Stumbling Across a Shuttle Bus

[Chris]

I took a very rare visit to Rye in April, and my luck paid off (at the expense of local passengers) across a shuttle bus operating on service 101, owing to gas works on the road between Fairlight and Pett Level. 

I'd seen 36491 tracking without a service number at Rye earlier in the day and hadn't thought anything of it, and with the shuttle having only started the previous Friday (thanks Invicta...), it was quite a surprise to find it was doing 'something interesting'.

Commendably showing full destination blinds, it's captured here on Monday 17th April, leaving Rye Station on the last journey of the day to Winchelsea Beach via Fairlight Cove. Attempts at a second bite at the cherry the following morning were rather spoiled by my phone not picking up a 4G signal until I was too far up a hill to get back down in time before it departed! 

Chris

[Neil Gow]

At the risk of being branded an armchair enthusiast, I find this fascinating. The normal line of route would be Winchelsea Beach, then Pett Level, then Fairlight  - so the screen display of Fairlight Cove (the larger text) via Winchelsea Beach was the correct version. I just referred back to my April Invicta to see if the route really did reach Fairlight by a double run back to the A259, following the 100 route all the way to Ore and then the 101 in the opposite direction (i.e. the route from Hastings)  towards Fairlight. Sure enough, that's what it says. I'd love to have been there to see them make the left hand turn in Ore from the A259 into Fairlight Road - it's bad enough in a car! And the right hand turn the other way's no better - still sharp, onto a busy main road, a pedestrian crossing and another junction adjacent, plus queuing and illegally parked cars obscuring the line of sight. They did well to avoid any incidents.

It's also stretching the definition of "shuttle", somewhat... the end to end time of that permabulation would be longer than a through 101 journey!