With thanks to Clive for reminding me that I saw it, Southern Vectis are pushing out their summer uplift on Saturday 24th & Sunday May 25th alongside most of the other operators in the area. Regular perveyors of the Isle of Wight summer services will not be overly suprised, albeit we also have a new service in Ryde.
Firstly – a very quick mention that some school routes on the Island are changing after half-term on Monday 2nd June. I expect that most of the students affected by the changes will already know.
So let’s jump straight into it.
Small Changes
Service 2 & Service 3 between Ryde and Newport (along the senic route of the east coast of the Island) will have the normal extra running time added to the service and buses will leave Newport 5 minutes earlier.
Friday and Saturday late night trips on the N3 night bus will no longer serve Ryde Tesco, but will stop at Newport ASDA.
Has someone decided to only serve places that are green-branded?
The Alum Bay and Yarmouth service 7 gains its extra-late Thursdays Only departure from Alum Bay at 22:05. The rest of the week this service will continue to start from Totland War Memorial at 22:12.
This is because of the weekly summer fireworks displays that are held at Alum Bay & The Needles.
There will be an extra trip on service 37. The 15:00 trip will now run regardless of whether it is a school day or school holiday.
Larger Changes
There are some changes to last years arrangements on a few services as well.
On service 8 – I think there is an investment of cash which sees the current ‘summer only’ extra trips between Sandown and Newport to run all year round.
The cash from the Isle of Wight Council and the Bus Service Improvement Plan has paid for a number of additional weekday morning trips as well.
If I am reading it right, the service will also double all year around, six days a week. I might of course just be misreading the publicity and it is just the additional morning trips which are newly funded.
Trips on the Downs Breezer running from Ryde – Wooton (for the Steam Railway) – Sandown – Bembridge – Ryde will run to a revised timetable. This starts on Saturday 24th May.
The Shanklin Shuttle starts on Saturday 24th May, however this year the service is truncated on School Days.
If I remember correctly, there was a gap on school days as the bus had a schools commitment (makes sense!) but then returned for a few more trips. On June, July and September school days though, the last trip is 14:15 from Shanklin Bus Station.
Note: There will still be no 13:15 departure to facilitate a break for the driver and the 14:15 on school days will end it’s trip at the Shanklin Bus Station and not go to the Railway Station.
New Service
The Sea Breezer is a new service for 2025 running from Ryde Interchange to Puckpool Park and Seaview.
The service is largely hourly but with a 90 minute gap in the middle, I presume it is 1 bus and driver all day and that is their break.
Largely Summer as Normal
Southern Vectis have pretty much got their summer services weighed off quite well. You can read their full news post on the IslandBuses website.
We have the Summer Links which will be running 4 trips a day over the May half term including the open-top trip which is a positioning run for the Needles Breezer(?). We also have the Isle of Wight festival coming up a the end of June and he usual mix of various colours as the Festival Fleet get bolstered with a few vehicles from the mainland.
I hope to get over to the Island in the next few months. We do spend some time with family in West Wights but never enough around Cowes and Ryde.
Will be interesting to see what happens with Go Southcoast-following the sad death of its managing Director last Weekend.