The Island Awakens

Reading Time: 2 minutes

With the inevitable lengthening of the days and the sun starting to feel slightly warmer Southern Vectis already has their plans for the summer season in full swing. This is a look at the summer season ahead with their open-top Breezers and more.

First though- Changes in Shanklin

There are timetable changes to Southern Vectis’ service 3 in the Ventnor and Ryde areas due to ongoing road closures. There was a previous land slip which affected bus services, and there are now timetable changes to reflect that.

Diversions affect the service between Trinity Church, Ventnor and Shanklin Community Center with buses running to this amended timetable.

From Saturday 2nd March

The Needles Breezer begins the very early season with services starting in just over a weeks time. As usual the service begins hourly on it’s slightly circular route between Yarmouth, Alum Bay and the Needles Battery.

The Needles Breezer will go half-hourly later in the year.

From Good Friday 29th March

For the Easter Holidays, the Island Coaster and Summer Links services will begin.

Summer Links was the old number 27.

This is the Newport – Tapnell Farm – Yarmouth service which runs four round-trips from Newport (one of which does not run between Tapnell and Yarmouth – presumably to fit in a school run?).

Island Coaster is a lovely long trip around the Isle of Wight, running Ryde – Sandown – Shanklin – Ventnor – Yarmouth. This only runs three trips each way (the full route taking nearly three hours) and may be diverted between Shanklin and Ventnor due to the landslip repairs.

Timetable PDFs are not available yet on the Island Buses Coaster Page but are on BusTimes at Island Coaster and Summer Links

From Saturday 25th May

With the summer heading towards full swing, the summer school half-term brings the resumptions of the Shanklin Shuttle and the Downs Breezer.

Neither timetable is showing on either Bus Times or the Southern Vectis website, however the services are unlikely to be substantively different from previous. If it ain’t broke, why break it?

The information from the Southern Vectis news article also says there will be a full afternoon service during the core summer season (presumably when there is no schools runs).

New Tickets? Or Old Information?

So while researching the right information for this update, I was on the Southern Vectis website for the summer services and it says:

From the start of this Breezer season we are introducing a new ticket type which will be known as Rover+Breezer ticket. 

https://www.islandbuses.info/days-out-bus

Now I thought that these tickets were introduced either last year or the year before. I do have a timetable somewhere so I must try and remember to dig it out.