The Journey Resumes!: Peterborough to Ely

When I arrived in Peterborough on 4th September 2019, I realised that there would have to be a pause in the project probably until the following year. Of course, "the following year" Covid-19 happened, which put a stop to everything. With restrictions on movement and the government instructing everyone to "avoid public transport" as well as obvious concerns for personal safety in the days before the vaccines had been developed, any future bus rides around the county towns would have to wait.

Not all the issues that had caused the original pause in September 2019 have been resolved, but by May 2022 I did feel able to restart the trip, at least on a limited basis. I had ended the previous part of the trip in a way that allowed me to re-start in either Huntingdon or Peterborough, but geography and bus timetables conspired to make Peterborough the obvious point.

ISLE OF ELY

The "Isle of Ely" isn't a separate county and is really part of Cambridgeshire, but until 1965 it did have its own county council. Crucially, it was identified as a separate entity in the "Bartholomew's Reduced Survey Map of the British Isles" that I received as a birthday present in the early 1960s and still have and which belatedly provided the inspiration for this project to visit every English county by bus.

That map also identified Peterborough as being in the "Soke of Peterborough", which was one of the Hundreds (administrative areas) of Northamptonshire. Like the Isle of Ely, it had its own county council until 1965, although unlike the Isle it didn't get a separate colour on Bartholomew's map being depicted in blue along with the rest of Northamptonshire. (On the map, each county was shown with a different coloured background to its neighbours, which was one of the things that intrigued me as a child).

26th May 2022

After an early start from Lancaster on the 0649 train I arrived in Peterborough in good time for the 68th bus of the trip: Stagecoach service 33 to Whittlesey, which I was pleased to see was a double-decker and which crossed from the Soke of Peterborough to the Isle of Ely shortly after leaving the city.

Whittlesey Market Place

Whittlesey is a small, Fenland town with an impressive market square. I'm sure that on a previous occasion I came here the buses terminated in the square, but they have now been banished to a nearby car park, which is at least more convenient for the Co-op, the town's largest food shop.

The next bus, Stagecoach 31 that was also a double-decker, took me across the fens to Ramsey, an even-smaller Fenland town, but one which I had been curious to visit for some time.

Over the fens to Ramsey

At some point the bus crossed over the boundary and back into Huntingdonshire, but as both the Isle of Ely and Huntingdonshire are nowadays administered by Cambridgeshire County Council there was, of course, no road sign.

Ramsey: and my next bus forward.

During the planning stage I'd been disappointed to find that the bus schedules would allow me just 18 minutes in Ramsey, unless I wanted to spend the whole afternoon there. In the event, this proved ample as the town is small - smaller than Whittlesey - and with not a lot to see. The most interesting aspect being that the main street - Great Whyte - is built over a culverted river that was once the town's main port.

I was puzzled by by next bus turning up in a rather insipid green livery, as I had been expecting another Stagecoach. But service 30, heading for Huntingdon but on which I was only making a short hop to Warboys, was one of their's - it was just painted in a special livery used by buses on the Cambridge to St. Ives guided busway. Service 30 doesn't go anywhere near the busway of course, but I noticed that a high proportion of the Stagecoach fleet in this part of the world carries that livery "just in case".

The short journey to Warboys was enlivened by a double-run to the small village of Wistow, where the bus turned round by reversing across a T-junction, a manoeuvre frowned upon by highway authorities these days, but presumably allowed on the basis of historical precedent.

At the small village of Warboys I would change buses again to head back into the Isle of Ely at Chatteris. The convoluted routing been made necessary by the bus timetables again. Although services in this part of the world are infrequent, very little effort appears to have been made to orgainse convenient connections and several proposed routings I had planned had to be abandoned because the buses just missed each other or the connection times were too tight to risk in the event of late running.From Warboys, another green Stagecoach bus, on service 35, took me to Chatteris, where I had a choice - either half an hour in the town followed by a ride northwards to March and returning on the same route and on to Ely, or spending two hours there before catching the same Ely bus.

"The Fountain" Highspot of March town centre.

Once again, the shorter stay proved adequate, so very unusually for this trip I made a round trip to March, returning the same way I'd come. At least I had half-an-hour in March for a cup of tea and a quick walk round. to see "The Fountain".

The return bus was the only one of the day to run late - some twelve minutes delay caused by heavy traffic around school closing time - a feature of bus travel that seems almost universal in England. Despite a fast run back along relatively quiet roads we were still twelve minutes late arriving at Ely. We could have eliminated this delay by missing out the protracted tour of a "Business Park" just outside the city that, predictably, produced no passengers as each "business" was surrounded by its own extensive car parks. At least the bus terminus in Ely was just around the corner from my hotel, which in turn was near the city's famous cathedral.