As with Go South Coast, First Bus are making it’s summer changes to services across Weymouth and the Jurassic Coast on Sunday 25th May. Between the Weymouth and Swanage areas, there can be quite a variety of vehicles and colour schemes now with morebus & Damory running as well as some of the smaller independent operators.
You can find the First Bus news piece on the changes on their website.
Services with no frequency change
There are always a number of services where the running time is extended to cope with the summer traffic. At the May timetable change the following services will do this, although of course this means they might add extra vehicles into the mix. Where indicated some timetables are also extended to run later in the day:
- Service 1 to Wyke Regis and Portland – on Friday and Saturday nights until 01:15 (on Saturday / Sunday morning)
- Service 8 to Chickerall – 21:30 (Monday to Friday) 22:15 (Saturday) and 18:20 (Sunday)
- Service 10 to Dorchester and Poundbury – on Friday and Saturday until 01:05
- Service X51 to Bridport & Axminster – and a Sunday service
- Service X53 to Bridport & Axminster – and a Sunday service
Service 2 to Littlemoor
The frequency of service 2 will increase to every 15 minutes Monday to Saturday (every 20 minutes on Sundays) and buses will now pick up inside the Weymouth Park & Ride. This would suggest that there might not be a separately supported Park & Ride bus this year?
Service 4 to Preston
The service calling outside the Haven Holiday Parks at Seaview and Weymouth Bay (South West Coaches have been doing a service specifically for Haven the last few years) will run every 20 minutes with buses running into the evening.
Last buses will leave Weymouth at 21:15 (19:05 on Sundays)
Portland Open Top Service 11
The Portland Coaster or 501 to us older ones is returning with a two-hourly (two-bus) service during school days, and an hourly school holiday service.
Littlesea Holiday Park Service 12
The annual Haven Holiday Park service resumed, however there will be a change in May where the Railway Station Forecourt will not be served. Passenger will need to use the King Street Bus Stop which I am assume will be because of the traffic levels and trying to turn into the forecourt.
The usual hourly schoolday and half-hourly school holiday service will return.
Jurassic Coasters
I am not sure they actually use the Jurassic Coaster brand on the website any more. The timetable at the moment seems a hot mess of page errors ( like if you click the top-level menu link to https://www.firstbus.co.uk/wessex-dorset-south-somerset/routes-and-maps ) and having to approve your location to get information.
To The West
Heading out of Weymouth towards Bridport and Axminster the open-top buses return to service X52 via Abbotsbury and Sunday services to Axminster return.
Each service will run two-hourly Monday to Saturday, as per previous years. Looking at the timetable I (I know – call me boring) find it quite interesting that the X51 and X52 leave Weymouth two minutes apart and arrive in Bridport two minutes apart.
So the map above is from 2022 granted, but it just feels longer. I have digressed a little bit though.
Now the First bus article says last buses will be later. To be fair that is only going to be heading back into Weymouth, only really because of traffic and with the exception that the 1906 Lyme Regis to Weymouth will start from Axminster.
Sundays – as I think are usual – the X51 and X53 will provide a combined hourly service.
To The East
Service X54 this year will run it’s current winter route between Weymouth and Wareham, and then extend to Corfe Castle and Swanage.
The timetable will increase to run every two hours with a small variation on schools days (one trip will not run between Wareham and Swanage) although the same “school holiday” timetable will run seven days a week.
Monkey World and the Bovington Tank Museum will this year be covered by NEW service 55. This service will run Lulworth Cove – West Lulworth – Wool – Tank Museum / Monkey World, so will also provide additional buses between Lulworth Cove and Wool Station.
Service 55 will operate hourly (except for a driver lunch break) daily. Unlike the Go South Coast’s Jurassic Breezer 31 – the timetable does not change on a Sunday to match the South Western Railway timetable.
It’s Largely Business as Usual
As I have recently mentioned with both Southern Vectis and morebus posts this week; First Wessex is largely doing what it knows will probably work. Weymouth and South Dorset are fairly predictable in what the traffic patterns are going to be so the timetables change to reflect that.
Of course, we have a few changes here and there, like where the Chickerell area had changes to the 3 and 8 in the last few years, but the core networks remain. My question will be the effectiveness of the 55 though, especially on a Sunday.
If you have yet to go across to First Wessex and see their script on the changes, you can find it here. There are no timetables showing yet, however they are on TravelineSW where you can download them as PDFs. I have not seen any leaflets or timetable booklets from First Wessex yet either, which I am sure they did last year as a download.
A bit of detective work reveals that the X50 (Weymouth-Wool-SomewhereElse) will run this year, but not until the summer school holidays. The X50 is shown as a “connecting service” on First’s timetable for the 55 (Lulworth-Wool-Tank Museum/Monkey World), interleaving with the X54 over the Weymouth-Wool section. We will have to wait until July for details.
We now have confirmation. The X50 will be open top and will follow the same route as the X54, ie Weymouth-Winfrith-Lulworth-Wool-Wareham-Corfe-Swanage. The two routes interleave to give an hourly service in the summer school holiday. At Wareham: outbound, both will go Worgret-bypass-station-town-Stoborough; inbound, both will go Stoborough-town-station-town-Worgret. That should keep the drivers awake!
Seen yesterday (bank hol mon)-hard top 08 gemini!
Is there a timetable available for this anywhere yet?