Hitchin Running Day

Sunday 1st June 2003

Prepared by Ian Smith, 23rd June 2003

Part 4: Return to Hertford

During our break at Hitchin we parked alongside GS32, with the two red RFs behind. After a little while GS17 came back from a trip to Weston and joined the other two to make a three-GS lineup.

RF366 headed off to Stevenage along the 386 at 1500, with the prospect of an interesting 384 journey to Hertford beyond that.

Meanwhile Eddie Knorn arrived with gleaming National SNB312 on the direct 303 route from Stevenage, and one of Arriva's Dart SLFs scurried past on their service 700, which seems to serve most of north Hertfordshire.

Eddie was on a tight schedule and a minimal turn-round time - part of the price of reproducing more modern operations! The National was straight round onto the stand to reload. An earlier age of operations was shown by the RMC, which operated a trip out to Henlow Camp.

More current operations were demonstrated as Sovereign 133 called at the stop en route to Luton, followed almost immediately by one of Jetlink's large Volvos (V22) on airport duty.

386: Hitchin to Buntingford

Running in to Stevenage we met another of Sovereign's Volvo / Wright Renowns, 129, heading for Luton via Hitchin. At Stevenage we found SNB469 resting between turns, in company with AN153, still in its First Rider livery of all-over cream, with fleet number 6460. The AN had spent much of the day on Stevenage local route 800, along with a Metro-Scania from Leicester (which I didn't see).

AN153 pulled round onto the stop while we were there, and we followed it out of the bus station. But we turned north, to thread our way through the maze of dual carriageways towards Walkern.

At Walkern we turned left, parting company with the 384 route, heading up the River Beane through the village and on towards Cromer. But before entering the village we turned sharp right onto the lane to Ardeley. We stopped in the village, and again many photos were taken before GS2 nosed round the corner into the lane to Cottered.

This really was a narrow lane, with no hope of passing anything coming the other way. In places it ran between hedges, at others between raised field-berms.

The narrow lanes took us up to Cottered, where we rejoined normal roads - with traffic. We paused briefly in pretty Cottered before travelling on towards Buntingford.

We reached Buntingford, where a couple of passengers alighted, and rolled the blinds round to 331 for the journey to Hertford.

We set off down the Roman road, soon being joined by the A10. We came off the main road into Puckeridge, and wiggled through to Standon Station before returning to the main road for the run to Wadesmill and Ware. We wriggled through the town, and round past the station to the level crossing. From there we motored west into Hertford, arriving just before 1730. RF406 followed us in on the last trip on the 333. RP21 was preparing to leave in the Epping direction.

SNB312, stalwart of the 390/303 service during the day, was the last public departure, working back north on the 331 to Buntingford, and thence to Royston. GS1 came in for goodbyes, while RM1699, RMC1507 and GS62 were parked ready for departure.

Once the traders had gone we loaded RF679 with the team materials (tables, chairs, sales material, bus blinds...) and headed round to the bus park to collect the bollards. It was my last ride of the day on GS2. GS62, GS2 and RF679 then headed off together for the journey south.

I travelled south on RF679. GS62 and GS2 disappeared into the distance long before we reached the M25. Somewhere near Harlow we passed ex-London Central DEL1, now with Local-link. It was parked on a verge with blinds for the 201. We went on. The forecast storms hit with a vengeance as we went down the M25 towards the Dartford Bridge, complete with lightning and torrential rain. But it cleared as we headed down into Kent, and we were treated to a glorious sunset before we arrived home.

All photos by Ian Smith. Click on any of them for a larger picture.

Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4.