School and college travel
19.08/09
BACK TO SCHOOL AND COLLEGE
September sees lots of Lewes Town residents going to a new secondary school or college and there is no excuse for hassling your parents to take you in the car. You can walk or cycle to Priory School or Sussex Downs College’s Lewes campus, and good bus (and sometimes train) services are available for all schools and colleges.
FREE TRANSPORT?
You may qualify to have your travel costs paid by the county.
For education up to age 16 you can get fares paid if you qualify for free school meals or your family gets the highest level of working tax credit. For secondary schools the school must be one of the three nearest schools to your home and must be 3-6 miles away, which means that Chailey and Ringmer schools will qualify for most Lewes town residents. There are special schemes for parents or children with disabilities that cause difficulty with walking, those attending sectarian schools and students with special educational needs. For more information see here
For post 16 education payment can be made to students from families in receipt of: Income Support, Income based employment and support allowance, Income-based Job Seeker’s Allowance, Child Tax Credit up to £15,575, guarantee element of State Pension Credit, but only if you are going to the nearest college offering the course and this is more than 3 miles away. If you are going to Brighton they will only pay for buses, not trains. More details here
REDUCED COST TRANSPORT
If you do not qualify for free transport Freedom and Pathfinder bus tickets provide pupils and students with unlimited bus travel on most routes within East Sussex. Freedom tickets cost £13.50 a week and are for pupils under 16. Pathfinder tickets cost £11.50 a week and are for students in full-time further education aged 16–19. You need to apply for a Sussex Student card 14 days in advance. Details here
They might also be good for Ringmer if you don’t mind only using the Red buses.
Trains are more expensive and the procedure for getting reduced tickets is annoyingly difficult. Cheap tickets are only available for students 16 plus. First you must get a Sussex Student Card. Download a form here You need to send in a photo and get the form countersigned by your college. This is difficult as you haven’t gone there yet. You may need to contact the college as soon as your place is confirmed following your results. Then you should allow 2 weeks or so for the card to come. Once you have got the card you can book a season ticket on line here You get a third off. A weekly ticket from Lewes to Brighton will cost about £16.30 and a monthly ticket about £65. You can tailor tickets to the exact dates of term with the same daily cost as the monthly ticket. Tickets to London Road are slightly cheaper. As far as I can tell these tickets can only be bought online at the Southern Web site.
Try to avoid journeys where you have to travel by train AND by bus. It is expensive and the tickets are difficult to buy. You have to buy your train season ticket on line and then take it to the station where they will add the bus journey’s- called plusbus. It will cost you and extra £9 for a seven day ticket, and extra £30 for a one month ticket and an extra £60 for a three month ticket. In some cases this is more expensive than buying bus and train tickets separately.
HOW TO GET THERE
As usual, one of the best ways to plan your journey is at www.travelinesoutheast.org.uk which will plot a journey from your house to the school or college of your choice, although the walking sections are not always the ones you would chose yourself. If you are doing post 16 education you will not always have a full day so you need to know about buses throughout the day. Do check all bus times before you set out.
Priory and Sussex Downs
You probably know where these are. The link above will give you the bus times. The nearest stops for most buses are Friars Walk or the bottom of Station Street because Network rail is too mean to repair the bridge at the north side of Lewes Station.
Ringmer
A special journey of the 125 leaves the bus station at 8.10, travelling via Malling, arriving at the college at 8.35 and comes back at college chucking out time. There are also occasional 143 buses passing outside the college. You cannot use Brighton buses tickets on these services. Otherwise the 28 bus to and from Lewes and Brighton passes outside the college every half hour.
Chailey
Two 121 route buses leave the High Street at 8.10, travelling via Western Road and Neville Road, arriving at the school at 8.30. One starts from the bus station at 8.08. The buses return at the end of the school day.
Plumpton
The 166 and 824 from Lewes go to the college and the 166 actually stops in the college grounds, but these are not frequent and so the college has its own bus service. A bus leaves Lewes Station at 8.35 and returns leaving 1.00 and 5.10. Find full details on the college web site.
Bhasvic and City College, Brighton
You have a choice of the train or the bus. The bus is cheaper but less reliable and often takes longer. A typical journey from the centre of Lewes to BHASVIC will take 40 minutes by train and 58 minutes by bus. But if you don’t live near the railway station but do live near the 28/29 bus route then the bus may be quicker. Travel Line South East will give you the times. The buses run every quarter of an hour.
By train most people walk from Brighton Station. which is just under a kilometre from Bhasvic and about 400 metres to City College By bus the stop at St Peters Church is the right by City College. This stop may also be the quickest route to Bhasvic if you walk up Trafalgar Street to the rail station. But most people walk from Churchill Square (or, if its raining get the 27 or 27a from the Clock Tower)
One way of getting to BHASVIC that travelline won’t tell you about is the 88 bus, one of the more esoteric and mystical of the services that Brighton buses run. It runs on a circuit in one direction round a number of colleges at odd times. The 28 bus which leaves Lewes Waitrose at 7.31 is scheduled to arrive at Brighton Lewes Road bus garage at 7.54. Four minutes later the 88 is scheduled to arrive, calling at BHASVIC at 8.11 and then Varndean at 8.27. You can do the same thing leaving Lewes Waitrose at 8.28, arriving at the garage at 8.59, leaving on the 88 at 9.11 and arriving BHASVIC at 9.23 and Varndean at 9.37. But that’s it. The 88 is no good for coming back from BHASVIC. And don’t try getting the 7.31 if you live in Malling, because it sits outside Waitrose for 15 minutes, presumably while the driver does their shopping.
Varndean
You chose Varndean because you liked the college, you are good at getting up early and you like walking, didn’t you? Varndean is probably the hardest college to get to. By bus or train you can reckon to spend 50 minutes plus travelling. The bus may be quicker. Don’t get confused with Varndean School, which is on the same campus, but quite a way away.
Simplest train route is to go to London Road and walk- it is about 1.5 kilometres.
Simplest bus route is to get the 28/29 to St Peters Church (every 15 minutes) and then the number 5 going north (every ten minutes) This drops you outside the college.
See BHASVIC for information about the 88 bus. There is an 88 that leaves Varndean going north at 3.57 and arrives at the junction of Lewes Road and Coldean Lane (in Coldean) at 4.15. Hop across the road in time for the Lewes bus due at 4.17 and you can be back at Lewes Bus station in 36 minutes total journey. Even if you miss the connection it’s still not bad.
Do let me know if you find any better routes than these.
WALKING BUSES AND MORE
Most infant and junior schools will be in walking distance of students’ homes See here for information about walking buses and facilities to encourage cycling to school- and similar initiatives in both primary and secondary schools. Ask what your school has planned. Because there are a number of primary schools in Lewes it is difficult to get help with travel costs. But see the article above. If you are under 8 you may be able to get help if you need to go to a school that is more than 2 miles away.