Fleetwood
17 February 2024. This weekend I was down in Fleetwood, making use of another pair of amazing value £1 sale tickets with Transpennine Express. See the YouTube video for this trip!
From Preston, it was around a two hour trip on a smart little Enviro 200MMC run by Blackpool Transport on route 74, a council-subsidised journey through rural Wyre. I'd also totally forgotten that the £2 bus single fare cap was a thing in England, and the bus journey was just £2 each way (normally the return trip would have been possible with a Blackpool Transport day ticket at £6.20, so a significant if not massive saving). The bus itself was surpisingly quiet given there's no direct rail route from Preston to Fleetwood, but it did have a decent number of passengers through the Preston suburbs and then picking up again from Poulton on to Fleetwood. The rural area was very pretty, though mostly just very small villages (Great Eccleston looked worth a visit, nowhere else had much more than a pub and a village store).
Like many former seaside resort towns, Fleetwood itself looked a bit past its best, though the actual seafront was still very impressive, with a huge sandy beach that was nearly empty on what was a pretty mild February day. An interesting building along the seafront is this former radar station that had recently been in the news when it was sold off by the council:
I got my fish and chips from the Granada Fish Bar - a large cod and chips for £10. The cod was fried fresh and was actually pretty good, if not all that large. Disappointingly though it was paired off with some approaching-stale dry chips, in a large portion. Overall it was okay, but nothing great. I had actually been planning to go to another chip shop that had a higher review rating, but on the day it was closed despite being within the opening hours posted on the front door, so it may even have just closed down but nobody locally had thought to update the Google Maps entry!
For the journey home I took Blackpool Transport's 75 - it takes a slightly more southerly route than the 74 serving more of the Blackpool suburbs and some different villages. The 74 and 75 provide an alternating half-hourly service between Preston and Fleetwood. Overall it's a nice little journey, and good value for a day out.
Tags: travel