Languishing At Llandudno – 4

Basically the 26 bus route, apart from serving the Great Orme in the “summer” season, provides the only genuine town service in Llandudno.

The route is designed to serve the “traffic objectives” shown below.

Retail Park ORANGE

Housing PINK

Hospital BLUE

It achieves this with a large clockwise lollipop route as extracted below.

… with no interachange passengers on or off on fbbs trip. Two had, however joined at the town centre. The retail park was passed passenger-less …

… and the route is then via a mixture of property adjacent to and along Queens Road.

Here you will find a pretty park.

The near unfathomable wiggles on the map provide a bus for a selection of pre and post war housing …

… with pleasant open spaces here and there.

There is a stop for the hospital …

… amd the Goff Course.

We then cross the incoming (and outgoing) railway line via a splendid 1930s (?) Concrete bridge …

… before turning back into town for a second call at the station.

Of the five passengers who travelled on the loop, the two that joined in town left on Queens Road. One gent joined there and alighted just before the hospital and the fbbs rode all the way round for their £1.30 each all the way from Great Orme Summit.

Total cash takings from Great Orme round the town and back to the shops, £2.60 courtesy of the fbbs’ holiday budget. The rest were “senior” concession holders.

The experience was delightful. 

Despite never bordering the sea, the fbbs felt that they had got to know the town of Llandudno far better than, say, sitting on an open top bus.

But, as blog readers may remember, below was the only publicity in the hotel and fbb saw no signs of anything useful anywhere else.

But then it is ALL ON LINE!

True, the network map is on-line …

… although fbb could not find it a second time!

Arriva is quite helpful if you ask the right question. Search for  “Arriva Cymru” and you get options for the company’s various networks, leading to a list of Llandudno routes.

A click leads to the 26 – with a mystery.

Ysgol William Davis has a much more noble name in reality (and not in Welsh!) …

… and Streetview does show a bus stop.

Apparently the bus dives into the estate to serve the school but at some very odd times. And does it really go there on Saturdays?

Then Traveline adds to the timtabular confusion.

Why is the 0808 shown as an extra chunk above the rest? Why doesn’t it sit at the lower end of the table with 0908, 1008 and 1009 etc.? It is the same on the all stops version.

Traveline Cymru has PDF timtables (hooray) and that for the 26 gets it right – nearly …

… but don’t ask about stops for the evening terminating journeys! Suffice it to say, all buses call at a stop for the Palladium, but just round the corner from stop D.

There was even a press article from 2019 which thundered that the 26 would, appallingly, no longer call at Palladium.

It still did and it still does. Here is the stop at which fbb’s bus “waited time” before setting off on its loop.

“Official” Palladium stops are on Gloddaeth Street to the right of the roundbout.

With that in mind, you can now make sense of those evening terminating journeys.

Oh? You can’t. Neither can fbb! And isn’t “Great Orme to Great Orme” a really helpful heading fr anyone travelling on the town loop?

In Yesterday’s blog, fbb showed a picture of a route 19 at Great Orme, going to Betws-y-Coed. Was this correct? And if so, did these Crosville Cymu buses run top Great Orme, or were they just on a town circular?

But, whatever the 26 did in the past, tomorrow fbb and Mrs fbb will be taking you on a service 19 to Betws-y-Coed – and boy was it fun!

 Next Mean & Lean 19 blog : Friday 20th Sept