The Bus Chronicles: Walking it

This is clearly not Marple Road...

Having last week pondered whether it was really worth trying to get a bus home from work, I can confirm that I did indeed walk home from work on Thursday.

Here's how it happened...

I have, this past week, returned to the superstop in order to catch a bus home rather than continue to try my luck waiting at the 385 only bus stop for a bus that only appears to have a three in ten chance of turning up on time, or indeed at all.

It was as I was walking down Hillcrest Road that I saw what should have been the 16:02 383 drive past me. This was at 16:13. "Well" I thought "This doesn't bode well..."

I arrived at the superstop at 16:25, which is around the time that the next 383 is due to arrive. Regular readers might remember that this is the one that is usually at least five minutes late, and always (always) so full that the only option is to stand next to the drivers cab. Usually I reach the superstop either just as it's arriving, or about five or ten minutes before it's arrival. This was not to be the case on Thursday however.

As a veteran of both the 383 and Stagecoach services more generally, I did wonder quite early on if Stagecoach might do what they often do when the timetable is out of sync and just quietly bin off the next bus on the timetable. I could have checked the Bee Network app on my phone to see if this was the case but, to be honest, I didn't feel like I needed to: Years of experience tends to mean my instinct for when this will happen tends to be pretty good.

When it got to 16:40 and the 383 still hadn't arrived, I figured that I was probably right on this. I mean, the next one was due at 16:48 anyway. And that one might be running late as well.

By this time, I was starting to pay more attention than usual to the build up of traffic on Marple Road, which had been increasingly grinding to a halt. Careful inspection of the stationary traffic, belching out petrol fumes, revealed that not only was there a lack of movement heading towards the stop, but that movement away from the stop had ground to a halt as well.

I looked at it for a few minutes, noted the lack of either the 383 or the 385 (which should have arrived around the 16:34 mark, but which never does...) and concluded two things:

1) If a bus did arrive, it would be both overcrowded and stuck in slow moving gridlock for ages.

2) It would, in these circumstances, almost definitely be quicker and less unpleasant to walk the rest of the way home.

I have to confess that it was the overcrowding and the particularly strong smell of petrol fumes that swayed me in the end.

I'd been at the bus stop for about 15 minutes by this time, which isn't that long really.

And so, off I went.

When I last walked home in January 2024 I was fairly new to the area and hadn't found all the various shortcuts.

Now, a year on and with more information, I was able to utilise one of the shortcuts home to reduce the amount of time spent on Marple Road and, consequently, the amount of time spent yo-yoing across Marple Road whenever the pavement ran out. As it was, I only had to cross over once because of this.

It was not a fun walk by any means: It still mainly involved trudging along a polluted rat run in heavy traffic after all, and I was reminded of the unpleasant tendency of random men in cars and vans to shout abuse at women for no other reason than they take exception to them walking along the pavement, but at least it wasn't raining. On the random abuse point, I have noticed over the past year a similar tendency for car drivers and van drivers to turn up and block bus stops just before the bus is due to arrive, and also to slow down and shout abuse at people waiting at bus stops. I can only conclude that there are men out there (it does always seem to be men in both cases...) who feel equal rage and hostility to both women and bus passengers. They must lead very angry lives.

I was just coming up to the point where I could turn off Marple Road to take my short cut when the 383 hoved into view, overtaking me briefly before getting stuck in gridlock again. As I carried on walking I idly wondered if I'd be able to lap it before I reached the turning, but the traffic moved off just before I drew level with it. 

Aside from it not being a particularly fun walk, there are other practical reasons why I would hesitate before walking home again: Chiefly, there is the the overheating issue.

The weather this week has been freezing cold in the morning, warm and sunny in the afternoon. And it's practically impossible to dress for both. Add a 45 minute walk home to the mix and you tend to arrive home boiling hot and drenched in sweat. Which is not a state of affairs I tend to look forward to.

I considered walking home a second time on Friday as the 383 I don't get (ie the 16:25 one) was so late that I wondered if the next one would actually turn up at all (I had discounted the 385 by this point: It clearly wasn't coming), but it did, and so I was spared the middle bit of my walk at least. Timewise though, it is definitely quicker to walk that to try and get a bus home before 5pm. 

Photo by Felix Ngo on Unsplash