Cambridge to Norwich

 29th June 2022

I returned to Cambridge by train, once again taking advantage of the cheap advance fares available via Leeds and the East Coast Main Line, in this case as far as Stevenage.

Confusion at Cambridge

The train journey went well and I arrived in Cambridge in plenty of time for my first and only bus of the day. It was only at the bus station that things went wrong

Drummer Street bus station in Cambridge  (c) Trevor Harries (Wikipedia Commons)

The station has 11 stands, with several more on the street outside. However, it lacks any central information point with details of which buses go from which stands. There are two overhead display screens - one of which was not working - that give the times and departure stands of the next half-dozen or so buses, but otherwise the only way to find out which bus goes from where is to visit every stand and check the display cases.

This method, however, falls down because most of the cases are either a) empty, b) have departure lists covered over by out-of-date posters announcing Covid regulations, or c) tell you to download an app to find out bus times!

I resorted to my "Bus Checker" app to establish that the bus I wanted left from stand 8 in about 15 minutes time.  Shortly before departure time a bus arrived, showing just "Stagecoach" on the departure screen. The passengers alighted, as did the driver, who most unusually left the door of the bus open.

Just before departure time a different driver arrived, shepherding a group of passengers from the far side of the station and telling them to "just get on - we don't have a ticket machine so no fares to pay". I asked one of the passengers where they thought the bus was going, to be told it was a number 11 to Newmarket. I also asked the driver if it was "an eleven, mate?" and he just nodded and beckoned me on.

Shortly after leaving the bus station, about two stops down the road, the passenger I'd asked suddenly got off! After another couple of stops it was obvious to me that we weren't heading for Newmarket after all, so I too alighted and was lucky enough to be able to get a bus back into the city almost straight away.  It turned out that the bus I was on was going to Ely and the service on that route had been interrupted by traffic problems on the road ahead, hence the ad-hoc arrangements to get passengers home!

I'd particularly wanted to go to Newmarket on the number 11 via Burwell, which once-upon-a-time had its own bus operator, "Burwell & District", but the next one wasn't for over an hour so I settled for a service 12 along the straight and fairly boring main road. At least the 12, unlike the 11, stopped in the High Street, just outside my hotel.

The 12, after arrival at Newmarket.  Note the wheelchair ramp in use.

Newmarket

I'd wanted to include Newmarket on the tour because of the curiosity of the county boundaries there.

The town lies on the boundary between Cambridgeshire and Suffolk, but most of it is in Suffolk only because of a peculiar bulge in the Suffolk boundary.

The purple line shows the county boundary and that Newmarket is almost completely surrounded by Cambridgeshire. The modern day administrative boundary has shifted a few metres to the south so that at least both sides of the High Street fall under the control of Suffolk, although the railway station still comes under Cambridgeshire!

Newmarket High Street. The left side in Suffolk and the right in Cambridgeshire.

Another curiosity of Newmarket is that its main shopping street is still an "A" road, the A6104. Before the construction of the Newmarket by-pass it used to be the trunk A11 London to Norwich highway and that evening I got a taste of what it must have been like, when an overnight closure on the A11 meant a constant stream of heavy traffic passing through the town, thankfully in one direction only.

Claims to Fame

Newmarket has two other claims to transport fame. On 6th January 1846 the last of the Royal Mail coaches, that once carried the mail from London to all parts of the country, passed through the town and no doubt changed the horses on its way to Norwich. After that all mail to and from London went by train.

The town was also the destination for the last horse-drawn bus service in England, from nearby villages, which ran until 1932.

Moving On

Mildenhall market place, but
it wasn't market day.

I left Newmarket the following morning on Stephenson's service 16 to Mildenhall. Because this left at 09.20 my pass couldn't be used and I had to pay a fare of £3.90, which didn't seem bad value for 38 minute run.  Perhaps it was the weather -  dull and "close" - but MIldenhall seemed to be asleep! There isn't an awful lot there to begin with. The small country town was expanded in population due to the proximity of RAF bases and London overspill from the 1960s. A shopping centre and bus station were presumably added during that period and a large Sainsbury's arrived bit later.

I was now travelling through Suffolk, but only by necessity due to a combination of the borders and the bus routes. My main visit to that county would follow and the next county on the route was Norfolk, although it would take two more buses to get there.

Coach Services of Thetford's 201 was a bit of a "nowhere-to-nowhere" route. Its destination, Brandon, was similar in size and facilities to Mildenhall and it stopped just 15 minutes short of the more obvious traffic objective of Thetford. The few passengers aboard all seemed to know one another - and the driver - in true country bus style.  One thing that Brandon did have - on a Thursday at least - was a small market, which at least enlivened my enforced 45 minute wait for the connection on to Thetford.

Brandon market

Coach Services also operates the 86, that took me to Thetford. It was a double-decker too, all the better to appreciate the beauties of Thetford Forest that stretched most of the way to that town. Just before entering the town centre we crossed over the River Thet and finally entered Norfolk

NORFOLK:  County Town - Norwich

Norfolk is the fifth largest county by area in Britain, but only the 25th largest in terms of population. 

Forty percent of the population live in Norwich, the county town, leaving the rest of the county a sparsely-populated rural area.

It is one of the few English counties not on the motorway network and lost most of its rural railways in the 1960s, but still seems relatively well-served by bus.

The popular BBC sitcom "Dad's Army", despite being set on the south coast, was filmed in and around Thetford and the town now attempts to cash-in on this with a Dad's Army museum and even a, functioning, butcher's shop trading as "J Jones" and selling "Walmington Bangers" 

Ration books no longer required.

My next bus was another curiosity. Running just twice a day it links Thetford with the only slightly smaller town of Watton. Despite running through a number of small villages, almost all the seven passengers travelled through to Watton, but it was hard to see why they had. Watton seems to have most of what Thetford has to offer and most of them weren't carrying much shopping. Watton has more regular buses to Swaffham, Dereham and even Norwich, so its hard to see why anyone would choose to go to Thetford anyway. Nor could they have been Thetfordians visiting Watton as there was no suitable return journey for them to use.

Watton was another town without a by-pass and with traffic down the main street, but I had only just under half an hour to wait for my next bus - the 11 to Swaffham - and the time passed soon enough.

I was upstairs on the double-decker when we arrived at Swaffham and, assuming the bus to be terminating in the market place, I didn't think it was necessary to ring the bell. Big mistake.

I was the only passenger aboard, so not unreasonably, the driver didn't stop!  By the time I had got downstairs we were well on the way to the next stop, which was quite a long way out of town, leaving me to walk back. (The service actually runs to a small housing estate on the edge of town, but I hadn't done my research very well).

The Excel bus

By the time I got back to the market place I felt as if I'd seen most of Swaffham anyway, so when I went to check the time of the next bus on to Norwich to see if I had time for a cup of tea, but found that there was one due imminently, I opted to catch it. 

 This final bus of the day was a lot more upmarket than most. The Swaffham to Norwich route is part of First bus's prestigious "Excel" service that runs through from Peterborough and features modern vehicles, with comfortable leather seats, wooden (or at least wood-effect) floors and next-stop announcements.  This particular journey was also operating a variant of the service that runs direct to Norwich along the A47, so although I was slightly disappointed to miss out Dereham, I reasoned that I had seen enough small towns today and had been there once before anyway, so an early arrival in Norwich would be welcome.

Ely to Cambridge                                                                                          Norwich to Ipswich