Flintshire Ale Trail anger as transport ‘shambles’ leaves many waiting hours for buses

Social media followers of Flintshire’s Real Ale Trail were told to “go forth and multiply” by one event organiser after they had received a barrage of “abuse” from “rude ignorant members of the public.”

Last Saturday’s event saw around 1000 people pay £10 per head to hop on and off four specially chartered buses which were advertised to travel between some of Flintshire best rural cask ale pubs every 45 minutes.

The event, which has been running for a number of years was deemed a “roaring success” by Shelly Barratt of Coya marketing, the Mold based company which organises the event alongside the Flintshire Tourism Association.

Image: realaletrailflintshire.co.uk/

Despite the positive tone from event organisers ale trail fans were left fuming after transport arrangements descended into a ‘shambles’ with people left waiting hours to catch buses to pubs.

Many took to social media to vent their anger and ask for a refund, leaving comments and one star reviews on the event Facebook page.

Rebecca posted a one star review, she said;

What a disaster yesterday was, spent most of the day outside waiting for buses. The 1st pub we went to spent that long waiting we actually just got a taxi to the next pub! In the end we just stayed on one bus until we got back to Mold because we had enough.

Mark also left a one star review, he said;

This is absolute balls! The pubs are great but the bus service is abominable. No information from the organiser during the lead up to the event despite email & twitter communication. Great ales, despicable event organisation. Refund our money

Jade said;

“That bad that we ended up staying on the bus to get back to where we started not enough coaches and not frequent enough either!!”

Another one star reviewer said everybody should get their money back while Holly said she was left stuck in one pub for two hours.

Jan told Deeside.com;

We arrived at the Gold Cape in Mold at around 2:15pm, there was one bus overloaded with people leaving and we were told by the driver another bus would be along soon.

There were already around 40 people waiting so we got a drink and waited for around an hour before giving up and going to Chester.

During our wait one bus did arrive at about 3:00pm but the driver emptied its passengers and wouldn’t allow anyone to board and just drove off.

During the time we waited people were phoning taxis to get them to the next pub which was just ridiculous as we had all paid £10 for the bus.

There was a timetable on Facebook however it was a joke as no buses arrived.

“Approx. times, subject to traffic” says the facebook post

More buses next time.

Shelly Barratt from Coya marketing who also run similar events in Snowdonia, Dee Valley, the Wirral and Conwy  said the ale trail nearly didn’t happened due to the collapse of GHA buses last year.

“The one day event is supported so well that the Flintshire Tourism Association would not let it go and worked hard to put the trail back on this year due to popular demand.

At peak times buses where full which caused a fair few logistics problems for us in the afternoon which was disappointing.”

“We really should have put on another two buses to help with peak times in hindsight, and we are really disappointed it didn’t go as smooth as usual” said John Les Tomos Landlord of the Oak in Hendre and an event organiser.

He added; “We’ve met up as a team to discuss how they could make the event better next time”

Despite the one day event grossing around £10,000 in ticket sales alone John Les Tomos added; “Since last year every operational cost has doubled in price so we may need to put up the ticket cost in order to buy in more buses to keep the event running smoothly.”