From our own correspondent

A regular commentator here, Dennis Dash, took the Greyhound to London yesterday. Here are his initial impressions of Greyhound.

I travelled on the 0910 from Southampton this morning on 23315 Sweet Caroline – on time from all stops in Southampton then a good smooth run with driver Paul via the M3, joining the M25 at 1030, then via the M4 bus lane and Hyde Park Corner to arrive 4 minutes late at 1133. There were about 8 passengers on this trip. I think Earls Court would have been quicker, but you never know for sure do you.
 
I had booked on the 1930 return tonight, but on seeing the weather forecast last night took the opportunity to check fares on earlier departures – the 1730 was a bit pricey so booked on the 1530 for £1, in case London was wet and miserable. Sure enough, as soon as we arrived at Bulleid Way this morning, the heavens opened, so after a trip to the Ian Allan bookshop and two Routemaster rides (East London RM 324 and First ‘SRM 3’) I returned to Victoria for the 1530. The surprise here was the 1445 Portsmouth departure – an 8 seater Ford Transit Taxibus with a Portsmouth phone number emblazoned on it. Not quite what the 7 passengers expected, but I suppose they had probably only paid £1 each, like me.
 
My 1530 Southampton departure was on 23319 Sherry, with 12 passengers and two drivers, Debbie being at the wheel. She started professionally with her announcements,
but soon got herself very tongue tied and declared herself a dippy brunette !
 
The route was the reverse of the morning – exit from London was good as after a 1533 departure we passed the Natural History museum at 1543 and Hogarth roundabout at
1555. The M25 was a bit congested but the M3 was reached by 1630. However, time was lost after that with traffic on the M3 past Winchester and in The Avenue, resulting in a 15 minute late arrival in Southampton.
 
Overall a good experience – I have already booked two more round trips (including a Portsmouth), and found the leg room and comfort on board to be excellent. The leather
seats with 3-point seatbelts are nice, there are curtains and power points for laptops as well as wi-fi. The free newspaper was the Southern Daily Echo going up and The Evening Standard coming home – The Standard included a double page write up of a trip on Greyhound yesterday whilst The Echo also mentioned yesterday’s launch on the business pages.

After writing this Dennis Dash followed up with:-

We now know that breakdowns are dealt with by First Rail Support, who are based in Lancashire but have a huge database of taxi and coach operators from all over the country, hence why the 8 seat Transit appeared.

Apparently the 0910 from Southampton broke down on the M3 today whilst Alex Warner was on board being interviewed by Peter White for Radio 4 !!!

The breakdown he refers to is covered here. Seems like it ran out of fuel!!!

Britain by Bus

Britain by Bus is a blog which sadly passed my notice at the time. It records a six day odyssey from Thurso to Brighton by the humble service bus. The ‘humble’ service buses in this case all being Stagecoach buses. Postings may now have finished but it’s a very interesting record of the trip.

PS Bus spotters must make sure they page down to the bottom of the the homepage. There’s a listing of every bus he took by Fleet number together with links to a photo of the bus.

Coach Wars

megabusblog megabusblog

I’ve been meaning to mention Greyhound’s arrival in the UK for some time now. First Bus own Greyhound buses in the US and are introducing the brand into the UK starting with the Portsmouth and Southampton to London routes. And at virtually the same time Megabus are abandoning the routes! Not that Megabus would have been any threat to Greyhound anymore than they were to National Express. Megabus started these routes promisingly with 3 trips per day in each direction. Although relatively infrequent the service was heavily booked and despite running double-decker buses, each with a capacity of around 90 passengers, duplicate buses had to run quite frequently. Then Megabus cut this back to 1 bus per day in each direction. Passenger numbers fell dramatically but at least the one up and one back each day were timed to allow a day trip to London. However, further ‘tinkering’ with the timetable ended up with a day trip only giving you from 12:40 until 16:00 in London – pretty useless. Now the last Megabus run to London from the South coast is on Sunday 4 October. The problem with Megabus has always been Megatrain! It seems that Megatrain is the preferred operation of Stagecoach PLC and that Megabus is restrained from competing with Megatrain where the routes clash. Megatrain offer cheap TRAIN fares, that’s for certain. But a cheap train fare is much more expensive than a COACH fare! For example a return to London from Southampton is GBP22.00 with Megatrain on 14 September, whilst National Express is GBP8.00 using the same departure times. As I observe it Megatrain pick up those travellers who are looking for budget rail fares whilst those who wont pay Megatrain prices use National Express because there has been no viable Megabus alternative. It’s this illogical type of management decision which has made me purchase shares in First Group rather than the company I work for :-(

Greyhound, however, seem to be entering the market in a much more positive way with the service to London being run hourly in each direction. They’ve certainly provoked a response from National Express! My bet is that they’re going to be very successful. This is based on the premise that unless you want to get to Heathrow Airport the Greyhound bus will be much quicker. Quicker because it’s not having to go into the airport to drop off and pickup but even more importantly when the top of the M3, M25 or M4 snarls up the options into Central London are numerous compared with being forced to Heathrow first. For example it only adds about 20-25 minutes to the Southampton – Victoria journey time by missing the M3, M25, M4 totally and going via Guildford and then in on the A3 and into London from the South over Vauxhall Bridge. If the M3 is OK but the problem is on the M25 or M4 then just take the A316 from the end of the M3. Lots and lots of alternatives not open to a coach which must call at Heathrow before going into London.

The only problem I see for Greyhound at the moment is how potential travelers will find the site and be able to book. Do a Google using terms such as “book a Greyhound coach to London” brings up 217,000 results but www.greyhounduk.com doesn’t even make in the first 5 pages. National Express comes in on page 1 in 4th place for this search! I found www.greyhounduk by going to www.firstgroup.com and finding the link there. I don’t think many potential bookers will think of going to the First Group site in order to get a booking link. Either the Press Releases Greyhound sent out omitted the website address or those writing about the service all chose to omit the web site URL :-(

Who dreams these things up?

Here is a very useful item currently on offer in Lidl.

You’ve bought this wonderful dual purpose walking stick and it starts to rain so you open the umbrella and hold it over your head. Problem. You’re keeping yourself dry but are now immobile due to no longer having a walking stick!!!! :-)

Designs like this need some sort of award. Nominations for similarly stupid items?

Mold bus driver holds pilots licence

From the Flintshire Chronicle, full story here.

“THE Number six bus now arriving at Mold bus station is piloted by Mark Kearney.”

“Not too many holders of a Public Service Vehicle (PSV) licence also hold a pilot’s licence.”

Well, here’s another one! I’ve held a private Pilot’s Licence since 1993 for ‘Balloons and Airships’

Heaven knows why you need a Pilot’s Licence for balloons – a Master Mariners Certificate would seem to have more relevance because you’re powered by the wind and to carry out some manoeuvres rope pulling is involved. And just like sailing where all shipping gives way to sail all fixed and rotary wing aircraft must give way to a balloon.

I’ve virtually given up flying now but had 10 good years with mainly wonderful memories; lots of flying in France and Belgium every year, a winter trip to Schladming in Austria to fly over the mountains in the morning and then to ski them in the afternoon, competing in the Mobilux Championship in Luxembourg etc. And then what should have been a great honour (representing the UK in South Korea) a disaster in which one person died, another paralysed for life and one with severe burns. The competition was being held on Cheju, an island about the size of Jersey off the south coast of Korea in the Yellow Sea. It never looked like a good location in which to fly a balloon since the island had a 6,000′ volcano in the middle of it and the perimeter of the island (the only places to land) had lava rocks everywhere which were as sharp as razors. We were given Korean built balloons to fly and after I’d inspected mine I came to the conclusion that it would be a pig to fly and land and after about 6 flights I wouldn’t be considering it safe to fly again. Taken from here this is what happened.

“The 1999 Cheju International Balloon Fiesta in Korea, according to an article by Stan Wereschuk and Bill Arras, was an event that could best be described as “the event from hell”. The article described accidents resulting in serious injuries that had their root cause in poor planning, lack of cancellation by the authorities when the winds were obviously too strong for safety, and numerous safety deficiencies involving the equipment provided. Although contestants supplied their own burners, the baskets were poorly constructed for safety, envelopes were made in haste, and, possibly most serious, the propane hoses and connections were inferior and were not meant for ballooning.”

“A very serious concern early in event was the attitude of officials responsible for launch, who, according to the article, failed to cancel events despite strong winds gusting up to 20 kt. Most pilots had the good sense to question all the deficiencies and some of them used their superior knowledge of ballooning and cancelled when conditions
appeared unsafe. For those who flew, the spirit of the competition dominated their sense of self-preservation as they disregarded known weather hazards and flew under conditions that greatly increased the risk; numerous accidents and fires resulting in serious injuries and at least one fatality were the outcome.”

After the fateful briefing at which the Competition Director said “We’ll fly” I walked away from the briefing thinking “You may fly but I’m not going to”! Since we’d been given free travel to Korea, accommodation and food, banquets with high level government officials etc. there was some obligation to fly but I was determined not to fly since the conditions were appalling. The first person I spoke to after the briefing was Bill Arras an American, and at the time World Champion. I asked Bill if was going to fly. “No” was Bill’s answer. If he’d flown I’d not have changed my mind but I felt a little better since the best in the world had reached the same conclusion as me.

After that the Competition Director was arrested and the competition abandoned. I hired a car and with my crew had a weeks sightseeing in South Korea.