Hertford to Aylesbury

 29th July 2022

Another hot and sunny day, the fifth (at least) in a row with temperatures over the 30C mark.

First bus of the day and the 104th so far. Arriva's 324 to Welwyn Garden City

I left Hertford on an Arriva bus on service 324 from the town's bus station at 09.42. My first destination was Welwyn Garden City, the second of the "garden cities" developed between the wars to house people displaced from London.  To be honest, I was a bit disappointed in it after Letchworth, partly because it new seems to be dominated by a large indoor shopping centre but partly because I didn't realise we had arrived at the bus station!  Buses set down at the edge of the bus station before moving a few metres along to the stand for their next departure.  But I couldn't see this from where I was sat and assumed we had stopped at a stop outside the shopping centre and would soon move on.  The driver didn't say anything either so I just sat there for three or four minutes before we moved onto a departure stand, where I had to get off!

After a short walk round I returned to the bus station to catch Arriva's 724 service, the service number and the destination "Heathrow Airport" giving the game away that this was once a London Transport "Green Line" service and a reminder that Hertford and Welwyn Garden City was once within the London Transport Country Buses area.  Despite the destination, I was only going to St. Albans. After Norfolk and Suffolk and even north Essex, the scenery was very ordinary, consisting of fast roads, housing estates and modern shopping centres.  St. Albans itself was nicer and I had allowed time here for a little exploration, although it was too hot to go too far.

St Albans

Third bus of the day was provided by another new (to me) operator "Red Eagle" and was a rare example (outside London) of a two-door bus, with separate doors for boarding and alighting passengers. The bus itself had started its working life in London.  Most buses heading north from St Albans are going to Luton, but Red Eagle's 34 heads off slightly more to the north-west and runs to Dunstable. It's an hourly service but if today was anything to go by its  hard to see why, with just three of us on board as we left town. The other two soon alighted at nearby villages leaving just me to enjoy the fast run along a main road that I soon realised was the A5. The A5 still runs along Dunstable's high street but we turned off on the outskirts of town for a lengthy tour of residential areas, which at least produced a few more passengers to bring the overall load up to a respectable level. Just before entering the town itself we crossed the county boundary into Bedfordshire allowing me to see some of the southern half of that county, having passed through the north much earlier in the trip.

Probably because of the A5, most of Dunstable's shopping seems to have moved into a nearby shopping centre so I abandoned my plans to spend an hour there and opted instead to continue to Leighton Buzzard on Arriva's F70, which I found a much more congenial place, having a sort of "coaching and market town" air.

Leighton Buzzard

After half-an-hour's exploration I continued on the following Arriva bus to my final destination for the day at Milton Keynes.

Because I'd forgotten that I had an OS map with me that covered this area I wasn't following my usual practice of tracing my route as we went along. The bus was also quite busy and the seat I had didn't afford particularly good views. I didn't realise therefore how closely we were following the line of the Grand Union Canal, except when we crossed it soon after leaving Leighton at Linslade. As well as crossing the canal here we also crossed the county boundary into Buckinghamshire.

BUCKINGHAMSHIRE -  County town: Aylesbury

Buckinghamshire is a distinctively-shaped county with a north-south axis far longer than its east-west. It is named after Buckingham, which was the county town until the 16th Century, when it was replaced by Aylesbury.

Aylesbury is central, but the county's largest towns lie in the far north, Milton Keynes and the far south, Slough.  The county gives the impression of great prosperity, linked to its role as part of the London commuter belt and the presence of the Chiltern hills

Bletchley looked as awful as I remembered it as we passed through, but I was surprised that on arrival in Milton Keynes we bypassed the town centre and heading straight to the railway station, which isn't exactly nearby and which has a huge bus station of Eastern European proportions outside. That, however, suited me fine as this portion of the journey ended here and I was catching a train home to Lancaster.  The rest of Buckinghamshire will have to wait.

15th February 2023

After a much longer pause than anticipated at the time, I returned to Milton Keynes to frecommence the journey through Buckinghamshire. I had the choice of either Arriva's X60 or Stagecoach's X5 to Buckingham, somewhere I had decided to spend some time, even though it ceased to be the county town of Buckinghamshire on the orders of Henry VIII in 1529. The X5, which took a more direct route, was due first, but both buses were running late and when the X60 arrived first I obeyed the "first law" and got on it, being rewarded with an interesting, if roundabout, route via Stoney Stratford.

The Old Gaol, Buckingham

County towns originally gained their status through the role in the dispensing of justice and it's fitting therefore that the most prominent landmark in the small market town of Buckingham is the old gaol. There isn't much else to the town, although there were a number of interesting nooks and crannies to be seen on a walk round ending up at a pub opposite the town's only bus stop.

This was the first time I'd ridden on buses since getting new hearing aids and the engine noise and bodywork rattle on the X60 from Milton Keynes had been a bit overwhelming. The next X60 on to Aylesbury wasn't much better and was a fast, main road route, although the driver did stop between stops for some walkers who would otherwise have been faced with an hour's wait for the next one.

It was still only mid-afternoon when we got to Aylesbury, arriving in what must be one of the most unpleasant bus stations in the country, buried as it is beneath the shopping centre and accessible only by lift or by potentially dangerous walking route!

Aylesbury's awful bus station

 My first port of call was Marks & Spencers to buy a new cap, to replace the one left on the train at Milton Keynes, followed by a walk around the rest of the town centre, which although unremarkable was certainly a lot nicer than the bus station, before finding my canalside Travelodge for the evening.

Aylesbury Market Place

 

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