The Great North Road Bus Trip, Day 3: Grantham to Doncaster

Day two saw me almost lose a wallet in Rushden and get ripped-off in Corby...

Day 3: Monday, 18th March 1991

Janet worked in Stamford, so was able to drop me off at the town's bus station  on her way to the office for an early start to the day. I thought at the time that Stamford deserved a longer stay and I've been back since and discovered that it did. However, buses on the next stretch through the boundaries of Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire were likely to be thin on the ground and I had no timetable so couldn't risk a delay.  I left town on the 09.00 to Grantham, a service 606 operated by the Lincolnshire Road Car Company, another former National Bus Company subsidiary then enjoying a spell of semi-independence under the unlikely ownership of the Yorkshire Traction bus company of Barnsley, before both operators became part of the Stagecoach group.

One eventual effect of privatisation was the disappearance of most of the quirky old bus company names such as Lincolnshire Road Car, Yorkshire Traction, Yorkshire Woollen District, United Automobile Services etc that co-existed alongside more conventional names such as " South Wales Transport Co" or " East Midland Motor Services" that had all survived nationalisation, only to fall victim to the corporate identity policies of Stagecoach and other big groups in the early years of the current century.

Bus 11  Stamford to Grantham.

Service 606 offered a fast ride along the Rutland/Lincolnshire border, through a number of very pretty villages that unfortunately did not produce many passengers. We crossed the East Coast Main Line once or twice and finished with a fast run up the modern A1 (The "Great North Road") to Grantham arriving at 10.15.  This time I wasn't surprised at being asked £1.95 for the journey. The Lincolnshire Road Car Co, like most large bus companies operating predominantly rural services, had a reputation for high fares stretching back many years.

I had been this way once before, albeit in the opposite direction on a journey to Stamford to sample the local beer brewed by Melbourne's Brewery before it closed in 1974. As I recall we arrived just too late to join the Camra-organised farewell tour of the brewery itelf and had some difficulty in tracking down any pubs selling Melbourne's beer, although we did manage a pint or two in Lincoln the previous evening. In those days the service was numbered 24 and the buses used were rather different from the Leyland Leopard coach I encountered on this occasion.

The Grantham to Stamford bus in 1974

Although both Stamford and Grantham were on the Great North Road the 606 - and the 24 before it - meandered off the main road to serve a string of villages lying to the east for most of the way.

Although I would have liked to continue to follow the route of the old road, the sparsity of buses in this part of the world now came into play. There appeared to be no buses on to Newark for several hours and no certainty of how I could continue northwards from there. There were, however, regular buses to Lincoln, which was vaguely in the right direction and it was on one of these that I continued my journey at 11.40, but not before paying a visit to Grantham's only tourist attraction - the birthplace of Maggie Thatcher, at which I certainly did not "pay homage".

Lincolnshire Road Car's service 601, which was a double-decker (hooray!), took me through another string of pretty villages with names such as "Carlton Scroop", Wellingore and Boothby Graftoe with additional timing points at "Fluck's Garage" and "Coleby, 1st Lane End", the latter suggesting a distinct lack of other features in Coleby to desribe a bus stop location!

Bus 13 Lincoln to Scunthorpe.

Despite the obvious attractions of Lincoln I allowed myself just 20 minutes there before leaving on my third "Road Car" of the day - this one a Leyland Leopard coach disguised as a "Coachlink" bus on service 353 to Scunthorpe (yes, there really were no better options!).  My notes say that we "meandered along back lanes for an hour or so" and that when we reached Scunthorpe I found it "an uninspiring industrial town with a 1970s-style pedestrianised centre"!   In fact, so "uninspiring" was Scunthorpe that I almost gave up the trip there and then.  The weather and the scenery had got progressively worse as the day went on and the general lack of useful buses led me to think at one point that I might have to stay overnight in the town. The only option, after a 90-minute wait, was to continue to Doncaster, and at the time the thought of a Monday night in an industrial south Yorkshire town didn't seem terribly appealing.  I got as far as trying to ring friends who lived near Leeds in the thought that I could jump on a train and go and spend the night with them, but they were out, which is just as well as the trip could have ended there and then!

Instead, and after that 90-minute wait, Leon Motors service 399, a Bedford coach, took me to Doncaster, but only after I'd established that the destination board "Haxey" in the windscreen was actually meant to convey the information that the bus was bound for Doncaster! There followed another "long meandering route through a bleak landscape in the rain" broken only by the crossing of the Trent as Gunness.

My mood brightened considerably on arrival at Doncaster.  For a start there was a Tourist Information Centre, still open despite it being after 17.30 and they swiftly found me a bed for the night in a friendly B&B just outside the town centre. The proprietors were interested in why I was in Doncaster, but when I told them I was "breaking my journey on the way to Scotland" they said they got a lot of custom like that and I didn't enlighten them any further. At least I was back on the Great North Road.

Today, I was on the road for 8h 35m, which was 5 minutes longer than it should have been, due to the last bus of the day arriving five minutes late. Five hours and twenty-six minutes were spent on the move and the rest waiting for connections or visiting the birthplaces of former Prime Ministers.  Fares came to £7.95 of which Leon Motors got £1.60 and the rest went to Lincolnshire Road Car. Total for the trip so far was now £24.70.

 I started and finished on the Great North Road but didn't seen very much of it along the way, except at Grantham.

to be continued...