Last Saturday, I wanted to use public transport to get from York, a city in northern England famous for its trains, to the National Coalmining Museum, a NATIONAL MUSEUM near Wakefield, by 10am.
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| York railway station (Wikimedia Commons). |
I caught a train from York to Wakefield at 7.44am, getting me to Wakefield in a little over half an hour. 8.20am on a Saturday, and I am at a major public transport interchange, with more than 90 minutes available to catch a bus that would need to travel about 6 miles along the main road between Wakefield, a cathedral city of nearly 100,000 people, and Huddersfield, a town of more than 160,000 people, to a NATIONAL MUSEUM.
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| It looks like this (Wikimedia Commons) |
It wasn't possible.
I had checked online the day before and indications were that I could catch a bus from Wakefield that would get quite close to the NATIONAL MUSEUM. That'll do, I thought, but when I got to Wakefield bus station I discovered that Arriva* had changed the timetable, that the bus only ran every two hours, and the next bus wasn't until 10.15.
I debated going on foot, but 6 miles with a bag full of rocks wasn't enormously appealing, so I walked all the way back to Wakefield Westgate station and caught a taxi.
When I reached the museum, the manager told me that there isn't a single bus service that stops there. Not a single bus route going to a NATIONAL MUSEUM situated along the main road between two large towns in northern England, ever.
Ridiculous. Pathetic. Disgraceful. And sadly exactly the sort of service you'd expect from a country under the governance of Johnson the Shit and the slithy Gove.
*which is of course owned by the German national rail company
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