Wider Wantage Wanderings (maxi)

The occasionally remembered song by the Byrds was released in 1965, but was a Pete Seager composition from 1959; when fbb was 14! It is taken directly from the book of Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament. It is a book which many Christians find difficult to take on board because it suggests that everything is a waste of time.

The book does (eventually!) concludes that God is never a waste of time but it is a hard slog getting there!

But you could think exactly that about today’s shambolic bus industry. fbb did think thus as he waited for a bus outside The Bear on Wantage Market Place on Saturday 12th October.

The gist of fbb’s first ever couple of blogs in March 2010 was that it was hard to find out when the buses ran; in this case from Wantage to Oxford. Then, fbb was looking back at his experience the previous Christmastide, on 29th December 2009 to be precise.

To understand the gist, you may wish to enlarge the above graphic. You can see something of Ecclesiastes in the situation. fbb couldn’t find out what timetable was in operation on 29th December, despite the timetable at the stop and despite phoning Traveline.

The choice, back then,  was between an X30 via Grove and Cumnor and a 31 (not X) via Grove, Marcham and Abingdon.

Things were much the same in 2014.

The X30 ran every 30 minutes (RED on the above map) and the 30 (ORANGE) was hourly.

Both routes diverted from the main drag to serve Grove High Street.

Then Stagecoach had an onrush of the timetable tinkering disease and came up with a whole new set of numbers with “S” as the prefix for use in the Oxford area.

So the X30 became S9 and the 31 became S8.

Search for an S8 timetable on-line today and this appears …

And the buses were branded “Gold” …

… as were the S9 vehicles.

There is a truly awful piece of Stagecoach publicity for the S9 fully available on-line and showing all sorts of “working timetable” drivel …

… but like so much that fills the waste paper basket that is the internet, it is both drivel and out of date! The S9 now runs every 20 minutes instead of every half hour.

Idly, fbb wondered whether the former hourly S8 had increased in frequency.

But it hadn’t. It had disappeared completely. Both easily accessible on-line timetables were out of date.

Surely there was still a bus between Wantage, Grove, Marcham, Abingdon and Oxford? It was Google Maps that guided fbb to the answer.

But whose X1?

fbb guessed correctly that Stagecoach had abandoned its S8 and GoAhead’s Oxford Bus had taken it over as X1.

The livery is rather cluttered and garish, but you wouldn’t miss it!

The frequency is still every hour, but it is integrated with an X15 to Witney providing a bus every 30 min between Oxford and Marcham,

But what is so much better than Stagecoach’s current effort is the map for the X1/X15; here from Oxford to Abingdon and Marcham …

… and below the continuation from Marcham to Wantage.

Outside The Bear Inn they boarded the S3 from Chipping Norton to Oxford.

Oh? Sorry? It was an S9 from Wantage to Oxford in a cunning disguise!

The wanderings will continue  on Wednesday .