make it easier to do without a car….please!

Today was such a frsutrating day, tryin to make a trip just outside Manchester by public transport. My parents are visiting  me for the weekend from the North East, and I’d wanted to take them to visit some interesting places near Manchester as we’d spent the day in the city yesterday seeing the fantastic exhibition at the City Art Gallery on the Manchester Exhibition 150 years ago.

I’ve done without a car in my life for some time now, and so we were to make the trip by train. We discoverec when we got to the station that there were no trains, but bus replacement services. Of the two ticket machines I found at Victoria one was out of order, the other wouldn’t accept payment unless it was the exact money in change, which had numerous people turning away from trying to use it. There was one ticket counter open with a huge que.

We got on the bus (which arrived late) and it took over double the amount of time they said it would take , and so we missed the connection to get another bus replacement from Stalybridge….the next one was over two hours away….so much for lunch in the hills! With the time already lost it made the journey really impossible, and so we simply took the replacement bus service back to Manchester. I asked the bus driver to let us off as he was virtually passing my front door but he shouted at us something like “you wouldn’t be able to get off a train would you!” which we took to mean that no he wuldn’t let us off the bus before standing stationary for a while in football traffic….I hope the travel writers mentioned yesterday didn’t actually try to travel anywhere today from Manchester using public transport!

I always use trains, and even though they’re often late, its still the best way to get around in my opinion, buses are not just slower but less desireable for a

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