Alongside the changes to morebus coming up on Saturday (29th May), the independent Yellow Buses operation have also played havoc with my “Bus Service Changes on a Sunday” routine with their summer uplift. This also starts on Saturday 29th May.
The Bank Holiday weekend is going to be a comparative scorcher. The open top buses are going to be out. Yellow Buses are going to be running more of them!
If you are not taking a …. blue Yellow Coach up to London for the weekend then you might want to head down to the beach to mingle with the rest of Hampshire and Dorset. Buster’s Beach Bus is running across the town and heading out to the New Forest too:
Changes to the Main Network
Services across the core commuter and shopper network are going to see a normal, pre-pandemic weekday timetable reintroduced across Yellow Buses. Changes to capacity limits have already been relaxed so it should almost be back to normal. Yellow Buses will also make additional changes that affect a small number of routes:
- Service 1 between Bournemouth and Christchurch will now run Every 10 Minutes
- Service 1a between Bournemouth and Somerford will now run Every 10 Minutes
- Service 1a will also extend to Highcliffe and New Milton Every 30 Minutes Monday to Saturday
- Service 1a will also see a new Sunday service to New Milton – 7 return journeys
- Service 4 will be extended beyond Castlepoint to serve Royal Bournemouth Hospital and Christchurch Monday to Saturday
- Service 4 will extend beyond Castlepoint to Royal Bournemouth Hospital on Sundays
- Services 4a and 6 will be extended back to Bear Cross and Leigh Road on weekdays
- Service 6h will be re-routed to serve Ferndown Industrial Estate
Changes to Buster’s Beach Bus
Open top yellow buses are also increasing in number, with more services across the beach and a new service to the New Forest.
- Service 11 will increase to every 2 hours on weekdays and hourly at the weekend
- Service 12 will increase to ever 30 minutes every day
- A New Forest Explorer will also be introduced, running between Christchurch, Highcliffe and Ringwood.
The new Buster’s New Forest Explorer will only run during school holidays and at weekends, with a handy calendar provided on the summer services webpage. It actually looks like it is a nice route to take a wander through, with a number of places where you could just escape and take a walk.
For those in deeper, darker Bournemouth and Poole though, you are going to need to head out to Christchurch, aor time a connection off the 21 at Bransgore, to head out to the forest.
– and a final collaboration
Yellow Buses will also host another new collaboration this year, as alongside the Yellow Blue Buses of the new Megabus service, they are also collaborating with the blue open top buses of Golden Tours.
The blue Golden Tours open top services, with recorded commentary, will be running in Bournemouth from Saturday as well. This is technically a collaboration with Yellow Coaches and a 24 hour ticket will cost £15 for adults and £8 for children.
This service will run at weekends only through June, with a daily service running from Thursday 1st July (if the website is to be believed) but there is not a timetable available yet, nor a list of the 24 bus stops that the hop-on:hop-off tour will serve.
Bournemouth & Poole are fast returning to a conurbation that you don’t need a car to get around and enjoy. The question that is on my mind is when the locals will get their full night bus service back!
Saw the blue and white Golden Tours bus going around at the weekend. There seems to have been a bit of a miscommunication at Yellows about the stops. While the website you’ve linked to shows 24 stops on the route map screen (https://d1wgio6yfhqlw1.cloudfront.net/UserFiles/file/Bournemouth_Map.pdf), about six weeks ago Yellows put Yellow Buses flags on EVERY stop along the route (in the direction of travel), including adding whole new bus stops along those sections of route where no bus stops existed (such as Osbourne Road and part of Woodside Avenue in Poole).
The route is VERY similar to the existing City Sightseeing tour, although CS is more picturesque, actually visiting Alum Chine and Poole Park for instance (rather than just getting near).
Yellows still have Buster’s Beach Bus flags at all stops from Alum Chine to Sandbanks and back despite no service alone this stretch again this year. Craftily they use the timetable windows to promote the Busters Beach Bus services that do exist. I wouldn’t be surprised if more do the same with the current extension of Breezer 70 along East Cliff to Boscombe Gardens clifftop. Just serve it this year and then have a whole load of extra advertising space for future years…
Separately it’s interesting to see closer links between YB and First Wessex, with some cross ticketing options and mentions of each other in the timetables. Wessex even painting their buses Yellow now. Hmmm I wonder… Shame the only place they both serve is Poole Town Centre where the services seem to go out of their way not to share any stops.