Wednesday, March 26, 2025
10 items of post-Stockport housekeeping
I'm still trying, very slowly, to visit England's 100 largest towns and cities by population. At the start of the year I had 13 to go but since then I've ticked off Sunderland (32nd), Hartlepool (84th) and Stockport (60th). Of the ten that remain the largest is now Huddersfield (33rd), the southernmost is Mansfield (99th) and they're all in a sort of stripe between Lancashire and Lincolnshire.
Visiting Sunderland ticked off another postcode area (SR), so my sole omissions within England and Wales are now BB, HD and WA, i.e. Blackburn, Huddersfield and Warrington.
In the last ten years I've been to every county in England at least once except Northumberland and Lancashire. I have obviously been to both of those, just longer ago. Technically I went to the historic county of Lancashire last week when I went to Stockport, but not the ceremonial county so it doesn't count.
My trip to Stockport cost just £15.20 thanks to buying ridiculously cheap tickets two months in advance during the Rail Sale earlier in the year. London to Crewe was £5.20 and Crewe to Stockport was £2.40. I can't currently find a way of getting to Stockport by train for less than £50 (or Chesterfield for less than £40, or Huddersfield for less than £90).
Yes I am a cheapskate, but if you're only going to visit a town once why not wait until a bargain fare is available? Here are the last ten farflung towns I visited and how much my bargain fare cost: Stockport (£15), Sunderland/Hartlepool (£28), Redditch (£18), Stafford/Crewe (£23), Rugby (£8), Nottingham (£30), Cheltenham/Gloucester (£34).
If you like bargain fares, be aware that Southeastern are offering thousands of £5 fares over the weekend of April 5th/6th as part of their Network Weekend promotion. There are still some left. More information here. I've snapped up two so I can fill in another gap in my attempt to (eventually) walk the entire Kent coast. Fingers crossed for non-windswept weather.
I got really lucky with the weather in Stockport because somehow in January I managed to book a trip in March on "the warmest day of the year so far". Ditto I played an advance blinder for Sunderland, unintentionally picking the one sunny day in a run of cold and damp. I assume my future meteorological luck has now run out.
My trip to Stockport very nearly never happened because the line north was blocked by "a casualty on the tracks" near Rugeley Trent Valley. My first train stalled at Milton Keynes for an hour while British Transport police 'conducted an investigation', which I fear was because this very train had been first over the tracks in Rugeley earlier that morning. Very few trains were going anywhere. I got lucky by eventually transferring to an Avanti service, next stop Crewe, although this subsequently went on a guided tour of the West Midlands which would have made certain trackbashers very happy. I was then permitted on a second Avanti where I sat amid business suits, somewhat embarrassed how little I'd paid, arriving into Stockport just half an hour late. That lost half hour ruined my chances of visiting a couple of attractions but it could have been much worse and I might have had to give up in Milton Keynes and go home.
(We all have similar tales of "oh my it was a dreadful journey" which nobody else is interested in, but sometimes it's a fine line between a fabulous day out and a full refund)
The Bee Network is bringing joined-up bus travel to Greater Manchester. A single bus journey in Manchester costs £2, but by scanning the QR code on your paper ticket "you can use it again to board any Bee Network bus within 60 minutes from the time it was issued." This is very similar to Hopper fares in London where the equivalent price is £1.75, but London's daily bus cap is £5.25 whereas in Manchester you can buy a one-day bus ticket for £5. Contactless payment launched on Bee Network buses earlier this week.
I also stopped off in Crewe for an hour on the way back, this because the homebound connection was otherwise too tight to risk. I can confirm that the new bus station is finally open and looks quite pretty at dusk.
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