With the start of the relaxation of lockdown, people are starting to head back out and enjoy the sunshine. We may only be going from Stay Home to Stay Local at Easter, but after the Easter weekend GoAhead are announcing some of their services are returning to a “normal” timetable. Forgive me for saying… I can’t remember what normal was! These are the changes being made from Sunday 4th April.
Bluestar
Bluestar 9: Normal Saturday timetables will resume on Saturday 10th April, up to every 20 minutes.
Bluestar 18: Normal timetables to resume Monday to Saturday to resume (albeit the Monday is a Bank Holiday)
Purbeck Breezer – from Good Friday 2nd April
Separate from morebus, because they will be changing on Good Friday, the summer Breezer services will resume their summer timetable over the Easter break. People should note that in most areas, schools seem to be breaking up on Thursday 1st April this year, so unless Boris Johnson takes to the podium Thursday morning going “April Fools!“
Breezer 40: runs hourly seven days a week
Breezer 50: resumes it’s half hourly daytime service and late evening hourly journeys
Breezer 60: will run half hourly for most of the season between Sandbanks and Poole, with hourly extensions to Rockley Park
Breezer 70: resumes for Easter and weekends until the end of May. Timetables to after 23rd May are to be confirmed
Although these are great summer season holiday buses. These open-top views of Bournemouth and Poole are still subject to the same restrictions as the rest of the UK. Even over the Easter weekend, technically the advice is still Stay Local. You can meet in a group of 6 outside (or two households) but people are expected to still minimise the number of journeys made.
All I can say – roll on Step 2!
morebus
The rest of morebus changes will take place on Sunday 4th April.
All morebus routes are advertised as resuming normal service levels from Sunday 4th April, except for service 112 in the New Forest which resumes on Monday 29th March. They have listed details of what that means on a dedicated news page.
Damory
Now… I vaguely remember the Damory side of things were back to running a near normal timetable back on the 8th March. There was a change to the service regarding afternoon schools trips on the X12, but confirmation is currently hampered by a broken website.
If I remember to check then I will indeed do so!
Looking Forward to Going Out Again
I am not going to say it too loudly, but I am looking forward to going out again. Some people reading this will say “Hang on, this blogger is a bus spotter and is going out spotting buses” but my interested is more to the business side of services, the change to services over time, to tendering, franchising and how groups…. group.
Long gone are the days, back to the days of open top buses in Portsmouth, when the different types of actual bus models were various enough to maintain my interest. Now I prefer to visit the towns and cities first, and click the occasional photograph of a bus within a scene. If that scene is sat out the front of your local traditional pub, supping a pint of craft microbrewery lager, come say Hi.
I will cover less service changes and more local and thoughts as well. You have just had a barrage of changes from me over the months, I look forward to actually showing you where you can go on a bus instead.