Sunderland to Hartlepool

November 2008

The bus from Sunderland to Hartlepool was a smaller one than I travelled on from Durham to Sunderland, and was cream and blue instead of bright purple. The passengers, as with the Durham to Sunderland bus , were almost entirely old folks travelling on their free passes (well, why not? that’s what I was doing). And they looked rather poor.

The bus goes through a string of poor-looking towns: Ryhope, the outskirts of Seaham, Easington, Horden, Peterlee. I have been through most of these places before, and they do look rather depressed. The people look poor, whatever that means (some comments on this on my page about Sunderland). And so do the buildings. Among the old folks joining and leaving the bus was a woman reading a book called Contract Law. Why would someone travel on a bus from Sunderland to Peterlee, reading a book about contract law? She may have been studying law – as a (very) mature student – or maybe she was in dispute over a loan or something. So much that one doesn’t know and is far too shy to ask. There was a story to be told there, there must have been.

The woman with her book was unusual. No one else I saw that day on the buses was reading a book.