Bus to the Pub 2015 - An Apology

The weather was good to us this year, but not the gods of the bus industry. To all of those who joined us on our tour of some of the best pubs in inner Manchester, Salford and Trafford I offer a sincere apology, from myself personally and also from the North Manchester Branch. The same apology applies to those who decided to change their plans and not come with us. The bus service we were able to operate fell far below the standard we had planned.

Firstly, anyone who came with us, or bought an advance ticket and decided not to travel, and who would like to ask for a refund should do so by sending an email to me at ten.ocset@rnt. This should carry the subject line "BttP refund", to allow me to extract your request from more routine emails. I am, like all who work for CAMRA Branches, an individual volunteer. We have no office backup to support us! You will need to include your ticket numbers, or at the very least where and when your ticket was bought. You will appreciate, of course, that a public statement such as this will inevitably attract inappropriate requests, and we do need to be able to distinguish genuine requests from fraudulent ones. I am aware that a small number of refunds were made on the day by returning tickets to the pub where they were bought.

Secondly, in order to send you a refund we will need a means of contact with you. If you are able to come to any of our Branch activities - we meet every Wednesday, see our events page on http://northmanchester.camra.org.uk - you would be most welcome, and we really don't bite. A face-to-face apology might be more rewarding for all. And you did choose to come on Bus to the Pub, so you might share some of our aims. Or send me your address and I can arrange for a cheque to be sent.

Thirdly, you deserve a quick explanation of what went wrong. Two technical problems, and a resulting physical one. The first was a minor ticketing problem before the buses left the depot, quickly rectified, but a 15 minute late start to the service nevertheless. The killer blow was the loss of one our three buses for over two hours, when it was only part way into its first journey. This was caused by the sudden and total loss of air pressure, caused by an imperfect road surface. Happily for the passengers on board, this was right outside one of our selected pubs. We were able to forewarn most of the following pubs affected by the loss of that journey, as texts and calls went down the route. What we could not say at that point was how long we would suffer the loss of that vehicle. It proved to be two-and-a-half hours, so its following journey was also affected. Although remedial action was taken by the operator to minimise disruption - an unplanned exchange of passengers between buses in Stevenson Square was part of this - we were never able fully to recover our timetable. As the day wore on, our three drivers were well off their scheduled times, and this affected their necessary and legally-required breaks. All three agreed to take the minimum break required by law rather than their planned meal breaks. To their credit, this is another old tradition of the bus industry, trying to provide the best service possible in adverse circumstances.

As the evening wore on, when normally it would be expected that earlier disruptions would self-correct, the time-keeping of some buses actually became more erratic. Now for the human factor. Passengers leaving one pub, and expecting to be in the next one fifteen minutes later, found themselves to be in a degree of distress when, after perhaps thirty minutes they were still at the same bus stop. Inevitably, when the bus arrived, there were repeated calls to 'hang on a minute, driver, me mate's had to nip back inside' Humorous (except for that mate), but when the bus is asked to wait often three extra minutes at half a dozen stops on each circuit, there's another twenty minutes or so delay added. You will understand why this problem became more severe as the evening progressed.

Lastly, a reminder of the obvious. We are not a commercial organisation, but a group of campaigning volunteers who do what they can to encourage people to visit pubs new to them. As volunteers, we happily give our time this bank holiday weekend to explain and apologise. Few commercial operations would do this so quickly. We have agreed that anyone who wishes to claim a refund should be able to do so. Our only source of income as a Branch is money raised by our members. The BttP was not a fund raising event, but is subsidised from our funds.

We know, from comments made to us by many throughout the day, that the disruptions, annoying as they were, did not prevent most from enjoying their day out with us. If you feel that, overall, this does not apply to you please feel free to ask for a refund.

Robin Bence, Bus to the Pub organiser