I hope you all had a great Christmas Day. I hear from the comment on the Christmas Day post that services in the Southampton area were well patronaged at lunchtime, however I was not near a Christmas Day bus route to have a look myself. It does appear that the First Solent industrial action was not avoided, so take heed that some services may be cancelled or altered at short notice.
I have been on the Nozecco for the last 24 hours, I can not wait to be able to crack open a beer at the weekend. Thankfully, I have not managed to give myself food poisoning, so the Boxing Day family taxi service will be in action.
For some of you, you will be heading out to the Boxing Day “physical” sales starting or regretting the digital Boxing Day sale purchases that you have already made. So while you take your laptop to the pub to start the returns let’s find a bus to get you there!
South Dorset
First Wessex have no buses running.
Bournemouth & Poole
morebus will run a Sunday timetable on most of it’s commercial network:
- Services 1a, 1b and 1c to Somerford, Southbourne and Christchurch
- Services 3, 4, 6 and 13/a for Wimbourne
- Services 5 & 5a for Kinson
- Service 8 & 9 for Turlin Moor and Upton
- Services 14, 16, 17, 22, 25, 26 around Bournemouth and Poole
- Service X3 between Bournemouth, Ringwood and Salisbury
- Service X8 between Poole and Blandford
A special timetable will run on services m1 and m2 (3 buses an hour on each route), Breezer 40 (every 2 hours) and Breezer 50 (every 2 hours)
Southampton
Bluestar run a standard Sunday service timetable – those without a Sunday timetable will not run.
The only exception to this is Bluestar 6 which will not run.
First Solent will not be running the Solent Rangers X4 and X5 as part of their special Boxing Day service.
Isle of Wight
Southern Vectis will run a full Sunday service.
Portsmouth, Fareham & Gosport
Services on Boxing Day are subject to Industrial Action – First Solent have said they plan to run the service as advertised.
As per the last few years, First Solent will be running a special service on selected routes. You can see the timetables here on the First Solent website.
In Portsmouth, services 1, 2, 3, Star 7 and Star 8 will run half-hourly for similar operating hours as Christmas Day. In a similar vein the similar lack of services towards Waterlooville will affect the QA day shift workers.
In Fareham & Gosport, the Eclipse E1 and E2 services will run every 40 minutes each between 0900 and 1830.
Portsmouth’s PR1 service for Tipner Park & Ride will also run, although the PDF does not show a timetable. The Portsmouth Park & Ride site suggests that it is a Sunday service.
Stagecoach South are not running service 69, but are running a reduced special service in the Portsmouth area.
- Service 18 will run hourly between Paulsgrove and Southsea
- Service 21 will run every thirty minutes between Gunwharf and Farlington, extending to Havant hourly
- Service 23 will run every 30 minutes
- Workers service 725 runs (might be of interest if Stagecoach sticks something unusual on it)
Full timetables are available online.
Winchester, Andover and Basingstoke
Stagecoach South will be running no service.
Newbury & District will be running Flightline 731 to a Sunday timetable in Basingstoke.
