Buzzing Around Greater Manchester - Again!
Part Two
1 June 2025
ABOVE: Bee Network - First Manchester 58006 (LV24 RRO), a Mercedes-Benz Sprinter Mellor Strata, stands in Rochdale Bus Station awaiting a morning departure on local circular route 436 via Buckstones. Taken on Tuesday 6 May 2025.
The Greggs cafe in Bolton Interchange has half of its seating area blocked off, and the remaining tables are all taken. A shame, really, as I have nearly half an hour in hand and could use a cuppa. It's the same every time I visit, actually! I wonder how much trade they lose that way?
On this occasion, I've just arrived from Wigan on route 575. I'm doing a circuit of the outer edge of Greater Manchester using the Bee Network. On this Bank Holiday Monday, I have set off from the Trafford Centre and, by early afternoon, I have covered off the western side of my intended circuit, as described in Part One of this article.
I am now heading towards Rochdale, but not by the direct route 471. Instead, I'm taking the 501 service to Farnworth. This service doesn't start in Bolton - it heads through northern suburbs from Johnson Fold, a residential area, on a Sunday headway of 30 minutes. The display at Bolton Interchange records that the 1416 departure is going to be five minutes late. The bus appears at around 1418, but loading does indeed take a couple of minutes, and it is 1421 as we pull off the stand.
ABOVE: Bee Network Go North West 4142 (SK73 CVA), an ADL Enviro200 MMC, pulls into Bolton Interchange, working route 501 to Farnworth. This was taken on Bank Holiday Monday 5 May 2025, as were subsequent pictures in this article, until otherwise indicated.
This is an ADL Enviro200 MMC of Go North West. The Next Stop displays on this vehicle aren't working, and it's surprisingly rattly for a almost new (73-reg) vehicle.
We head out past Bolton Railway Station, which is connected to the Interchange by a bridge, but of course people using that link don't get to see the square outside.
ABOVE: The Clock Tower outside Bolton Railway Station. Part of Trinity Court, an old church converted into an apartment block, can be seen on the right.
The clock appears to be showing the correct time - approaching twenty-five past two - but online articles suggest that this may be quite unusual... The 1899 clock, which was moved brick-by-brick to stand outside the station in 1987, has apparently stopped on a number of occasions, including for five years from 2002, and again in 2023, when the hands were stuck at ten past five. Now I know that ten past five and twenty-five past two will look very similar on a clock face, but I'm sure it's showing the latter here so presumably someone found the money and fixed it!
Much of this journey is through residential areas - some of these are very attractive-looking.
We don't make up the lost time, so reach Farnworth Bus Station at 1444, five minutes late.
We're only actually two miles south-east of Bolton at this point. Farnworth has a population of almost 27,000 (2011 Census), making it a significant town in its own right. In the Middle Ages it was just a hamlet; it expanded in the Industrial Revolution around the coal mining industry.
There has clearly been some significant development in recent times, as the whole area around the Bus Station looks like new build.
ABOVE: Farnworth Bus Station
Farnworth Town Hall, on Market Street, is a much older structure, though, opened in 1909:
ABOVE: Farnworth Town Hall
From Farnworth I am heading to Bury on route 512. The 1510 departure (they are only every two hours on Sundays, although route 511 plugs the gap via a different route) is another ADL Enviro200 MMC, but a short one, and provided by Diamond Bus North West. Neither the display screens or the audio announcements are working as we set off from Farnworth - the display is stuck on somewhere called "Albion Street", listing stops to Radcliffe.
We have only gone a short distance down the main road before we turn off and start venturing into some tight residential roads, initially into Kearsley; it is reported that, in the Industrial Revolution, a papermill, cotton mills, chemical works, an iron foundry, a quarry and 15 coal mines all operated within Kearsley's boundaries.
We cross the River Irwell and dig deeper, on a double-run into Prestolee, where the reason for such a small bus becomes very evident - it's getting very tight indeed.
ABOVE: Crossing the River Irwell at Bridge Street, Stoneclough
As we work around Prestolee, one of those old mills can be seen, hidden behind the houses. This is Kearsley Mill, an Edwardian mill now used by many private businesses, and Grade II-listed. The way we twist-and-turn suggests that it sits in the middle of the village, with the houses built around it, but a check of the map shows it to be at one end of the village. It's just very, very dominant and obvious:
ABOVE: Kearsley Mill
We continue towards Ratcliffe, where the audio information and display screens suddenly spring into life as we reach the aforementioned Albion Road, in Chapel Field, just before Ratcliffe. From this point, eager to make up, perhaps, the audio announcements tell us that "this is a 512 service to Bury" at every stop, regardless of whether we call or not (usually the service announcements are only made when the bus serves a stop).
We reach Bury Interchange at 1609, three minutes early. It's been a fascinating run, digging into places I would never otherwise have discovered - not even on the 471.
At this point I am planning to go on to Rochdale, to complete Day One. But I decide to cut here because there's no Metrolink from Rochdale due to engineering works, and there is from Bury, making it easier to get back to my hotel near the Trafford Centre.
When I get back to Trafford, I discover what people in Manchester do on a Bank Holiday Monday. It's been a very quiet drive all the way around to Bury, but Trafford is absolutely heaving with people, even at close to 6pm!
Next morning...
It's no longer a Bank Holiday Monday. It's now a normal working and school day. The tram from the Trafford Centre is pretty quiet, but a change at Cornbrook (once a stop that you could only use for interchange, with only an emergency exit to the street) puts me onto a service that is crush-loaded, as people head into the centre of Manchester to go about their day's business or learning. Few of those on board are here for fun, I suspect!
Personally, I don't mind other people's rush hours - they're far more interesting than my own. But I do appreciate that I am taking up a space, when it's this busy, of someone who might need it. Or, given my bulk, probably two spaces...
The journey gets easier, and it actually only takes 63 minutes to reach Bury, so I am in time to resume my circuit with the 0907 departure on route 468 to Rochdale. (The 471 is still the quickest route from here, but I'm not out for the quickest!)
The 468 is part of the much-diminished First Manchester operation. First didn't do especially well in the Bee Network tendering process, losing its Oldham presence to Stagecoach Manchester, but it did pick up work in the Oldham and Rochdale areas, and a depot that previously belonged to Transdev (well done if you're keeping up)!
First operates a fleet of Volvo B8RLE MCV eVoRas on the 468 (and companion service 467). The two routes between them provide a quarter-hourly service between Bury and Rochdale, albeit via different routes.
ABOVE: A Volvo B8RLE MCV Evora of First Manchester navigates the complicated road junction at the Moorgate Retail Park in Bury, working an incoming route 468 service from Rochdale. This, and pictures from this point on, taken on Tuesday 6 May 2025, unless otherwise stated.
One of the challenging points about the eVoRas, apart from the correct way to spell the word using Capital and small letters, is that the layout feels quite cluttered. And, as the floor rises gradually as you move towards the back of the bus, it becomes impossible to see the information screens from the back because other things are blocking them:
ABOVE: The information screen, from this point near the back of the bus, is just about visible above the driver's rear-view mirror, but what looks like another mirror has made it impossible to read it.
This is a reasonably straight-forward journey, deviating from the main road to serve Bamford, an 'affluent' suburb of Rochdale.
As we come into Rochdale itself, the former Oldham Joint Stock Bank, dating back to 1895 and grade II-listed, dominates the skyline of South Parade. The River Roch flows through as well, but with sections underground as it flows through the town.
Ten miles north-east of Manchester itself, and with a population of over 111,000 in 2011, Rochdale sits in the foothills of the South Pennines. The town's existence can be traced back to the ninth century.
It has taken 45 minutes to reach Rochdale (scheduled for 40), and we arrive with more than 20 passengers on board - not bad for a weekday post-rush hour morning, although this has been the first bus, for some of the way, that free passes can be used on, which can generate a mini-peak.
My decision to cut Monday's travels at Bury has now presented a potential problem. The route I have planned back to the Trafford Centre is going to be very tight - there's no wriggle room. This is because I have basically devoted an hour this morning on this Bury to Rochdale leg, which should have happened yesterday. So I'm in two minds about whether to skip the next two rides, to Oldham, in favour of the much quicker through service 409. But I'm also quite stubborn, and decide to stick to the plan, even if I regret doing so later. The worst case is that I can't finish the loop today...
So, against my better judgement, I'm going to pick up one of the "Buckstones Circular" routes 435 or 436 services. These two routes run opposite ways around a route serving Shaw and the nearby Buckstones Estate. Each runs hourly, and the loop time is about 50 minutes. You might expect, then, that the buses would leave Rochdale on the opposite halves of the hour, to provide a half-hourly service for those, like me, who could go either way round. But they don't - they leave within two minutes of each other, at xx09 (436) and xx11 (435), leaving an hour's gap (near-enough) between.
Stands A & B at Rochdale Interchange aren't quite as close to each other as they sound - there's a Station Supervisor's office in between, so I have to make a conscious choice as to which stop to wait at. Fortunately I am rewarded by the early arrival of the 436, so I can wait here and take a picture like the one at the head of this article!
The 1009 departs punctually. This is another service from First Manchester, and is operated by a Mercedes-Benz Sprinter Mellor Strata minibus, one of 15 in the First Manchester fleet. It's a 20-seater, plus three tip-up seats, and feels airy and spacious, with large windows and decent seats - certainly a lot better than the van-based midibuses that sprang up everywhere in the deregulation era of the 1980s.
ABOVE: Another view of a Mercedes-Benz Sprinter Mellor Strata, as Bee Network - First Manchester 58011 (WR24 AZW) leaves Rochdale Interchange after dark on Saturday 25 January 2025, working route 440 to Syke, a northern suburb of Rochdale. Route 440 has an end-to-end journey time of just 11 minutes.
The only negative of these vehicles is that, sitting in the back, every bump and hump in the road is felt - it becomes very bouncy. It may be the way the bus is being driven, but it feels more like a design 'feature' to me! If you have a back condition, you might stick to the rows ahead of the rear wheels on these buses!
And so I am heading towards Shaw on the anti-clockwise service - as the audio announcements put it: "This is a 436 service to Buckstones Circular". Four of us have started out, but there's a decent churn rate and nine or 10 passengers board during the course of my short journey.
Once out of Rochdale itself, we cross the M62 motorway, which has almost ground to a halt in the eastbound (Yorkshire) direction:
As soon as we're over the motorway, we're suddenly in open countryside:
This continues for about a mile before we enter the environs of High Crompton, which then merges into Shaw. The area is known collectively as Shaw and Crompton.
The "Big Lamp" is a local landmark. The original was a 20-foot high six-sided gas-powered public street lamp, which was demolished in 1925. A scaled-down replica was built during the 1970s, electrically-powered and standing six feet high. Click here to see what it looks like.
I reach Shaw & Crompton's Metrolink stop in 20 minutes. The 435 would have taken 26 minutes to reach this point, and is due to pass in nine minutes. The effect of this is that, just as at Rochdale, the two buses leave Buckstones one minute apart. Very curious timetabling!
Also curious is that, on Sundays, buses run a more linear operation, from Rochdale as a 435 to Shaw, and then back the same way as a 436. The other half of the loop - the bit I've just done - isn't served.
ABOVE: A rear view of 58006 at the Shaw & Crompton Metrolink stop, with the Briar Mill behind. In 1953, the Mill was bought by the Lancashire Cotton Corporation, the world's biggest spinning combine; the Mill was reported at the time to contain more than 120,000 spindles!
I have 24 minutes in Shaw to find the next Bus Stop. The problem will be what to do with the other 23 minutes once I've found it... As it turns out, there's a decent shopping street to wander along (Market Street), so the time before my next bus to Oldham will soon pass.
And when I get to Oldham, I want to catch one of the most delightful and scenic bus services in this area. But time is against me, and another review of the ground to be covered is making things feel ever tighter. Am I going to have to forego my scenic journey in favour of making sure I can complete my circuit?
TO BE CONTINUED...
BELOW: A diagrammatic representation of the journey so far:
