Day 4: Hereford to Kington and Back

Tuesday, 7th May 2015

Only half-a-day today, fitted in before returning home at the end of this stage of the trip.

Hereford is quite a way from the edge of England but I could get nearer to the Welsh border by making a trip up to the small town of Kington. Even better, there are two slightly different routes between the two towns meaning that I wouldn't have to retrace my steps exactly.

The service between Hereford and Kington, which actually extands over the Welsh border to the spa town of Llandrindod Wells is a classic example of what can be achieved by partnership working between local authorities and bus companies, with a little help from a government that wasn't fixated on closing things down.

Service 462 starts from the Railway Station at
Hereford. Another of my innovations!
When I started work for what was then Hereford & Worcester County Council's public transport team in 1986 there were just five buses a day between Hereford and Kington, one of which ran only on College Days and only two buses a week ran on to Llandrindod.  During the 1990s, as money became available to subsidise extra buses we were able to expand the service to the heady level of one bus every two hours (but only to Kington). In 1998 two things happened: Hereford & Worcester reverted to the separate authorities of "Herefordshire" and "Worcestershire"  and the new government introduced Rural Bus Grant, doubling the amount the new county had to spend on rural buses! The local bus company running the service was one of our better operators and we were able to work closely with them to improve the service to the unheard-of level of one bus per hour. Not even in the "good old days" of the 1940s and 50s had the service been so frequent. Meanwhile our colleagues in Powys County Council had made the service on to Llandrindod a daily one and timed it to connect with Hereford buses at Kington. Eventually the two services were combined as a through route with almost every bus on the hourly service running through to Llandrindod Wells. At its peak, we even managed to add an evening and Sunday service, but these later fell victim to cutbacks. Not only did we improve the service, we also improved the buses with £5M of government funding being used to replace clapped-out 25 year old coaches with brand-new wheelchair-accessible buses. Passenger numbers went through the roof, proving that even deep rural areas such as Herefordshire and mid-Wales will respond to a bit of TLC when it comes to their bus services.

Sadly, all this is now threatened by "austerity". Herefordshire is being forced to withdraw most, if not all, of its subsidy and we will just have to hope that the operator can find a way to keep as much of the service going as possible.

All Quiet in Kington
Back in May, I left Hereford on Sargeants Brothers service 462, the more roundabout of the two routes to Kington. The bus was busy (see above) and combined with a bit of unrealistic timetabling, we were 15 minutes late into Kington, although nobody seemed to mind. After a walk around the town and a coffee in a local cafe (no Starbucks, Costa or other chains in Kington) I came back to Hereford on the more direct 461, which carried an even healthier load, so perhaps the service will survive after all.


Day 3/3A  Chester to Hereford                                            Day 5  Hereford to Gloucester



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