BY BUS FROM CREWE TO LIVERPOOL
8 October 2023
ABOVE: D&G Bus 28 (T28 TYB), an Optare Versa, arrives in Northwich prior to working another journey on route 82 to Chester. All photos in this article were taken on Tuesday 13th June 2023, unless otherwise stated.
I have just arrived at Crewe railway station. It's a busy, bustling place. Twelve platforms serve several railway routes - the West Coast main line runs north-to-south through here, with a north-west branch off to Chester (in turn a gateway into North Wales). The Shrewsbury line runs south-west from here, and lines to Stoke-on-Trent via Alsager, and to Manchester via Sandbach, run off to the east / north-east. Knock out Crewe and a lot of North-West England's rail network would be paralysed.
But the centre of the town it serves is not very close to the railway station. It's the best part of a mile even as the crow flies, and one cannot take as direct a route as the crow does. Certainly Moovit is off the mark with its advice:
Fifteen minutes would be more accurate. Twenty if you're out of condition, like me, and dragging a heavy suitcase. Like me. Helpfully, Costa has a branch half-way along the route into town. Perhaps they should make more of this? The Costa Halfway House?
This great railway town isn't otherwise the most sparkling town in my view (sorry, residents); on a previous visit some years ago, where I stayed overnight, even the town centre McDonald's closed at 7pm...
However, there is some investment underway. A "leisure-led mixed-use development" is being built; phase one will include a new bus station and multi-storey car park. This has meant the closure of the old bus station, and a temporary site has been set up to bridge the gap. It may not be pretty, but it does the job, and it's better than just pushing the buses into surrounding street, which is what normally happens on these occasions...
ABOVE: The temporary bus station at Crewe
I'm on my way to Liverpool, but of course I never go straight anywhere, which is why I'm in Crewe in the first place!
There's an hourly bus to Chester in the form of Stagecoach Merseyside and South Lancashire route 84:
ABOVE: The modern face of route 84 (Crewe to Chester) is demonstrated by Stagecoach Merseyside and South Lancashire 27889 (PE13 LTK), an ADL/TransBus Enviro300. It is seen in Crewe on Monday 19th June 2023
I've done that route before, though (and will again, in six days' time, but I don't know that yet). Like many buses round here, it used to be run by Arriva, but Arriva pulled out of Cheshire earlier this year.
The 84 under Arriva was an hourly through service, with extra buses between Nantwich and Crewe to provide a service every 20 minutes over that section. The extras now provide an overall half-hourly service over that stretch, but D&G Bus, part of the Centrebus operation, now also provides a half-hourly "Fast & Direct" link between Crewe and Nantwich, under the number 84X, in a smart livery that works really well in my view.
D&G Bus 4 (YX16 OHW) is an ADL Enviro200, seen in Crewe working route 84X to Nantwich
D&G Bus was one of the big winners from Arriva's exit from this region, and had to source 14 new buses quickly in order to manage its new service registrations. Its buses are very much in evidence here.
ABOVE: D&G Bus 107 (YX14 RZA) is an ADL Enviro200, is working route 85 from Newcastle-under-Lyme to Nantwich, via Crewe Bus Station, where it is seen
First has a small presence as well:
ABOVE: First Potteries 63173 (SN64 CGG), a Wright StreetLite DF, at Crewe Bus Station
My journey, though, is taking me on D&G Bus, and former Arriva service, 31 to Northwich via Winsford. I've used this service before, in Arriva days.
I'm on a Wright Streetlite DF, and it looks like being a busy run. Lots of people to load up and we leave Crewe five minutes late.
We're heading north out of town. The driver is friendly and courteous, joking with someone who has made the bus by the skin of her teeth that she should "never run for a bus", as it's "just not worth it".
We come to Leighton Hospital, necessitating a double-run and causing a slight delay as two other buses are serving the hospital's small bus stop when we arrive. It's a tight squeeze to turn around and get out again!
Soon after, we come to the village of Church Minshull. This is one of the places that I name-checked in my very first article, as an illustration of some of the places that I pass through by bus that many of us (including me before I came here) will never have heard of.
Church Minshull has 22 listed buildings - 18 at Grade II and four, including St Bartholomew's Church (1702), at Grade II*. I'm no expert but that sounds to me like an unusually-high number of listed buildings for a village with a population recorded as 426 at the 2011 Census.
After that we're soon into Darnhall, a suburb of Winsford. We explore the housing areas here at depth as we head towards Winsford itself.
ABOVE: This open space breaks up the housing areas near the Bedford Rise stop on Durham Drive in Winsford
Winsford grew around the salt mining industry. According to Wikipedia, rock salt was laid down in this part of North West England 220 million years ago, during the Triassic geological period. Seawater moved inland from an open sea, creating a chain of shallow salt lakes across what is today the Cheshire Basin. As the lakes evaporated, deep deposits of rock salt were formed.
Extraction began at Winsford in the 17th century, and is today quarried from a depth of more than 150 metres, producing grit for use as a de-icing agent on roads.
We only get glimpses of Winsford Town Centre from this bus, which carries straight on down the High Street - a dual-carriageway that skirts the northern side of the town.
It's a broadly straight run from here, apart from a left turn at "Road One" Roundabout, at Wharton Green Industrial Estate. A few miles later, we're into the pretty town of Northwich.
D&G Bus 58 (DG58 BUS) is a Wright StreetLite DF that was new to Bus Vannin, Isle of Man. It has just brought me from Crewe on route 31 and is seen in Northwich. It will return via route 37, a longer route back via Middlewich and Sandbach
Northwich lies at the heart of the Cheshire Plain, at the confluence of the rivers Weaver and Dane. The association with salt continues in the etymology of Northwich. The "wich" (or wych) suffix is considered to have been derived from the Norse, wic, for bay, and is associated with the more traditional method of obtaining salt by evaporating sea water. Therefore, a place for making salt became a wych-house (information attributed to "Words and places, or, etymological illustrations of history, ethnology, and geography", by Isaac Taylor, 1864).
All of the bus interchange stops are in a row on Watling Street, adjacent to the shopping precinct. I'm taking the 82 to Chester; another D&G service. We have a very jolly driver here. He apologises to the large queue that we're going to have to wait a couple of minutes while he gets a drink (it's a scorching hot afternoon). When he returns, he asks "who's getting on first"? He then concludes that "it had better be me or we're not going anywhere"!
We leave with around 24 passengers on this mid-afternoon journey, but we start to lose them very quickly as we head out of town. By the time we reach Hartford station, just 10 minutes out from the start, we're down to seven passengers.
We're in a much more rural setting for this run, heading westwards towards Chester. We pass Oakmere Lake, a Site of Special Scientific Interest that is not quite visible from the bus, and Kelsall, home of the Chester Folk Festival. We then come to Stamford Bridge (no, not that one - the place you're thinking of is probably the battle site a few miles east of York - or the football ground in South-West London).
ABOVE: A typical view, looking south, from the 82 bus
We pick up a few more people on the last stretch into Chester, and arrive at the bus interchange with seven passengers. Four of us have done the long haul all the way from Northwich, now just over an hour behind us.
ABOVE: Three Stagecoach vehicles are in evidence in Chester Bus Interchange (four if you count the one I am taking this picture from). On the left is 27288 (SN65 OEG), and on the extreme right is 27777 (PO61 NTU). Both are ADL/TransBus Enviro300s. The vehicle between them is likely to be 36319 (LX58 CBV), an ADL Enviro200, working rush hour-only service 204 to Garden City, just under five miles away on the east bank of the River Dee, across the border into Wales. I've not identified this vehicle from the photograph, but from BusTimes.org, which has confirmed that this was the only bus on route 204 that day
From here, I'm taking the X1 bus all the way into Liverpool. And I do mean all the way - it's going to be a two-hour slog across the Wirral Peninsula.
I've turned up at the stop in Chester Interchange and the bus is here. My first puzzle is about timing. It's 1545, but the timetable suggests that the most recent departure on this hourly service should have been at 1520. Is this bus 25 minutes late? (Next service isn't due until 1625 - bus peak spreading again here.)
It certainly could be the 1520 service, judging by the number of people around. It's a modern ADL Enviro400 MMC in Stagecoach Gold livery, with leather seats. There's no room downstairs so I have to drag my large suitcase with me to the upper deck. Even here. I'm on an outside seat as there isn't an inside one to be had.
We pass Chester railway station, which is a few minutes out from the City Centre. There's a service 1, also operated by Stagecoach, that starts from here and follows a similar routing to the X1; the latter skips a few places on the outskirts of Chester, such as Bache and Upton. The 1 only calls at the Chester Bus Interchange on the way into Chester, which seems odd.
The two routes come together at Chester Zoo. By this time a couple of people have left the X1 and I have secured the front inside seat. But this is going to be a busy run all the way, and there isn't the space for my case to take up a seat, so it's now half on my lap and half on the 'shelf' at the front (which a lot of people seem to think is a footrest).
A little further along and we reach the Cheshire Oaks Retail Outlet, a large "village-style site for designer and high-street fashion brand discounts" with 140 stores and 18 restaurants, and the adjacent Coliseum Shopping Park, which houses some of the bigger named stores.
ABOVE: The spacious roads and generous parking around Cheshire Oaks and the Coliseum Shopping Park seem to be geared towards the private car rather than the humble bus
It seems like a vast area, although not everyone is going to be happy if this exchange on Google is anything to go by:
It takes several minutes to complete the double-run through this area; we drop people off but pick as many up. The bus is surely full by now, but no-one is left behind as far as I can tell.
We come to Ellesmere Port, founded at the outlet of the Ellesmere Canal, which was first proposed in 1791 to link the River Mersey to the River Severn. It was never completed.
There's a nice bus interchange here, outside the Civic Hall on Civic Way and nice and handy for the local shopping centre.
ABOVE: Stagecoach Merseyside and South Lancashire 25220 (SF08 GOE), an Optare Versa, is the only other bus in evidence as we pull into Ellesmere Port Bus Interchange. It will shortly start a trip on local circular route 6 to Great Sutton and Little Sutton
We're very close to the banks of the Mersey, but the river stays tantalisingly out of sight. This same comment can be applied to most of the rest of the journey, to be honest.
ABOVE: Stagecoach Merseyside and South Lincolnshire 15851 (VX62 CXL), a Scania N230UD ADL Enviro400, is working route 1 (Liverpool to Chester Railway Station), when seen near the Halfway House pub in Little Sutton
We enter the Wirral as we cross the M53 motorway beyond Hooton, and reach the village of Eastham. Here, on Eastham Rake, is a bus on college duties from Happy Al's, one of a number of vehicles that this operator has that retains the Lothian Buses livery of its previous owner:
ABOVE: Former Lothian Buses SN59 BGE, a Volvo B9TL Wright Eclipse Gemini 2 now with Happy Al's, is seen on Eastham Rake, working a college service, possibly a 'closed door' (private) contract.
There's also an interesting bus refuelling at the Shell garage in Eastham:
ABOVE: I believe this to be former London Transport AEC Routemaster RM 1097 (201 UXJ, originally 97 CLT). The blind and markings suggest that it is owned by Aintree Coachline, but I've not been able to find any definite proof that it owns this vehicle.
The village of Eastham soon morphs into the town of Bromborough. We're less than a mile from the river bank at this point but it's still not visible.
It's worth mentioning Port Sunlight, north of Bromborough. Built in 1888 by William Lever to house ‘Sunlight Soap’ factory workers, Port Sunlight is one of the finest examples of an industrial worker village in the world. It has 900 Grade II listed houses and 130 acres of beautiful gardens and parks. It's now a tourist attraction in its own right. I must stop off there on a future visit (another opportunity missed)!
The various urban locales merge into one another here and the next one is New Ferry. There was originally a "ferry, cross the Mersey" from here, but it hasn't run for over 100 years now.
ABOVE: Arriva Merseyside 4534 (MX13 AAE), a Volvo B5LH Wright Eclipse Gemini 2, is seen on the New Chester Road at Legh Road in New Ferry, working on route 464 (New Ferry to Liverpool). The bus is currently heading south-east, while Birkenhead and the Mersey Tunnels lie to the north-west. The bus will shortly turn right and head on a slightly long-winded route via Higher Bebington, a suburb broadly west of New Ferry, before turning north.
We're about an hour and 40 minutes into the journey by the time we reach the Stagecoach bus depot on the outskirts of Birkenhead. Our driver, who has worked extremely hard through difficult and busy conditions, is at last able to go and have a break, and a new driver carries us forward.
ABOVE: Stagecoach Merseyside and South Lancashire 10886 (YX67 VCW), an ADL Enviro400 MMC, is seen on the section of New Chester Road near Rock Ferry that is also part of the Wirral Circular Trail, a 37-mile long cycling and walking trail that goes right around the Wirral.
Birkenhead itself is the town that sits on the opposite side of the River Mersey to Liverpool. Probably always in the shadow of its noisy neighbour, the arrival of steam ferries in the 19th Century opened Birkenhead up and it developed a huge ship-building industry.
ABOVE: Birkenhead town centre, where it feels as though most roads lead or from to the ferry! We're climbing an elevated road to bypass the tunnel traffic and access the town itself
There's a smart and practical bus station here. This was often my starting and finishing point for my visit to the region in 2021, where I stayed in Birkenhead because the hotel I wanted in Liverpool wasn't available.
ABOVE: Birkenhead bus station seems a little quiet, given that it's around 5.30pm on a weekday. The Arriva Merseyside Volvo B5LH Wright Eclipse Gemini 2 working route 407 (Liverpool to West Kirby) is probably 4851 (KX62 JXU)
Not so this time; I'm heading right to the end of the line in Liverpool. The last part of the trip takes us through the Mersey Tunnel.
Well, one of the tunnels - there are three. The railways got there first, in 1886, when the Mersey Railway launched its service from Green Lane (Tranmere) via Birkenhead to Liverpool. The tunnel from Birkenhead is believed to have been the world's oldest underground railway outside London.
We're using the Queensway road tunnel, which opened in 1934 (the Kingsway tunnel, from Liverpool to Wallasey, a little further north, opened in 1971).
It takes about four minutes to work our way through the tunnel. I'm struck (not literally!) by the number of buses that are heading in the opposite direction. There are at least eight bus routes using the tunnel. The tunnel has four lanes - two for each direction - and there's no barrier between the lanes. Buses use the right-hand lanes in each direction (better clearances), and it feels as though the buses in the opposite direction are passing pretty close to us.
Finally we surface in the City Centre of Liverpool. The tunnel continues for more than half a mile under the land once it has crossed the river, and the bus stop, in Whitechapel, just down the road from Lime Street station, is just a short run from the tunnel mouth.
There's still a good load on board, as there has been the whole way through. And I'm not the only one who has covered the whole distance from Chester - the people who were sitting behind me have been there all the way too, and I bet a few others have as well.
Chester feels like it was a long time ago (well, it has been two hours). Whilst a few of us have travelled the complete route, many, many more have just dipped in for part of the journey, demonstrating the value of these kinds of services across urban areas such as The Wirral.
It's been a long run, but don't get me wrong - I've enjoyed it. I would certainly recommend any of these rides, and I need to go and spend a bit more time on the D&G Bus network at some point.
And if Chester feels like it was a long time ago, Crewe feels like a lifetime away. But it's been just under five hours, on three buses (and I could have done it on two).
It's now just before 6pm, on a warm summer's evening, so time to pop to the hotel and offload the case, then out again for a light supper, followed by a couple more hours on the buses. But that's another story.
ABOVE: Journey's end - the Grade I St George's Hall venue dominates the skyline at Lime Street in Liverpool City Centre, at dusk (10.12pm). The steps up to the right lead into Lime Street station, and the station signage can just be seen at the extreme right. Lime Street is a busy road for buses, so it's quite surprising that what looks like a Stagecoach Enviro300 is the only bus in evidence