Memory Travel by Public Transport

One day, when I was about ten years old and one of my sisters was about seven, my father gave us a sack and a little money with the request, “Go out into the country and fetch me a sack full of sheep manure”. I should perhaps add that sheep poo is regarded as an excellent fertiliser for chrysanthemums or dahlias – I can’t remember which – perhaps it is for both? It’s apparently also good for other plants.

At the bottom of our road was a number of bus stops, one of which was for the Green Line buses. The Green Line buses used to travel from one green area into London then out the other side to another green area on the other side of London. So we waited for the bus and , when it came, I asked the driver to stop when we  came to a farm with a lot sheep poo in the fields.

When the bus driver spotted a decent haul, he stopped and let us off with a wistful gaze, hoping I suspect that we weren’t going to catch HIS bus on the way back.

We walked into the field and started collecting, watched by a bunch of surprisingly inquisitive sheep. “What are you doing with our poo?”, they seemed to be saying. The question that we had NOT asked was whether we should collect the fresh smelly gleaming poo or the dried up older stuff. Being a brilliant decision maker, even at that age, I decided that we would collect some of each. I can’t remember seeing the farmer but I’m sure he had a good laugh if he did chance to see us.

When we had finished filling the sack until it was almost to heavy to lift, we hailed the next bus and were taken back to our bus stop in Sudbury Town. I should add that we had always longed to travel on those fast single decker buses so this trip was really very exciting to us, travelling on a green line bus out into the countryside!!!

I used to love visiting the South Kensington museums. Here I would pay my respects to the enormous whale in the Natural History Museum

then go downstairs in the Science Museum where we could play with various devices and later perhaps attend one of the lectures.

For these visits, I would buy a “half ticket”. The man in the ticket office would take the ticket for South Kensington and ceremoniously snip it at exactly 45 degrees in half. He handed me one half and I have no idea what he did with the other half.

When I was about nine, I was a junior exhibitioner at Trinity college. This meant that every Saturday I would walk down to Wembley Central station and take the train to Baker street with my precious half return ticket. I would then enjoy walking through the lanes of Marylebone to Mandeville Place and back again later in the day.

In the Summer, we would sometimes take another type of train from Sudbury which would take us to Ruislip Lido for the day. One day we walked to Regents Park and got into the London Zoo by digging hole under the fence. But it was by underground train that we travelled back to Wembley. The network of different types of trains which ran through Wembley and Sudbury was amazing. we could travel anywhere for very little.

Later, when I lived in Chiswick, things were even better. Granted I could walk to the Polytechnic Harriers running track and the Boat Club by Chiswick Bridge. (It’s SO nice to row down the Thames in an eight when you are NOT racing!!!) I could even cycle to the the Bank of England Sports place by Richmond Park with a banker friend. But when I needed to go anywhere else in London, I would go from Chiswick Park on the “tube”or from another station for a curious Cross London line. For the South Bank concert halls, the Film Insitute(with that creepy voice doing the translations!) or the Hayward, I would take the direct District Line to Charing Cross and walk across the railway bridge with hundreds of others. For the Charing Cross Road bookshops or the Covent Garden Opera, I would change to the Piccadilly Line at Hammersmith. For Mornington Crescent BBC, I would change to the Northern Line. It was SO easy, as long as you avoided the Rush Hours!!!

But the most exciting journey we ever took was to Liverpool Street station where we caught the train to the Essex Coast. We were incredibly excited to be travelling to the seaside! Later, I found that you could drink Guiness in the pub’on the platform while you waited for the train.

Even in car country USA there is public transport. For example, there are two trains into Seattle from Everett in the morning and two trains back from Seattle in the evening. Bus transit stations are mushrooming all over the outskirts of the city with already full carparks and the centre is well served by all forms of transport including the famous monorail constructed initially for the 1966 exhibition. Then there are the famous ferries which run regularly and reliably from very early in the morning until late at night. All this is nothing compared with the amazing road system. It has always been evident to me that just stealing one lane from the major freeways would give any city in the USA another wonderful rail network. San Francisco has some railways in the middle of the road. At the moment car pooling is encouraged by HOV (High Occupancy Vehicles) lanes which can only be used by vehicles carrying two (sometimes three) or more people.  Unfortunately I have often seen buses running along these freeways in off-peak times with no passengers. I suspect that this may soon change.

I can remember when London and Sheffield had excellent tram services. These were changed to bus services. In London, they even got rid of our favourite 662 trolley bus line into Paddington from Sudbury Triangle. Now they are coming back in Sheffield with their “superTram” – really just the same old trams.

City of London Mayor Boris, who often cycles into work, wants “bendy buses” for London and also wants to reinstate the OLD double deckers instead of the “very safe” buses that replaced the iconic Route-masters but not trams at this stage.. Buses even run throughout the night. But Boris has also introduced bikes throughout his city, has organised the Olympic Games, helped set up a thriving IT industry, and no doubt will be meeting the 2014 ’Tour de France’ when it arrives in London.He has even managed to get Arnie’ on a bike!!

Boris is a REAL character whom many people feel would be a colourful Prime Minister if his old school mates at Eton and Oxford would let him. His reference to the present Prime Minister’s Oxford degree “PPE” is to a degree which has soupçons of Politics, Philosophy and Economics whereas Boris is a REAL scholar!! Look at the bewilderment on the face of his interviewer!!

Five years ago, when I was living in Florence, the city was building tram tracks. It was heartening to see the care with which the cobble stones were being replaced between the rails. Two years later I returned and was pleased to see that one route was already in operation. The city has a decent bus service and small electric buses for the back streets of the Old City.

The city rail services of Paris, Chicago and New York are well known from the many films made around them. When I see trams running down the streets of the old DDR at dusk, I immediately remember the spy stories that I have read about the East Germany. And then there are those amazing street cars of San Francisco; many of them retired trams from Melbourne Australia.

We all know the vaporetti and gondolas of Venice which often appear in movies but did you know that you can take a traghetto (public gondola) across the Grand canal for 50 cents? I used to take a traghetto from Cannaregio to the Rialto when I felt a little lazy. So public transport can be an evocative experience.

It’s difficult to assess the cities which have the best transport system for travellers without cars. On a recent trip to London I found the District and Piccadilly line trains to have plenty of seats at off-peak times. Arriving at Heathrow airport, it is still a good idea to travel into London by tube rather than by any other means of transport. But you will soon need an oyster card as many ticket offices are closing. The oyster cards enable travellers to prepay fares and operate the automatic gates leading to the trains. They can be recharged anywhere the ticket offices have been closed!!!

Australian cities have excellent public transport. Melbourne still has its trams and the suburban trains. Sydney also has excellent services and Brisbane also has a similar system using trains and buses.

From my house in Brisbane, I have a variety of choices if I want to use public transport to get into the city. At one end of the street is a bus service which runs every ten minutes during the day. At the other end of the street is a “glider bus” service also running into the town on a very tight schedule. “Glider” buses only take “goCards”. Like an oyster card, you wave the card in front of a machine as you enter and your fare is deducted from the card when you wave it again as you leave the bus. The whole idea is to speed up the buses.

If I walk down the road, I can catch the CityCAT into town. This catamaran  uses the same fare zone system as the buses and travels very fast. It’s probably the most pleasant way to reach the city.

Another way they speed up the Brisbane bus services is to build “busways” through Brisbane. They go under buildings and over other roads to move buses quickly towards the suburbs. Buses travel along these busways at a good clip and the stops on the busways look like normal train stations.

One thing I like about the Brisbane system is that buses and trains coordinate quite well. A website will give you several options when asked how to get from one place to another at a certain time. When travelling from Brisbane to Noosa, a distance of over a hundred miles, the Noosa bus will actually meet the train at Nambour.

Of all the places I have visited,Vienna seems to have the best best inner city public transport system. Trams run everywhere and nobody has told the city that underground trains simply do NOT have to go that fast!! There is another train system altogether which runs into the surrounding countryside and also services the airport. If you travel from the airport on THIS system, it will cost a fraction of the cost of the highly publicised “Airport Train”. There is also an equally large bus system, as if that wasn’t already enough. There is an amazing network of cycle tracks alongside the roads with their own traffic lights. Yes, we really have to treat cycling as a form of public transport when it is organised SO well!!!They also have carriages drawn by two horses taking tourists around the old city.

One day, we tasted some wine in BILLA which purported to come from North of Vienna. Determined to find these vineyards, we jumped on a tram and stayed on until it reached the terminus. We walked up the valley looking for the vineyards and, seeing nothing, began our walk down on the other side of the valley. THEN we looked up!!! A huge hillside vista opened up above us and there were the vineyards. There’s wine in them hills!!! I suppose we should call that tram a Green Line tram