stops before the terminus he came upstairs asking us for directions to the last stop along with directions back to Durham, apparently it's about 10 years since he last drove a bus to Barnard Castle. Hope occurrences like this don't become common on this or the 870, I can see it being less of an issue on the Stanhope X1 runs with that service mostly using dedicated drivers.