This is one of those services that has been run on and off for many years, but has never seemed to make enough money for an operator to be running it for long. As we emerge from the dark and hopefully into the light; Southampton Mini Link announce that they are the latest in the line of operators running the seasonal service to the safari park.
Now, when I saw this from an anonymous comment on the returning Southampton Bus Update saying that this was the case, it made me think back to all the bus services that have tried and failed to maintain an ongoing connection to the park. Now I used to love going to Marwell Zoo and we are long overdue a trip there ourselves; but it is so remote that I would drive.
Southampton Mini Link is hoping that this will all change though and that people will once again get the bus from both Southampton Airport and Eastleigh Railway Stations.
A bit of a reminisce
So I remember a number of buses serving the park at various times over the last decade. Back in the day, Stagecoach would divert the 69 on Sundays so that it would serve Marwell. That happened for many, many years until Hampshire County Council cut funding to it.
Black Velvet, later to be known as Velvet, later to be bought by Xelabus; then ran a service M from Eastleigh to the zoo. Service M ran for many years.
First Hampshire also ran the service for a number of years. This was a single bus operation during the low season and two buses during the peak. At one point there was a half-hourly shuttle from Eastleigh during the bulk of the day with the first trip for each vehicle running from Southampton City Centre. Most recently, First had 69386 decked out in promotional wraps to promote the service – recently, I mean 2019.
So it surprises me that Marwell Zoo Wildlife have chosen to go with such a small operator for this years operation.
This Year….
So this year Southampton Mini Link are going to be running an hourly service throughout the season. Although it is not expected for Marwell visitors to be wanting to leave after just an hour, the service is running both ways at the hourly frequency, so I wonder if there is a hope to also pick up passing trade through Fair Oak. The service will also extend south to Southampton Airport Parkway station for Lakeside Country Park; this is something different from previous years.
As with the First offering the first trip will run from Southampton and the last trip will run to the City Centre. As the services are within the opening hours for the park I can only imagine this is not for Marwell staffing reasons.
It appears though that the service is to the expense of the short lived, temporarily suspended due to the pandemic, service 5 between Southampton and Ringwood.
As you can see, it appears that the page for the temporarily suspended but “very popular“ service 5 is now being used for the Marwell Wildlife service.
If you are planning to head to Marwell (not Zoo) Wildlife this summer, then the timetable and pricing details are available on this link. They do now accept contactless payments on their buses, although the promised app that they were advertising last year either failed the testing process or simply did not get started.
I can only hope though, that the Marwell Bus will be more reliable than the Ringwood experiment, which was regularly missing journeys.
Stagecoach Bus 69 does still serve Marwell on Sundays. (Mornings from Winchester and afternoons back to Winchester).
I also remember years ago Solent Blue Line used to serve Marwell as an extension to the 48 (Now BlueStar 2) from Southampton on Sundays.
I have had a similar conversation on Twitter about this as well.
I was under the impression funding was withdrawn and the 69 stopped being diverted. I am glad I am wrong though as Winchester is a good railhead if you can manage the walk in to Jewry Street to get it.
I wonder if the 69 could start at the Rail Station and then via the bus station to make it easier.
There were several years when no Sunday buses ran on the 69, but the current one bus commercial operation from Botley outstation has been running for about 4 years now. The timetable is quite tight but it would actually take very little time to divert all inward journeys to Winchester via the Station like early Stanmores and some BlueStar 1s, offering a link with trains albeit probably not the best connections based on current bus times.
The problem with Sunday buses at the Station are not the bus times, but the train times!