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builtforleisurenotforspeed · 8 years ago

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Turns out Yorkshire is alreet I guess...

Although on the other hand , a 0700 alarm isn’t, by any means, alreet. Monday marked the day of which a little planned excursion was to be held towards and around ‘God’s own county’ - as the Yorkshire folk would like to call it. The day started with the departure from my mate’s house in Gorton towards the closest stop with all the Ashton services, when getting there a 169 soon showed up. We decided to skip this route because...well...it drags on and on as it does a clockwise sightseeing tour of Droylsden and Littlemoss (shudder). A 7 turned up shortly afterwards and provided a faster link to Ashton by ignoring that clockwise nonsense.

Ashton at 0900AM wasn’t as bad as one thought it would be, but it did call for a breakfast provided by a well known fast food establishment (p.s. why are McMuffins so bloody good?). Although, beforehand we encountered an elderly lady at a near cash point and learnt of some saddening news about her, which out of respect I shall not go into detail about. We met the third member of the outing in that McDonald’s. Realising the time and the close proximity of a soon due to arrive train, we scurried over to the railway station in order to catch our train across the border into Yorkshire.

After messing around with the payment of the tickets, we all had them by the time the Northern ‘Super-Sprinter’ slowed into the platform - talk about having a close shave amirite?... - anyway we hurried on the front carriage and found a table towards the middle.

Soon we arrived into the town of fields where Hudders were at, yes, trust me, that made complete sense. Here, we spotted an old Dennis Dart operating on a local town service while on the walk towards the Bus Station. We made it up and decided where to go after purchasing MetroDay tickets. We opted for Yorkshire Tiger’s 231 route which took us through some marvellous scenery and small villages on the way towards Wakefield town centre. We managed to get the front seats on the top deck from the start to the end of the journey.

We got into Wakefield Town Centre at around 1130AM and after they had a quick leg stretch we then went onto deciding what the next move should be. An older Spectra caught our eye standing at the far end of the station, ready to depart so thus we hurried along to catch it. The route was the 425 to...Bradford... But although it wasn’t the most scenic of the day, it was still somewhat enjoyable for the time being until we got to...Bradford... (side note: we had the seats at the rear top deck of the bus because we were hard cunts who aren’t to be messed about (side side note: I lied about the ‘hard cunts’)).

At around 1300PM we got into Bradford, the place where a number of drivers of two major companies were really rather miserable folk - no wonder, i’d be too if I had to work in and around Bradford. Long story short I had a lecture from one of the drivers about having a camera out - despite me not taking any photos at the time - this pissed me off in all fairness because it seemed he made it out that I would take the photos and use them for malicious activities, even though they’d either sit in a subfolder or be uploaded to Flickr...Hmm...

Another leg stretch and a quick escape from...Bradford...followed by catching one of Northern’s premier Pacer units into the large metropolis of Leeds. Leeds City Centre is a big interest to me down to the architectural style of buildings and the various amount of transport passing through seemingly every second no matter where you go. The bus wanker within was satisfied after the brief walk around of a part of the city centre near the railway station.

What took me by surprise was the amount of older vehicles still running around in daily service, with one example being a Wright Floline as shown above.

After around 25-30 minutes, we headed back into the station and onto the next town - which turned out to be Keighley after looking across the multiple boards that the station had within. The chariot for this part of the journey was a Class 333, an odd looking unit created by the joint venture of CAF and Siemens at the turn of the century. This impressive unit hurried us towards our next destination in no time at all - getting us into the town centre at around 1500PM.

We debated on what to do next, with the decision being split between waiting for the Flying Scotsman - better known as the overpriced tea making device - to make an appearance at the railway station or to head over to the bus station to catch Transdev’s branded ‘Brontë Bus’ to Hebden Bridge. We decided on the latter and headed over to the bus station to await the next step in the exploration...after a toilet break...

The stand was busy with people of all ages heading to their homes in the Worth Valley and further afield into Hebden Bridge. A specially branded Volvo B7RLE D7E pulled into the stand and took all the passengers - including us - and soon departed. This route impressed me. Really impressed me even, with the endless steep hills, tight lanes through towns and villages and scenery on the tops, this was all seamlessly taken in the bus’ strive as it tackled each hill with, with risk sounding like Jeremy Clarkson, ‘speed and power’. The earlier load and the fact that it was around school kick out time resulted in a heavily loaded bus through the Worth Valley, which decreased significantly towards the end of the Worth Valley and climb up into the middle of nowhere.

The bus delivered us and the remaining number of passengers into Hebden Bridge before terminating at the railway station. We walked down from the station onto the main road through the town linking it to Halifax and Rochdale and awaited our next move. We broke that day’s ‘First virginity’ by catching the 592 into Halifax town centre which produced an older variant of the vehicle found on the Brontë Bus - much older even. After hurtling through into Halifax we got into the station there at around 1630PM - the start of peak hour.

We didn’t have a Tango in Halifax for long as we quickly boarded the ‘Zest 503′ route which took us from the heart of Halifax back to the town where this circular began - Huddersfield Town Centre. As it was peak hour, we became stuck in several traffic jams on the way out of Halifax and passing through the M62 junction between Elland and Huddersfield. Although unusually the Volvo B7TL on this section of journey couldn’t decide whether or not it should go into limp mode or not throughout the journey. Limp mode is when the engine gets hot and as a result the cooling fans turn on as an attempt to cool the bus down. A well known factor with this type of bus in the Spring and Summer time.

We dived into Huddersfield Town Centre and made our way back over to the Railway Station with our journey done. Although it wasn’t as silky smooth as that, with the railway deciding that it didn’t want to work at that specific time resulting in delays to the express services which would’ve have directly involved our slow train - if it was to arrive in the first place. Checking RTT resulted in the confusion that the train we was going to get back into Lancashire was infact cancelled at Stalybridge for no apparent reason. Further confusion was added on top of the confusion cake as it rolled in unannounced and untraceable on the website. Everyone shoved on and we were soon off on our slower approach to Lancashire. Confusion and delay.

We got into Ashton several minutes late and wondered towards the bus station to catch the bus into Manchester - because we were cheap fucks who refused to pay extra to get into the city centre on the train. We met one of the mate’s girlfriend in Piccadilly Gardens and had tea in the local McDonald’s. Afterwards we went into Gorton and messed around in the house before eventually going our separate ways after Gorton, where I said my pre-goodbye to the couple who were heading back to Finland (little did I know that I joined them the day after as far as the Terminal at Manchester Airport). I walked around Manchester to await the 184 up to Oldham and thus the adventurous day concluded.

In brief:

7 - Gorton to Ashton

Northern - Ashton to Huddersfield

231 - Huddersfield to Wakefield

425 - Wakefield to Bradford

Northern - Bradford to Leeds

Northern - Leeds to Keighley

500 - Keighley to Hebden Bridge

592 - Hebden Bridge to Halifax

503 - Halifax to Huddersfield

Northern - Huddersfield to Ashton

216 - Ashton to Manchester