DownThe Hill In A Sunny Sheffield
I took these pictures as I walked from the Leopold Hotel to the station.
The Winter Garden was a total surprise. In fact, when I saw it, I was rather disappointed that I’d had a morning coffee in a Cafe Nero.
It was a very easy walk with the hill.
As I got to the bottom, it struck me that it might have been an idea to put the odd escalator in the climb to make it easier to walk up. Perugia has a similar problem of getting up the hill and they have used escalators to advantage.
Sheffield’s Information-Free Buses And Trams
I chose the Leopold Hotel, as it was in the centre by a tram stop, which made it easy to get to and from the match at Hillsborough. It also meant that to get to the hotel from the train, I just went to the tram stop and used my Freedom Pass to go a few stops up the hill.
But when I arrived at the stop, all it had was details on the tram route. But there was no sign of any local map. As I’d spotted the hotel from the tram before it stopped, I just walked a few metres down the hill and round the corner.
I had planned to have an early supper with an old friend, at the new Carluccio’s on Ecclesall Road. He’d said I’d needed to get an eighty-something. So I walked and found this bus stop.
The World’s Most Useless Bus Stop
Note that is says “Buses Do Not Stop Here on the sign. It didn’t have any information that a visitor might like to use to get to the Ecclesall Road. There was no information and nobody around to answer my question.
I eventually walked a couple of hundred metres the other way and found a guy, who told me that any bus from a particular stop went down the Ecclesall Road. The queues incidentally at the stop was manic, mainly because the ticketing system required many to give money to the driver. As usual I had to put my Freedom Pass down and pick up a printed ticket.
And when I did get on a bus, there was no way, I could tell where I was, as it was a silent bus. Luckily, I knew roughly, where I was going and I knew there was a Waitrose on the corner of Ecclesall Road. But I still ended up walking further than I wanted.
At least I could read the name on the bus stops, but how do the visually-impaired manage?
The bus wasn’t that full for the rush hour and that helped me look out. But I still had to fight my way to the front to get out.
If ever a city needed London’s bus spider maps and cash free buses it is Sheffield. How many more passengers would they get, if the buses and trams were organised with the same objectives as London in mind?
But the worst thing about the buses, was coming back from Ecclesall Road was that the buses seemed to have stopped running.
In the end I had to pay £6 for a taxi.
How visitor-friendly is that?
At least when I need to go to Sheffield in the future, I now know that unless I’m going to somewhere near a tram stop, the best course of action will be to stay at home.
The Anonymous Widower 