Saturday, September 05, 2020

A Rural Bus Ride in the Time of COVID-19...

We’ve heard a lot about the problems of public transport operators since the pandemic set in - very few passengers, restrictions on those who do use it, and the financial crisis that an absence of fare revenue has wrought. Out here in rural Suffolk, there aren’t that many trains, and the notion of commercial bus services is quaint, to put it mildly. Most services outside of the major towns require a subsidy from the County Council, and with local government finances ever more tightly squeezed, their future is shaky.

Ros was chairing the ALDC Annual Conference today, and suggested that I might like to go out somewhere. Trains were out, as the High Output Track Renewal was at work south of Stowmarket, so I was reliant on buses.

With COVID-19 reducing discretionary travel to negligible numbers, our already sparse network was virtually skeletal, but as we’re all being encouraged back to work, they’re all being reinstated, and so I could catch a 114 bus from Little Stonham to Eye, as long as Ros was willing to drop me at the stop - it is nearly five miles away. At Eye, for contractual reasons, it would be transformed into a route 112 bus for the short dash to Diss.

And so, bright and early, Ros dropped me at a remote bus stop (in fairness, she did make sure that the bus came), and I was off in my own elongated taxi, there being no other passenger. Stonham Aspal, Mickfield and even Debenham, a relative metropolis, came and went without sight or sound of company. Rishangles and Thornham were a blur and then, at Occold, that staple of rural buses, a little old lady with a shopping basket got on. By the time we left Eye, there were four of us. Luckily, the bus seats 49...

I didn’t have long in Diss, which wasn’t a wholly bad thing to my mind, because I had a bus to catch for Norwich. There are four or five buses a day on the direct route up the A140, but I had in mind something different.

Norfolk County Council had, pre-pandemic, decided to try an experiment, introducing a Saturday service from Diss to Norwich via East Harling, the intention being to enable the villagers living in the wedge between the A11 and the A140 to go for a day’s shopping in Norwich and leave the car at home. You get about three hours in the city, enough for some shopping and a bite of lunch. There’s only one bus in each direction, but we’re used to that out here in the sticks.

Route 37A starts off by heading west out of Diss, passing through Roydon and Bressingham before veering off through the Lophams and then on to East Harling. You’ve now travelled ten miles and are now further from Norwich than you were when the bus left Diss. You are now heading in the right direction, at least.

I was, not entirely unexpectedly, the only passenger as we left Diss, but a rather enthusiastic woman got on in Roydon, and told me how wonderful the new service was, and how she was encouraging people to use it. She was going to East Harling to meet her sister and so, when we arrived, she got off. It was just me and the driver now...

Kenninghall, Banham (for the zoo), Buckenhams Old and New, passed by without a pause, let alone a passenger, then a detour through Carleton Rode and Bunwell before reaching Tacolneston. Still nobody to share our ride. Ashwellthorpe, Wreningham and Bracon Ash were left behind us before we pulled into Mulbarton. Surely we’d pick up someone there - it’s a growing community with a decent non-league football team and a supermarket? But no, we were left to carry on in glorious isolation all the way to Norwich, where I thanked the driver for the entertainment and got off.

Yes, it had taken three and a half hours to get to Norwich, compared to the usual half hour or so on the train, but the countryside’s lovely at this time of year, and I wasn’t in a hurry. Besides, if nobody uses these services, there soon won’t be services to lose...

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