Welcome to Cheadle, Cheadle Hulme, Gatley and Heald Green's Online Guide produced by AboutMyArea/SK8

Bus & Train Timetables

This summer we've witnessed the horrific power of nature when the most recent bout of flooding decimated many towns around the country. If we are to believe what the scientific community tells us then we are likely to see more adverse weather in the future unless we begin to reduce our carbon footprint.

Now many of us are recycling, using energy efficient light bulbs and not using standby functions, but most of us still use our cars to get out and about. It is all fine and good to ask people to use public transport but it is often extremely hard to decipher how best to use it. This guide is here for those who can't drive, need public transport or those of use who want to use more of it. To give you an idea of how powerful this tool is, Tourist Information Centres often use it when aiding visitors to find public transport.

North West Journey Planner
http://nw.aimwebsites.co.uk/

This web based piece of software is a magnificent little tool that will allow you and your family to find everything they need to know about public transport in your area.

The journey planner works on 2 fronts: a) Journey planner & b) A timetable finder

a) Using the Journey Planner
1)Enter where you wish to leave from, now this could be your street, postcode or something more general like your village

2)Enter your destination using the same criteria

3)nput data into the rest of the fields (date, time you wish to leave and the type of transport you wish to include)

4)The next screen will ask you to specify more exactly your "to" and "from fields" for example to make sure it knows which cheadle in the country you mean and then ask it to plan your journey.

5)Now if the journey is possible it will give you several journey options detailing the number of the bus or train, the number changes, duration and times of departure and arrival.

6)By clicking on view journey you can then see in detail pick up and drop off points, changes and their specific times.

7)Once there you can also click on Map to show you in detail several specifics such as: where you need to walk to catch the bus and where the bus route goes.

b) Timetable Finder

1)This option is perhaps more appropriate for those who know which bus they want to catch but want a timetablewhich inlcudes their local stop.

2)All this requires is for the user to input the service number and time they wish to depart.

3)The power of this tool comes in the ability for the user to specify which stops to include in the timetable which is displayed by using the customise facility in the bottom left corner.

4)This allows you to get information specific to yourself.

5)The facility also has a map which of the route which is displayed over an A-Z type map which means that you can really get a feel for the route of the bus and where exactly the stops are.