North East thread 7: the bus chat continues...

[Someaddedsugar]

Just setting this up so it's here

Lots of dog walkers round Aykley woods, this morning. I think they were all on a similar mission to me, with Ds2, who had his shoes on by 8am, this morning 😅

They're cracking on with the demountables on StL playing field. Looks like the foundations are down and there was a JCB unloading girders.

He gets field time when he can but mostly yes in for the winter now as he’s an oldie

How is everyone getting on with the bus strike?
A friend of a friend who doesn't have a car recently had to re-locate to Quaking Houses. Where she is marooned at the moment, to all intents and purposes...

I’ve never seen so many Uber drivers. And taxi’s.

The buses we do have in the city all went pear shaped with the Millburngate bridge roadworks, yesterday. T he 64s were running 40 minutes or more late with huge gaps where they were being regulated. DH's sat nag brought him home from Teesside by the very scenic route. (if you call Ferryhill scenic)

Yes, my dc were late home from school. I think it was gone 5 by the time they got in. They finish at 3.20!

it seemed to have reached a point of the no 64s ending up at bus stops in pairs / about a minute apart on the road

I'm just glad it's half term Ds1 is usually on placement near Spenny on a Tuesday. Getting home would have been hell for him

@PickAChew I have a bit of a soft spot for Ferryhill.

The page below would have you believe all sorts of things about how it got its name. Someone in the Eng Lang Department in Durham in the 70s thought it derived from something Anglo-Saxon, and had to do with fairies.

Here's my theory:
Anyone who has driven past Ferryhill on the A167 knows that it passes through a great huge cutting, which is a relatively recent road improvement in the grand scheme of things.. Ferryhill is on a hill, and in its heyday, the A167 was actually The Great North Road, the main east-coast coach route. So I reckon that what used to happen was that the stage-coaches stopped just short of Ferryhill, the passengers got off, the coach then had minimum load and could make it over the hill. Meanwhile the passengers and their luggage were conveyed over the hill by mule to the other side, where they rejoined the coach. Hopefully spending a bob or two on the way! They were ferried over the hill

At least it wasn't far to Durham, if you were heading Northwards, where many excellent hostelries were (and still are) available Darlington similar, for those heading South

With the coming of the Railway in the mid 1800's. the importance of the GN Rd diminished. But Ferryhill thrived, because it was near the railway. Ferryhill Station came into being, and was the freight terminal for that part of Co,Durham.

As a CAB adviser in the late 1990s, I did an advice session in Ferryhill once a week. Lovely people, left behind after the Industrial Revolution had stripped Co Durham of its mineral resources, doing their best in difficult circumstances.

https://ferryhill.gov.uk/history/#:~:text=Another%20story%20is%20that%20Ferryhill,Swan%20House%20on%20the%20east.

It always strikes me how sad and neglected so much of it looks, when I pass through. So many people there stuck in such poor quality housing. I would say that if something "interesting" is going to happen on the number 7 bus, then it's there but, tbh, it's anywhere between there and Darlo. Almost always an eventful journey!

@PickAChew DCC knocked down the very worst of the miners' houses that remained to the East. Due to the fact that the coal seams of Co Durham dive down to under the North Sea, broadly speaking mining began with drift mining in the West, then shafts were sunk to the deeper seams. The industry moved gradually East, and the shafts got deeper, because the same seams got deeper underground. On the East coast they were deepest, and the coal face was eventually a considerable distance from the mineshaft, actually under the sea. Word has it that miners could hear the sea somewhere high above their head, but I have no first hand reports of this.

Wheatley Hill was the one I knew about. First Street, Second Street....Eighth Street. Quite rightly razed to the ground in the early 1970s - they were much worse than what remains in the West.

But I suspect by the time I came to Durham, the worst houses in the West had either been pulled down - or may have fallen down. There are lots of good ones left, some made out of local bricks, since between the thin coal seams were deposits of clay, hence local brickworks.

I love it round here

I used to live near Wheatley hill and it's a dive, in parts, despite the slum clearance. I don't think any of the newbulds there will have done anything to revive it because they're not really connected to it at all. I've noticed that the increasingly derelict main street is slowly being demolished and they've at least got a new post office.

FIL worked down the Easington mines. Started at 14. Not much left of them by the time DH was the same age.

My house was made with bricks from either claypath or Crook hall - not nipping outside to check 😂

There is a wall at Beamish with the named bricks 🧱.
The bus strike is having such an impact in North East, yet is only being mentioned in traffic reports.
If London’s buses were on strike it was be on the news. My chip is stuck on my shoulder. 😆
I can’t believe how awful it will be to walk to work today. Better clothes aren’t going to help today. 🌧️ ☔️🌧️🌦️

There's an article. In the chronic (more than ever with the app update) about how badly the Grainger market is being affected by the strike.

Totally agree about the buses and if it wasn’t occurring in the “northern hinterlands” the outcry there would be

Fully agree re the difference in north/south reporting. Same with the weather!

So Acas were involved in talks, yesterday, but nothing was resolved and it's looking like the strike really could carry on until Christmas.

With nexus' permission, a small independent, City Transport, have made an emergency registration of an hourly shuttle between the Galleries and Heworth interchange and that will start service tomorrow. Hopefully that will pave the way for other independents with available fleet and drivers to help plug some other gaps. 🤞

The bus companies are hoping that the approach of Christmas will make the drivers more likely to give in. The drivers may well be wise to this, and digging their heels in further. FWIW I am with them on this.

All over the world there is a general feeling among workers that they are being exploited treated unfairly, and they are saying it is time to change this. The only method they have at their disposal is the withdrawal of their labour. Which of course has detrimental effects - that's the point of doing it in the first place. IMHO if you think about it, we are all in this together. Experiencing inconvenience and coping with it is a form of solidarity

Easy for me to say though. I'm retired, with a car.

Hi I'm in Newcastle! I'm greatful I have a car and the buses near me are actually on as we aren't in gne area. My fam are though.

Buses going into Newcastle have to be CAZ compliant, Arriva don't have enough double deckers CAZ compliant.

That's why Durham gets all the Ashington cast offs.

And yes, @SequentialAnalyst our inconvenience is fine as we have options but people having to fund taxis on NMW are beyond inconvenienced. I'm with the drivers, though, as some of the arrogance from management is breathtaking.

@PickAChew I agree about the NMW and taxis, and I bet the striking drivers do too In a way, it's part of what they are fighting for - working people not having to live on a pittance barely above the breadline, and having to depend on buses for partly for financial reasons.

Is there anything that could be done to mitigate this? All I can think of is companies, such as supermarkets, and health care centres, such as hospitals, hiring mini-buses from taxi firms to collect people. (Builders used to do this to collect up all the tradespeople working on the current job.) Employed carers presumably have to use a car.

A lot of people have organised car shares, when they need to be in the workplace. The danger for GNE is thst they don't go back to the bus when they're running again.

My guess is that the logistics of shared lifts, particularly the extra time it takes the driver, and the sharing of petrol costs, will mean that people will return to the buses soon enough, once they are running again.