Like any new endeavor, understanding a bus system has a learning curve. We have spent a good share of our time in England so far learning to use the City's bus system. The decisions we face on the city buses are cost vs time vs proximities of our endpoints. We have become pretty good walkers and so a lot of times we choose to walk simply because its faster or the end points aren't convenient. This last week was a new adventure for us - we toured Devon using the bus system. For a map of Devon: http://www.lotstodo.co.uk/
We've gone on a couple of "Tour Bus Trips" before, Paris, Manchester, and London, but this was different. On the Tour Bus trips you go to a catalog, pick your trip, pay, and follow the flock. In this trip we had to decide where we were going and then figure out how to get there. We did discover a website that made this process a heck of a lot easier. In using www.traveline.com, at least in the Southwest corner of England, planning a trip is a piece of cake (this same site works great for trips within Bristol). You input your endpoints and rough time constraints and the program returns with a whole list of possible options. The travel options include: trains, coaches, buses, ferries, taxis and walking. The program allows you to eliminate any of the travel modes - we usually remove the "train" option (trains are outrageously expensive compared with buses or even flying). Each option can then be explored with any level of detail you could desire, including maps and complete schedules on any bus, ferry or train they suggest.
At some gut level we all make the assumption that buses are slower than private automobiles - that is not always true. At the local level, the bus is constantly stopping to pick up and let off passengers, which slows them down - a lot. But, in Bristol the buses have a lot of privileges not available to passenger cars, such as: bus lanes, special arrangements at some intersections, a driver who travels his road several times a day (or several times an hour), and finally a driver who is motivated and judged by his/her ability to maintain a schedule. The biggest single advantage here locally to buses is parking. Obviously you don't have to park a bus or pay to park it. Most of the local parking fees are greater than the bus fare.
At the intercity bus level, there is absolutely no advantage in speed of a car over a bus. The buses meet or exceed highway speed limits and they travel from city center to city center. You do have to live with their schedules and to get to a specific place to have to periodically change buses. There is a certain amount of anxiety about changing buses at transfer points. The distance between bus stops that you have to walk is listed in the "Traveline" program. At Barnstable we were told that we had to walk 56 meters (60 yards) between two different street addresses in 8 minutes. As it turned out the two addresses where the two ends of the same bus depot and the two buses were side by side. The biggest problem with bus changes that we experienced was that the stops weren't long enough. The bus changes are ideal times for lunch or an afternoon tea. Since you generally are in the heart of the town, finding food or refreshment is usually easy. Finding the best place to eat, ordering food in a town without a single sign that suggests "fast food", eating and then getting to the bus early enough to be somewhere near the head of the line so that you can sit together can be a bit of a rush.
Rural buses are an entirely different story. Local governments issue bus franchises and a committee determines the local routes. As a result, every little village or hamlet wants and needs bus service. You may be traveling at a good rate of speed down a fairly good secondary road and the bus will suddenly turn through a break in a hedgerow and take you two miles off the main road to service a collection of thirty houses. This isn't all bad when you're on tour - it a great way to see the countryside. The fun part of these little side trips, on this trip to Devon, was the size of the roads - they're very narrow. Many of the roads are only a lane wide, with either hedgerows or buildings on both sides, with grades as much as 20% and corners never designed for buses. All of this happens without cars being on the road. If you add cars to this scene and a driver who is determined to keep to schedule you end up with a ride for the uninitiated that rivals "The Matterhorn at Disneyland."
I'm not sure if the hedgerows in Devon are designed to be taller than those in the Midlands or we're just later in the season. The picture on the left shows Nancy next to a Devon hedgerow - the hedges must go 8-10 feet tall. The only good view of the countryside is straight down the road or a quick glimpse at a gate access point.
The good thing about the rural buses is that the bus stops could be where you wanted them to be. Going out we would simply ask the driver to stop at such-and-such a house or a convenient intersection and that would be the bus stop. On the return trip we simply waited at a wide spot on the road and waved at the driver and that spot became the bus stop. The system was very friendly.
We picked Clovelly and Woolacombe as our next destinations. We picked Clovelly because everyone that knew the West Devon Coast said that Clovelly was a "must see." Woolacombe was picked because it was the destination of one of the Tour Bus companies. With the destination picked, finding a B&B was made easier with the ever-expanding Internet. There are several commercial websites that feature B&B's anywhere in the country, but the small town Chamber of Commerce usually features independent, owner promoted websites that have great B&B's at a reasonable price. If you are really daring - most towns have an information center and they have a listing of most of the local B&B's, but you have to do these centers in person. And the most daring is to simply look for the signs posted on the streets in your destination -- hard when you're walking with your luggage
The reason we had our dinner with us was that in the bus transfer at Exeter we learned about the real time to get lunch. The Bristol - Exeter bus was a little late, the high street in Exeter was only a short block away, the schedule promised 35 minutes for lunch but it just wasn't enough time for even a quick lunch. The next bus change was at Bude and adversity and hunger had made us a little testy. The scheduled transfer was 41 minutes, Nancy watched the bags and I walked a half block to the bakery and bought a couple of Cornish Pasties and a fruit drink that we have become quite fond of called "J20".
A Cornish Pastie is a hand-held meat pie with meat, potato, onion, and sauce. County Cornwall is famous for pasties and rightly so. Bude is just barely in Cornwall, but the pasties lived up to the County's reputation. We bought two, one beef and one lamb. Even hungry, one was enough for the two of us. It was a good thing, because we ended up having the second one for dinner.
Next morning the weather was still unsettled but looking promising. Tom loaned us a couple of lightweight raincoats and off we went to Clovelly. We knew it was a one kilometer walk to the top of Clovelly and it was a least that. What we didn't know was that it was all downhill. Clovelly is known to be a hillside town but we had sort of envisioned was a flat plain with a nice edge and then the town tumbling down to the beach. The drop from the cottage to the top of Clovelly was at least as great as the hill from the top of Clovelly to the beach
After our cream tea lunch and thanks to our newly acquired Bristol hill climbing skills we ascended to the town parking lot. The parking lot had a visitor center with a movie on the history of Clovelly, a small café and a gift shop. We spent time in all three. Having learned the shortcoming of the Fuchsia Cottage (no food close by) we bought a sandwich for dinner and trudged up the rest of the hill to the Cottage in time for a light nap before the World's Cup Finals (the rest of the worlds answer to the Super Bowl). The Final was between France and Italy (the stuff of legends). Italy won.
Monday morning we moved from Clovelly to Woolacombe. Walked to the end of the block, waited by the roadside, and waving down the local bus - worked fine.. This first bus took us to Barnstaple and by the time we got to Bideford, the bus was full. The itinerary had anticipated uncertainly about what to expect at Barnstable, including a side trip to Arlington Court (a highly praised National Heritage Site). We passed on the Arlington side trip and instead did a walk-around of Barnstable; did a little shopping; bought Nancy a new rain coat, to replace the one she lost on the golf course before the trip and had a nice "sit-down" lunch. We split a lunch (most restaurants serve too much food) and chose a "home made lasagna." The lasagna came with the local coleslaw (English coleslaw has enough dressing so as to make it "creamy") and our choice of a green salad or chips (french-fries). Only the British would eat lasagna with chips
The camping park was obviously a destination for family vacations, with lots of entertainment for kids. In addition to the camping (and mobile home rental) there was a small grocery store, swimming pools (indoor and outdoor), miniature golf, an arcade, several play areas and a huge restaurant with counter serving. After a look around we returned to the B&B for some wait time and at the appropriate time returned for dinner.
The restaurant had an impressive menu with ordering at a counter. Nancy ordered a nice, steak dinner and I had an Indian dish , Chicken Masala. That and a nice glass of wine and we were all set. The restaurant was jammed with families with kids, lots of kids. The park had a person dressed as "Wooly the Bear" who had the little kids wound up pretty tight, but we found a quiet table in the corner and stayed out of the way. This was quite an event for us because we just haven't had much contact with kids since arriving in England. The little kids were very well behaved. Nancy's steak was her first big piece of beef since leaving the US.
After dinner the dance floor was cleared and they had several contests for the kids with prizes. It really was fun to watch and then they had a "Kiddy" floorshow. The floorshow was presented by a traveling zoo that brought various animals out of closed boxes with a lot of hyperbole and fanfare. The kids loved it and I found out that there are skunks indigenes to England. The only thing that I would take issue with is the "Ringmasters" claim that they wouldn't stink unless badly treated.
Tuesday morning the weather changed and the day was bright and clear. We wandered down the hill to the village of Woolacombe. Just a little aside: in English place names "combe" means valley and in this case the "Wolla" doesn't refer to sheep but to wolves. Woolacombe is the "valley of the wolves.
Wednesday we returned to Bristol. The trip required one local bus to Barnstaple and two coaches (Barnstaple to Taunton, Taunton to Bristol), but was pretty much uneventful.