In Stockport with a bit of history ……

 Well, less the history and more the successor to Stockport’s bus station which after 40 years of receiving and sending buses out across Greater Manchester shut up shop at 3.15 am on August 29th, 2021.

Information Centre, 2025

I would like to say I was there with a tear in my eye and an old unused bus ticket, but I wasn’t.

Busy morning, 2025

Nor was I there when its reincarnation welcomed travellers in March 2024.

My Wikipedia tells me that “Stockport Interchange is a transport hub in Stockport, Greater Manchester, England. As well as a bus station, it includes walking and cycling links, a rooftop park, and a mixed use residential and commercial building.

The interchange includes an accessible, covered passenger concourse with seated waiting areas, 18 bus stands with the capacity to accommodate 164 bus departures per hour, cycle storage facilities and a travel shop.

The development also includes a 2-acre landscaped park on its roof, located above the bus station. Following a public vote, it was named Viaduct Park. 

A brace of buses, 2025

A waterside walking and cycling route with a spiral ramp provides access from the River Mersey and the Trans Pennine Trail to the park and onward to the town centre.”*

All of which shows I missed a lot by not being there and indeed not actually going till this morning.

And there’s the rub, because I quite forgot to explore the garden, and missed making the interchange with the railway station.

If I am honest the bus station was always an after thought which just fitted into the big adventure which had been to travel into Manchester Piccadilly Railway Station from the nearest destination.

I know there are other contenders of which Ardwick and Ashburys are closer, and in the case of Ashburys there would be a sentimental link back to the days over fifty years ago when we lived off Grey Mare Lane and used the station.

Waiting, 2025

But I reasoned going to Stockport would allow me to visit the Interchange, and then take the train into the city to check out how much the skyline had changed since the 1970s.

Alas it failed to happen.

Stockport Railway Station had been closed for three weeks and wouldn’t reopen till Saturday.

And if that wasn’t enough, I discovered you had to pay 20p to use the Interchanges’ lavatory.  Now in this age of contactless payment I had long ago stopped carrying cash and was only saved by the intervention of a kindly old man who offered me the money as he left the lavatory.

So full marks Stockport’s Interchange for a magnificent bus station with its garden and fine views of the river, but perhaps it needs to revisit its policy of spending a penny and if abandoning the charge is not going to happen at least find an alternative way of paying.

Location; Stockport

Pictures; of the Interchange, 2025, from the collection of Andrew Simpson