As you might know if you head to Weymouth, First Wessex has a long standing arrangement to run buses to a number of the holiday parks each season. They can be quite busy, certainly when we have been at the Littlesea Holiday Park with not quite standing loads, but always a healthy number of taken seats, usually a few pushchairs and families happy to fork out the family day ticket rates.
So it is a little surprising that First Wessex have announced their early season services and it looks like it will be a substantially reduced service all year round.
501 for Portland
There is nothing yet announced for the 501 down through Chesil Beach and along the east side of Portland. The Portland Breezer is advertised on the the leaflets for both the 502 and 503, so one can assume that the open top ALX 400 is still expected to be running, just no times yet.
502 for Littlesea Haven
This is a strange one because I am not sure the frequency is quite right.
Back in the day, even up to the start of the pandemic, the service was hourly in the low season using a single bus, then upped to every half hour through the hot and the school summer holidays. So I was a little surprised to see that the leaflets for this years 502 is showing as a single service level for the entire season.
The extension to the Weymouth Sealife and the Premier Inn is not running this year, although I found that this section of the route was not necessarily the busiest or the money maker; there are regular buses on a number of routes that head past the entrance to the car park.
But this year the bus is going to run… every 50 minutes from March to November? Now I know bus stop space is at a premium around the Kings Statue, but whenever I have used it the bus has oft run late from Haven because of the number of people having to physically life pushchairs and pensioners up the non-existent step.
The lack of a round trip at lunchtime is also an observant return, not surprisingly though as this is a tourist service and tourists are already at the beach or remaining on the park by that point.
It makes no sense to me though why it is not just an hourly service, so that people who do not know the area also do not have to have a University Challenge of What time is the bus back? It is useful to note that Haven were previously advertising their 2022 season as having a new ”no entertainment” option at a slightly cheaper rate.
You can download the 502 timetable directly from First Bus here.
503 to Bowleze Cove and Waterside Holiday Park
Like the 502, the 503 is running to a relatively tight one bus frequency of every 45 minutes. It also feels that the 503 is finishing earlier this year, with a last bus leaving Weymouth back to Waterside at 18:05.
You can download the 503 timetable directly from First Bus here.
Notably not announced yet….
At the time of writing there is nothing advertised along the lines of the X52 to Monkeyworld and the Bovington Tank Museum. I am curious to see whether this will happen this year, as low frequency holiday camp buses – presumably with deckers to add additional capacity – is going to be the theme of the Summer.
Hopefully when the 501 and X52 timetables are available, they will appear on the First Wessex dedicated page for the Jurassic Coasters.