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TRAVEL

Bus Travel
Where is the bus stop? When is the next bus? Online bus stop enquiry service - just input your location, road or post code, for a list of bus stops within 1000 meters, select the stop and receive the next ten buses timetabled. The description and the map indicate which side of the road the bus stop details relate to. This site also has by far the most useful bus mapping - it works, no script or flash required- unlike those below- and shows all bus stops within a km of your location (or a specific stop if you prefer). Use the location flag symbols in preference to the blue Google bus stop markers which may be slightly off-place.

Enter a post code, street and town, or bus stop name or sms stop code (eg manjdmgp):

Bus times To find out how to travel by bus there are two main suppliers of information, Transport Direct and Traveline. Transport Direct is operated by Atos on behalf of the owner, the Secretary of State for Transport, Traveline is owned by Trapeze and operates on behalf of local authorities. Traveline has a differing interface for each region, with several regions having unusable interfaces, but two regions have covered MOST of the country between them (but still don't cover journey between the two mega-areas!)
Many map services require javascript - use the bus stop location service above for a plain no-script map.

Transport Direct (cookies essential) has times for UK trains, coaches and many local buses and domestic flights. This is the only site to use for cross boundary journeys.
NOTES: The linked walking maps located on walkit.com will give maps only if javascript is turned on, otherwise you can see a text description of the route to follow. The travel route maps from Transport Direct itself require javascript turned on. Transportdirect uses an obligatory session cookie (deleted on exit). If you refuse the cookie the site will not function. Treat all suggested journeys with consideration especially walking times.
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Traveline- Do not use Traveline if your journey crosses the boundaries of the areas listed below, or is entirely outside them. The results if any will be misleading. Immediately below, an input form for NW England (except Cumbria)- read the warning re cookies. Then links to two principal English areas enquiry form pages, and finally a form for Wales.

Traveline in the North West This source covers journeys in and between Greater Manchester, Lancashire, Merseyside, Cheshire (all parts), Blackpool, Blackburn with Darwen, Warrington, Halton - and has SOME journeys which start or end in these places but go outside the area.
Travelling from: Travelling to: Via (optional):
Time - select: Leave after: Arrive by:
Date of journey: Date must be within one month of today.
Mode of transport (select as required): Bus   Train   Metro   Coach    
I have stripped copious javascript from this form and there is no sanity or format checking of dates and times so make sure your input is correct! Times are hh:mm with a colon, dates are DD/MM/YYYY with slashes and four digit year. Maps require javascript.
Traveline - England - main two areas If you need to travel ONLY in the North West, traveline NW covering the North West- Lancashire, Manchester, Merseyside, Cheshire. Maps require javasript.

For everywhere in England south of Cheshire or Yorkshire, with buses and trains: East Midlands journey planner- (NOTE: most of the maps require javascript, journey leg maps can also be downloaded or viewed as PDF files)
For travel across area boundaries or in other areas of England use Transport Direct link above.

Wales traveline without javascript or images only navigation
Leave after Arrive by
Date is in form dd/mm/yyyy and must be within 3 months of today.
Travelling from: Travelling to:
I would like to travel by: Bus  Train   Coach      
Note: Mapping is only available with javascript on, bus stops show arrows with direction of travel, and starting and finishing points are red and green footprints.
Do try not to call Travelines 0871 telephone number which is a premium call- as at 7/08 it cost 40p per minute from a phone box! And they couldn't assist me either. saynoto0870

BUS TIMETABLES
A useful site is tfgm - formerly GMPTE- timetable page covering all buses in Greater Manchester (timetables in pdf format)
An alternative is Cheshire/Lancashire/Manchester timetables from traveline
The old county of Cheshire was split in two in 2009 (on 1st April no less) and bus data is split between two web sites- Cheshire East is positively hostile to public transport, and has dropped bus route maps entirely and bus timetables are mostly external links which are sometimes not user friendly. Cheshire bus servies outside the main towns will reduce drastically in Jan 2013 and again in March 2013 due to the Council withdrawal of financial support. Note to self: Do not under any circumstances consider living in or visiting Cheshire -especially East.

Cheshire West inc Chester and Cheshire East including Crewe and Macclesfield - Most East and many West Cheshire timetables are on other sites and may not be accessible.
Derbyshire Timetables || Lancashire bus timetables (Stagecoach and some others are on external web sites) | | Flintshire bus timetables

Bus route maps Maps of bus services: Cheshire West local area maps || Cheshire East does not believe in transport maps at all.
Derbyshire || Lancashire | | Greater Manchester bus route maps - the large area is split into several overlapping maps.

Free buses in Greater Manchester::- There are three free buses with circular routes in Manchester, called metroshuttles, one free circular bus in Bolton, and one free circular shuttle bus in Stockport. this TFGM web page has links to PDF format route maps for the buses.

There is also a free shuttle bus around Oldham, connecting the Metrolink station at Mumps to the town centre. A pdf of the Oldham route is available.(500k)

UK Train times and fares: CARE- There are a lot of engineering rail closures especially at weekends - and none of the following sites are fully up to date as the track owner is not telling the operators in time. Treat all sources of information with doubt especially if your journey is more than a week in the future! Take plenty of food and drink as even a local one hour journey could end up taking four hours (discovered the hard way...).

To access the official railway data, no javascript or cookies required- use Accessible UK Train Timetables which has the full official data -as up to date as exists for times- but for fares, there are severe problems with the web site for some journeys.
There are now so many ticket restrictions that National Rail and the train operators themselves are no longer able to cope and the railway computer systems may force train staff to sell you more expensive tickets. Note that a ticket price may only cover one particular train booked at one location at one instant!
It is often cheaper (by a tenner or more sometimes) to split your ticket, especially if you can move a portion of the journey out of peak hours, reduce cross county boundary journeys, or take advantage of greater discounts for shorter journies. eg For one particular train from Manchester to Derby, you can save ten pounds by buying a return ticket Stockport-Sheffield and a separate return ticket Sheffield-Derby.
On times, be sure to use "check for updates" or "bulletins" for the most recent information. If it goes wrong, you may need to contact "Passenger Focus" to obtain a refund on an overcharged ticket! The official National Rail (Mobile) website HAS a mobile version but will redirect most devices to the none-mobile site if it doesn't think you really are using a mobile phone. NOT friendly at all. Our railways are a mess.

Is there a taxi at the UK station you are going to? Please enter the name of the station

Enjoy reading Today's UK train delays-and Cleared incidents- note that the 2004 revamp of the site seems to have caused it to miss a lot of serious delays, or report them later. Local North West delays seem almost never to appear. Northern Rail have now ceased their own journey problem reporting entirely but a small relic can be found on this BBC travel web page.

UK Live Departure Boards has the web equivalent of the tv monitors you see at railway stations, giving arrivals and departures in the next few hours. Note the limited and experimental nature of the data. NOTE a train shows as NO REPORT until it passes a reporting point.
The site National Rail expect you to use has EITHER arriving OR departing trains but not both. Use the station name or the three letter code available from the site below.

An alternative format with both arrivals and departures is available from traintimes.org and but you need the absolutely correct station name (or code).
Don't ask traintimes.org when the next train from Adlington is, nor the next train from Adlington Lancashire. You must type Adlington (Lancs).!!! Adlington in Lancashire is ADL. Get the three letter code from the site below:

Station codes - three letter station codes used for example by manual ticket office or train crew machines, useful if you are told they can't issue a ticket to a station. For example in Manchester a ticket to CRS code MCZ (which prints as Manchester CTLZ) includes travel on Metrolink trams from your central Manchester rail station of choice to the city centre. The NLC code is 0451 (sometimes as 045100), compared to Manchester Stations which is 0438.

Railway fares in the UK are a nightmare, and very often the headline price - the one you will probably be charged- is not the cheapest fare available, despite regulations to the contrary. You can also lose a lot of money in penalty fares if you accidentlally get on a train not appropriate to the fare you have paid- and it is very none obvious. While I don't like linking to sites that require javascript, hurrah for a US based website that gives FULL details of ticket restrictions and fares.


If you are in the UK and going abroad, an extremely useful - essential- web site to look to is the UK Foreign Office travel advice section - (free FO publications).

MAPS A map always comes in handy.
streetmap.co.uk Try this friendly and fast no-javascript option:
  Street Post Code Place London Street  
Google maps without javascript Google maps without javascript: The image size 640x640 is the maximum, and you cannot move. Zoom level 17 shows bus stops.
Input post code or location with comma separators eg st anns square,manchester or town
Zoom: |
Unfortunately Google maps have seriously out of date and erroneous information- hospitals that closed over a decade ago, roads which on the ground have gates across them, paths with vertical sections... as with satnavs, use with caution. I tend to now use openstreetmap, this link is to a none javascript page. I use the Linux program Marble to access the openstreetmap database.

Openstreetmap without javascript
Here is a way to obtain a static map from openstreetmap (link to no-javascript page), but to use this form below you do need to know the longtitude and latitude, available from the streetmap or openstreetmap links above or using eg the Marble linux program.
Latitude: Longtitude:      Zoom (1-18)    Style to use: mapnik
Now click here:
  Map data is (c)Openstreetmap.org, licence CC-BY-SA.

In 1998, 2002, 04, 06,08, 10 and 2012 holidays were in North Wales. Be sure to check out a lovely listed building at risk- Castle Lodge, Ludlow

If you are looking for UK tourist information, best of luck, there are many content-less web sites out there with just a few really useful ones for specific localities. Generally I find the various UK tourist information centres something of a waste of space, the useful TIC is a rarity to be treasured.

LINKS TO ART GALLERIES The emphasis here is to link to pages which load fairly quickly and have useful content. And no Javascript or Adobe(tm) obstacles.
Royal Academy || Bolton UK artworks || Tate Gallery || Manchester UK artworks || BBC Your Painting: UK oil paintings
artcyclopedia | | Pre 1900 non-British European Oil Paintings in the UK (site formerly known as nicepaintings.org)
Overseas: Washington DC NGA
Search Wikimedia:

Detroit Pub Co collection of old photos mostly of the USA.


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