(05 Oct 2017, 3:46 pm)Jimmi wrote Really? In my experiences at least, it is usually not more than a few minutes late, most of the times it has been in the region of 30 minutes is when there's been road works on the A167 in Darlington which affects all Darlington - Aycliffe services. I got the 14:20 from Sunderland this afternoon which arrived about 13 minutes late but I think this instance was down to the service having a new driver on it, unsurprisingly on this route he fell even further behind time, was about 20 minutes late by the time I got off in Newton Aycliffe.

Or it leaves Darlington late due to it being a new driver on each departure, and they haven't got a driver to operate it (or s/he's come in late off their previous trip so are claiming their bait!) Darlington's alleged shortage of drivers certainly won't help matters, as any spare drivers will already be out on the road.

I recently attempted to travel on the final service of the day through to Peterlee from Darlington on a Saturday afternoon. The bus was dumped in Darlington near the Arriva canteen, blinded up for 'X21 Peterlee' and duty board in the window of the bus confirmed it was the one I was waiting for.

I waited for 15 minutes until the service's scheduled departure before deciding to press the bell down at the Arriva shop. After querying whether the service was going to operate (given that it was the last journey of the day operating to Peterlee), the bloke who opened the door didn't know and said he'd check to see if they could find a driver. About 5 minutes later, someone else came out and said that it would run. About 5 minutes after that, the driver eventually came (though didn't bother to check if anyone was waiting at the stand - assuming that everyone who was waiting had walked down to the shop where the bus was parked!)

Kudos to the driver - despite leaving 25 minutes late, he got into Peterlee around 10 minutes late so made up about 15 minutes. The journey was, er.. fun.. to say the least!