'Only poor people travel by bus.' Even if those words aren't actually spoken, that is the subtext of so many conversations about transport in Britain. Buses are for people who can't afford cars, for old people, who at least don't have to pay to travel on them, and for those who live out in the sticks. Conveniently, many bus travellers are in all three categories. Buses are infrequent, unreliable and squalid. A neighbour recently surprised me by implying that taking a bus journey would be equivalent to walking around in a black plastic bin bag.
Well, I often travel by bus, not because I'm poor, because I'm no poorer than most, or because I live out in the sticks, as I live on the edge of a small town within thirty miles of London, or because I'm old and don't have to pay, although I am and I don't. My poor sight made me give up driving forty-odd years ago, and I don't want to rely entirely on lifts, so I find short-distance bus travel convenient. The bus service in my area isn't marvellous but it isn't bad either, if I plan my journeys. Most of the buses turn up at more or less the expected times, the drivers are generally efficient and courteous, and the buses themselves, although they vary in standards of cleanliness and comfort according to the company and the season, are generally tolerable over short distances.
Sometimes people talk to each other at bus stops and on buses. The conversations may be predominantly phatic, but at least there is occasionally a sense of community. There is always the risk of encountering someone boorish, aggressive, over-familiar or loudly garrulous, or who takes up more than half the seat, but I enjoy the brief, polite conversations, whether on matters of parish pump, national or global importance, with people I half-know. It certainly beats standing in a tube while avoiding eye contact with utter strangers, but that is hardly a fair comparison.
Any road up, as a friend from the north used to say when leaving the B-road of chat to get back on to the A-road of relevance, this week I had one of my more extensive, intensive and interesting bus travel experiences. Partly as a joke and partly as an encouraging challenge, over a year ago I suggested to a friend who had had major surgery that, when he felt strong enough, we and our wives should see how far we could get by public service bus in a day, spend the next day sightseeing and return by bus the following day. This later crystallised into a plan, researched in detail on t'internet, to travel from the Chilterns to the Cotswolds. So it was that on Monday, taking only essential luggage, we travelled from Chesham to High Wycombe, changed for Aylesbury, where we had coffee, changed for Oxford, where we had lunch, changed for Swindon, where we spent only a few minutes, and changed for Cirencester, our destination (the locals just call it 'Ciren'). We stayed in a small hotel on the edge of town and spent Tuesday looking around, visiting the huge, ancient parish church, the outstanding Corinium Museum, recently placed in the top thirty out of thirty-four thousand entrants in Europe, and in the afternoon taking yet another bus to Bibury, a small village of great beauty. On Wednesday we came back via Cheltenham, Oxford and Wycombe. As the crow flies, Chesham and Cirencester are not very far apart; by car the journey would have taken only two or three hours, far less than the time we spent in transit. But that was and is not the point. We enjoyed the slow pace, the varied scenery, the changing accents. All the buses, from several different companies, including big ones such as Arriva and small ones such as Red Rose, departed and arrived within a few minutes of the scheduled times. Some were more comfortable, less noisy and less crowded than others, but every driver was unfailingly courteous. In short, the system worked, and we are already thinking about our next trip.
