General Chat

Some buses to use my bus pass on would be good!
My bus pass doesn't get much use, unfortunately. A car is essential.

Although the Scottish bus pass (National Entitlement Card) allows free travel on any normal service bus at any time of day (except night buses in cities), I really only use mine if I go to Glasgow - and even then it means going by car for the first 7 miles, to join the Glasgow bus route.

The reduced train fares mentioned by Andysmum are only for travel within the region where your card was issued.
Here in the Highland region, that's pretty useless. In any case, I'm 20 miles from the nearest station.

I wish we had any local buses before 9.30!

There are two buses daily in each direction through the village, Mon-Sat. None on Sundays.
The northbound one goes at 10.20am and 4.45pm, and the southbound one at 1.15pm and 6.45pm.

Assuming you want to come home again the same day, only the first bus in each direction is of any use for going to the nearest towns - 20 miles to the north, or 25 miles to the south.
If you go on the second bus in either direction, the last bus back from the south leaves before you've even arrived, and the last bus back from the north only allows 15 mins in town.

Going on the first bus allows either about 1.5 hours in town, or else nearly 7 hours.

Impossible to commute to work by bus, and impossible to go to hospital appointments, for instance, unless they're in the early afternoon in the town to the north.


And then the bus company says it's not worth putting more buses on because not enough people use the existing ones!



My mother never drove. She did pass her test in her 40s, but my father always did the driving.
My school mates and I all had driving lessons during our late teens.
The local driving instructors' cars were always waiting outside the school at the end of the school day!

In Scotland you can get a travel pass at 60 (original pension age!). It can be used on the buses at any time, for reduced train tickets at off-peak times and for a fixed 50p fare on the Clockwork Orange. (Underground in Glasgow).

The cost is paid nationally to the various companies involved and when, occasionally, somebody complains about the cost, the government answer is always that enabling pensioners to get out of the house and meet their friends saves the NHS money, that they then go and spend their pensions in the local shops, which keeps town centres thriving and is good for the economy and overall brings in a lot more than it costs.

I learnt to drive when I left school and so did many of my friends. When I started work in Winchester most of the women could drive but I found when I moved to Scotland in the early 80's and was transferred to Greenock that very few of the women could drive. This i think was partly traditional and partly financial, as it was not an affluent area. Those of us who could drive had either moved from elsewhere or lived outside the town.

My mother got a driving licence as soon as she could (no driving test required) but never learnt to drive. My father had a company car which she wasn't allowed to drive, so she watched what he did and then many years later, after they had gone their separate ways, she hired a car one day and drove from London to Southampton for a day out!! :-0 I was horrified! After that she bought a car and drove everywhere for the rest of her life.

In England you can get a senior bus pass when you are of state pension age and as MG says you can use them anywhere in England. We can buy a £1 ticket if we want to start a journey before 9.30 am . We do have a good service here usually.

We used to be able to use our Freedom Passes 24 hours Names, but since the pandemic it has been restricted.

I am sure we cannot use the passes until after 9.30, although the website says 9am.

If your pass has the red rose logo in the top left hand corner, it can be used on local buses in England.

I know we have used them on the South Coast when on holiday.

Try explaining to some bus drivers that you want to pay for the first half of your journey, before 9.30, and use your bus pass for the other half. Some just say "just go and sit down, love



Try explaining to some bus drivers that you want to pay for the first part of your journey, until 9.30, and use your bus pass for the second part. Some say "just go and sit down, love", others understand and charge for the first part, others make a real fuss at which point I tell them that I am going to volunteer and usually "quieteness them down".

Maggie
Aren't you now entited to an oldies bus pass?

The National bus pass allows you to to travel after 9.30. Some areas, like London, allow you to travel any time. :-P

That is interesting Maggie, you must then wonder if that is deliberate. Strangely yesterday the machine coming home wouldn't register my pass.

Florence I was not offended but it is strange that you can say that. I didn't work when I had my children but I did have my own car and learnt to drive when I was married and 22 years old. I can only think of a couple of people of my age who didn't learn to drive. This would be in the 50s/60s but if you go back a generation you would be right, my Mum didn't even think about driving and neither did any of her friends/family except the men.I do know of one or two in my generation and a bit younger who are not computer literate and never want to be. I also think maybe smart phones is a 'cost' problem, they are not cheap. that may be true of a lot of things like tablets, laptops etc. And, even when I was young learning to drive and owning a car was not cheap.

Round our way, there are 2 bus stops, both 7 minutes from where I live, but about 11 minutes apart by bus. The fare is different from both stops, but I get a 'dayrider'.

A few weeks ago, I caught the bus from the 'nearer' (first) bus stop at 09:26.
All the pensioners got on at the other bus stop - at 09:37 - but it didn't matter, as the machine didn't work! :-( A couple of pensioners said 'It never works on this bus'

So, there were 26 people on that bus.

Twenty four pensioners weren't 'registered' as using the bus.
Two people who had weekly tickets weren't registered (the machine didn't work for their tickets either), so they, apparently, weren't there.
So, only the 2 of us who actually bought tickets were, apparently on that bus!

What's important about this, is Councils are trying to cut spending, and taking little-used 'funded' buses off is one way to do this.
If machines don't register the number of passengers, it gives them a wonderful excuse :-0 :-|
This is where technology can be used against us,

No need to apologize Florence. I wasn't offended at all :-)

Suffolk Vera And Ann Gloucs, sorry didn't mean to offend you in any way as I know Ann you are good with photos on the PC etc..Its just that when I was at school, none of my friends mums drove a car, it was always the dads that did.

None of my mums sisters drove. Neither do they have a mobile phone or PC and none of my friends parents have any modern tech stuff. Maybe its the area where I was from.
Most of the mums didn't work and stayed home to raise the families, the men went out to work and took care of everyone.
As the man drove everywhere, the women weren't really encouraged to learn how to drive.
Even my dad, an engineer, refuses to have a smart phone and he is more than capable of using one, he just prefers what he was brought up with I guess.

Florence in the hebrides

JoyLouise, they are here too, thankfully I'm not one of them because I get the bus at 10:00.

ZZzzz, those pensioners who board buses before 9.30 am in our area are known as twirlies because invariably they ask the bus driver, ‘Am I too early.’ :-D

Well I have a bus pass for a couple of years with no problems, I needed to know what time I could use it from as I needed to use it at 09:00 so I had a look in a few places and nowhere had the info I was looking for so when I got on a bus today I asked the driver he said through gritted teeth that I can't use my bus pass before 09:30 I said ok thanks and maybe the next time you go shopping you should get some manners and respect.

I’m also of your parents’ generation Florence. Most of my contemporaries use computers, iPads, iPhones etc. to a greater or lesser degree and I consider myself competent in that field.

Where did you get the idea that few women of your parents’ generation had driving licences? Amongst all my friends, family and acquaintances I can only think of 3 ladies who haven’t driven and 2 of those lived in London with it’s good public transport so didn’t need a car.

I’m sure part of the problem is that my generation have been so constantly told by the media and others that they wouldn’t be able to cope with modern technology that some of them have come to believe it, which is a great shame.

Florence I am almost 82 would that fall into your parents generation. I too have smart phone, kindle, IPad, desk top PC can edit photos use ecell up to a point ditto word. I understand most thing on the internet and do internet banking. Many of my peers are the same. :-)

I am quite a techie. I have a smartphone, kindle, PC and can mange emails, attachments etc. I can scan, crop etc with my printer.

I do have a driving licence although no longer drive and a passport so ID for me isn't a problem. But I guess at 60, I'm still a spring chicken and was still working until 2 years ago where technology in schools kept me up to date.

But my parents generation is a different matter as most of the women didnt drive back then, had no passports either so for many ID can be a problem.

Andys mum, we dont have any trains here lol. Daughter is ferrying it to mainland, then bus to the"big city". Her and her dad are then getting a train elsewhere for a few days!

it looked straightforward online to buy the tickets until she wanted to claim her discount and it failed to recognize her card and also didn't recognize our post code which has been here for years lol.

If you have to spell out your name 3 times and also your email 3 times, then i think there is the problem! Maybe the "international" gentleman that took the details needs a trip to Audiology :-D

I think it will be worse when they do away with ticket offices which they are talking of doing tickets will then have to be picked up from some sort of machine at the station which some elderly people will find difficult.

I don't have a smart phone, although OH does, but we are fairly modern (I suppose) in that we have computers, passports and driving licences.

The list of acceptable ID in many places has altered a bit recently and now has many more options, mostly for the benefit of non-computer people.

I always buy any long distance train tickets on line using The Train Line website. It is quick and easy and you have the option of picking them up at the local station, which I do. They are paper tickets too!! :-) Florence, I may have this wrong, but I didn't think you had any trains/stations in The Hebrides.

Re the ID. I sold my car before Christmas as I was not driving it and we have a fairly good bus serice. I always hated driving and my OH was always the driver. Once he died I didn't feel the need to do something I hated. But I did renew my driving licence as (if I wanted to) I could still drive. But the reason I renewed it was for ID purposes.