Mid Cornwall round trip
27 January 2023

Until a couple of years, there was no direct bus service between Truro and Bodmin. There was the First 27 service that ran from Truro to St Austell and then on to Bodmin, although First have now withdrawn the St Austell to Bodmin leg. Now, this part of the journey is  covered by the Go Cornwall 26 route.

Cornwall Council decided to include a Truro to Bodmin route in its portfolio of subsidised routes in 2020. I don’t think that this route has been particularly well patronised.  The Council also decided that it would be good to have a direct Truro to Bude service. Again, I think that the uptake on that was not very good and long distance routes such as these are difficult to keep on schedule. The latest offerings on these routes are the 89 Truro to Bodmin via St Columb Major, and the 95 Newquay to Bude via St Columb Major and Wadebridge at two-hourly intervals with a one-hourly service on the Newquay to Wadebridge leg of this route. The timetables are set so that, in theory, a passenger wanting to travel from Truro to Wadebridge or Bude can change at St Columb Major and vice versa.

This week, I took a circular tour around mid Cornwall to investigate this route. I caught the First 27 from Grampound at 09:40, due at Tresillian at 09:50. It was slightly delayed in Probus but arrived at Tresillian within a few minutes of its scheduled time. I changed there to the Go Cornwall 89 due at 10:03. It departed Tresillian a few minutes late, there were three other passengers on the bus with me. We picked nobody else up in Ladock, Summercourt or Kingsley Village or Fraddon and made up the few minutes before arriving at St Columb Major, Trelawney Parc, at its scheduled time of 10:40. There, it has a five-minute layover allowing it to connect with the 95 from Newquay due at 10:44. My three fellow passengers disembarked here and one got on the 95 when it arrived on time. Nobody got off the 95 to join the 89 to Bodmin at this stop, but at the next stop in St Columb Major, cattle market, one other passenger joined me. The bus then left St Columb and returned back along the A39 to join the A30 at the top of Highgate Hill. We left the A30 at Cornwall Services and drove through the services where nobody got on or off. We then crossed back over the A30 to travel up the old road to Lanivet and then into Bodmin. We pulled into the grounds of Bodmin Community Hospital at the scheduled time of 11:13 There is a stop there for buses on the 11, 26, 89 and 405 routes. Each bus, whichever direction it is travelling in, drops off and picks up at the same stop and then does a U-turn at a small roundabout before exiting the hospital grounds - it seems to work fine. There is no RTPI board at the stop but there are two timetable cases, one for each direction, containing a schematic route map for each service and a listing of times. This seems to me to be a more passenger friendly way of displaying information when there is more than one service at a stop versus the convention at most stops of just sticking in every timetable and leaving passengers to work out which might be the best bus to catch.  See photos below of the Bodmin Hospital display and the timetable case at Tresillian.

The Go Cornwall 26 service arrived on time at 11:23. From the hospital, we drove back to Lanivet, along the old A30, in and out of Cornwall Services (again nobody got on or off), through Victoria and Roche towards Stenalees. Good views of the massive road works for the new A391 St Austell to A30 link road being built alongside the existing road. At Stenalees, we turned back up towards Bugle and then back to Penwithick before rejoining the St Austell distributor road. In to St Austell via Tregonissey Road and arriving at the bus station, due at 12:13 but late because of the slow journey through the Bugle area, arriving at 12:20 only just in time to connect with my next bus, the 27 back to Grampound, leaving at 12:21.

Overall, an interesting round trip using two First and two Go Cornwall services. All, fortunately, were on time or within a few minutes of scheduled times, meaning that my connections worked OK. If the 26 had been a minute later at St Austell, I would have missed my connection and would have had to wait an hour for the next bus.

I did encounter a blip on the tap and cap system. I used tap on, tap off for each journey and was charged £2 for each of the first two journeys (the government funded maximum price operable for January to March). On the 26, there seemed to be a problem with the ticket machine. For the first half of the journey, the GPS tracking was not working and the bus was not being picked up on the online systems. By about Stenalees, it seemed to have been corrected because, from there, I was able to track the bus online. However, at St Austell bus station, the tap off machine was not working and I was unable to tap off. When I looked at the Littlepay website for a record of my journeys, it was showing my Bodmin to St Austell journey as incomplete. Later in the day, the system charged me for an incomplete journey at the £2 price, but it did not give me the benefit of the daily £5 maximum. My fourth journey was also charged at £2 when it should have been free after I had paid £5 for the day. I ended up paying £8 for the four journeys. I have lodged a complaint via Littlepay about this but am awaiting feedback from them. I did wonder if there was a general problem of the £5 maximum daily charge not working because of an algorithm conflict between the £2 fares and the £5 maximum. However, having tested it on a subsequent day, the £5 maximum criterion does seem to be working. It may have just been a blip because of the incomplete journey.