Kevin Fitzpatrick

As a Brummie in feel conflicted. I'm proud that our city is the home of metal and that Ozzy felt proud of his roots here. But feel a little bit that the TV show may have contributed to the stereotype that Brummies are thick
@mrjamesob.bsky.social

A - how have I never heard of this before, definitely on my hitlist for this summer
B - sheer coincidence reading his post while I'm on a bus he was driving. Surprised I've managed 6 years of Oxfordshire bus commuting before I caught a bus driven by @rupertairbear.bsky.social

A strange first for me in two ways,
1 - being held up by a steam tractor
2 - being a special tourist bus it has special fares, but accepts stagecoach megarider tickets. So I rode for free and pensioners had to pay

Staying in Oxfordshire today, coming to Faringdon to ride the delightfully bonkers summer Saturday only Faringdon Tourist Bus service, providing a public transport connection to some lovely little villages usually inaccessible.

I bloody love you Lewis, but for the love of fuck how do you not see it?

And yet he insists that the media doing the exact same isn't a problem

Direct quote from @lewisgoodall.com on yesterday's News Agents re Starmer talking about Farage...
"What you are doing though, in saying that these guys are the insurgent force basically, you are lending them a legitimacy & credibility that they don't necessarily have"...

Hilarious train rules that make no sense...
Signaller tells driver to go back into the platform at New Street after a heavy delay, but we aren't allowed off to make alternative arrangements, so I'm stuck on a train to Coventry with a vague hope they'll hold a connection

Singing in French is doing absolutely nothing towards true justice for Joost....
🇳🇱 Euro-pa-pa, euro-pa-pa 🇳🇱

It's taken 4 attempts, partly my own fault not including this branch previously, partly engineering works prohibiting it, but...
✅️ Treherbert branch
✅️ Valley Lines
✅️ Wales
Now then... it's not even midday and it's gorgeous out in the sun, where now?

This is how you do socialising, right?

Don't know why it's taken me >6 years of living in Oxfordshire to visit Culham with it's cute old station building on the abandoned London bound platform. Off for a walk back north to Cowley for the first leg of a bank holiday Brum v Oxford speedway double header

The message shouldn't have been "we're not running trains from/to Birmingham because of the Blues fans", it should have been "we're throwing all of our resources at running the longest possible trains at really frequent intervals direct from a major park and ride facility near Birmingham to Wembley"

You can excuse the unfortunate signal fault royally fucking things up at the moment. But I think there's been a major communication problem here...

Coleford.
And, in things I didn't know existed, a railway museum. Sadly not open until 2.30

On a bus day out across the Cotswolds. It's still weird seeing former Perry Barr buses out in this part of the world, still showing signs of it's NXWM past with grey 101 branding

Pewsey.
One of those bus routes and small village rail stations I've wanted to use for a while. Perfect excuse today passing through the area en route to Taunton

It's that time of year

Close them both.
Even some "peak" S3 journeys I've been on through Combe have had no one use them to be fair...

And home.
800 miles, and still like 5 short miles left to complete Wales (damnit...)

Off towards home, via Brum for a bit of post birthday family time

Back into Aberystwyth proper to enjoy the cliff railway and a bit of beach before the T1 back to Carmarthen for the night

A train from Pwllheli crosses the Dovey as it arrives into the junction with half of a Birmingham service

Made a "pilgrimage" to Dovey Junction to watch all the trains leave and spend an hour in the remote(ish) nothingness

Waited till midday for a drink. I must be getting old.
Time for a train

It's my birthday and I can stupid if I want to...
It's a bus.
Not a train.
But it accepts train tickets.
Because that's what properly integrated public transport looks like.

At low tide, you can reach St Catherine's island, and you can walk underneath the island!

More beach, just at low tide this time

With the Traws Cymru buses to Cardigan disrupted at the moment (I picked a crap weekend for this corner of the world...), I abandoned Fishguard to head back to Whitland and the Tenby line in daylight

Onto my targets for the day. Two small stretches of the Pembrokeshire branches I haven't travelled yet:
The end of the line at Pembroke Dock, and a bus up to Haverfordwest to clear the small section up to the junction at Clarbeston Road