Or 65p with a Railcard (single valid between any two stations Bletchley to Bedford). This is apparently a special offer until about 19th May to "celebrate resumption" of the full rail service after having buses only for so long.

So today I took it as it's been many years since I last used the line: bus Luton to Bletchley, train Bletchley to Bedford, bus Bedford back to Luton. Total cost 65p (with a bus-pass and railcard).

A few observations: the F77 bus was 10 mins late leaving Luton and lost more time, so about 15 late into Bletchley. I had checked on a map that Bletchley bus station was adjacent to the railway station so naively thought that it would be a very short walk from one to the other. As usual, of course, it's not as easy as that - indeed they could hardly made it harder if they had tried. You have to cross a busy dual-carriageway then go under the tracks then up a badly-signposted long set of steps to reach the station. Then after the ticket barriers up over the tracks to platform 5, nearly back to the bus station again.

The Marston Vale line is fairly flat and at both ends the scenery is marred by an excess of big sheds, but there are a few mildly picturesque bits in between. Ridgemont station has a "Heritage Centre and Tearoom" but it isn't open on Mondays so I wasn't able to try that out. A few of other the stations had original station houses still in place, though mostly no longer in use. But for 65p you get a train ride of over 40 minutes which is good value for rail travel around here. It was a 2-carriage DMU with fairly comfortable new (or newly refurbished) seats (2+3 across) and USB charging points, which I doubt the old services had. Two staff on board as well as the driver, to sell tickets I guess, but I didn't see them sell even one on the entire trip so the staffing levels seem excessive. There may have been a dozen people on board in total, most of them like me just taking advantage of the special cheap ticket offer.

At Bedford the rail-road integration is even worse. There are a few bus shelters right outside the station but absolutely no maps or indications of where buses would go from there. So I walked to Bedford Bus Station which is about 10 minutes away to the east, and it's a pretty unpleasant and user-hostile place too. But the MK1 bus to Luton departed on time and was only about 10 minutes late at its destination, so not too bad by the prevailing standards.

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Clive Page