Guest Blog: A Southampton Bus Tour 2

Just one day after the start of the new year, Website Manager Tom Lingwood and Website Editor Steven Briers wasted no time in making the most of Southampton's buses once again as they embarked on their second bus tour of the city and its surrounding areas, and as they both explain, their day saw a few interesting surprises.

Anyone who has kept an eye on events in the bus world in our area will know that a lot has changed in recent months in terms of routes, frequencies and vehicles themselves. Among them include the introduction of brand new buses for Unilink and Bluestar 1 (more of which later); the introduction of new routes (and the withdrawal of old ones), and more buses than ever operating on Boxing Day and New Years Day. To encapsulate some of these changes, we decided to have a second bus tour, following on from our last one in May last year, with the main intention of going on routes that had changed (or were due to change) in some way. Here is what happened.

Our first leg of our journey involved the First 13 from Burgoyne Road in Thornhill to Central Station. One of the first surprises we encountered was on the bus shelter, where we saw a piece of history in the most unlikely of places. Along the top of the shelter, underneath where a bus flag had been attached previously, were faded remnants of the original Solent Blue Line logo, of which there are a small handful still around in certain places, so this wasn't too much of a surprise. What did amaze us was that underneath this, again faded and extremely worn, was the original sticker for Hampshire Bus when they operated in the 1980's (picture below).

(The bus stop in Burgoyne Road

 

The route 13 now no longer serves Thornhill and instead terminates in Harefield, reinstating the loop around Moorhill Road and West End Road that was once done by the 4 when it served the area a whole 8 years ago. For this reason, we made this a must on our tour. One of London's former double deckers (32256 - LT52 WWB) did the honours and it was a pleasant journey all round. Thankfully the roadworks by Itchen Bridge caused no delay; something we feared because of our tight schedule.

From Central Station it was straight on to a route which is now sadly history; First's service 10 to Totton College. As this was the last chance to ride the route, we chose to do the whole length of it (excluding the short section from Vincent's Walk to Central Station). Again a double decker in the form of 37165 - HY07 FSX (one of the batch of 5 introduced in Southampton as brand new in 2007 for the then 8/8A route), we sat on the top and enjoyed the variety of landscapes that the route went through, from the quiet residential Luccombe Road in Upper Shirley, to the busy General Hospital, through to the extremely busy Redbridge Flyover. Alighting at Totton College, our next step was to wait for the first of 3 Bluestar buses in our trip.

(37165 - HY07 FSX)

 

The 11 was our next port of call and once it had completed its loop of West Totton, it arrived (3414 - NK04 FPA; previously one of the many Cadets that operated the 18 for so long). Reminiscing about the times that these buses were on the 18, it wasn't long until we arrived at West Quay. Tom spotted across the road the recently started Velvet 300 to Ringwood, and was keen to take the potential opportunity for a photo, but time was against us so we had to leave it this time. More important things awaited us; namely lunch.

Walking up Above Bar Street Tom quickly saw something that we simply couldn't miss the chance of experiencing. One of the brand new buses for the Bluestar 1 pulled up to the bus stop as we passed, and we decided in less than a second that we had to ride it; even if it was only to London Road to get our lunch. Nonetheless we were impressed by what we saw; even the standard "No Smoking" sign on the bus intrigued us as it also mentioned the banning of electronic cigarettes. How times have changed. After a quick bite to eat we headed back into the centre of town on a U1C (again one of the newest of buses in the Southampton area), and then it was a very quick visit to the First Travel Shop for a new timetable booklet before boarding our next bus.

Our next destination was Romsey, but via the newish W1 from Wheelers; one of the newest operators on the scene. This was one of the key routes of our tour, and everything else we did centred round the inclusion of this, as it was a route we have been keen to sample since it was registered on VOSA. The journey was pleasant and timely, and looked like it was quite popular amongst the public from what we observed, although admittedly after it had left Chilworth we had no idea where we were going. This remained the situation until we reached Romsey Bus Station. It was a minute or so before this that Tom saw another unique opportunity.

(AE56 MDJ & SF08 ROU at Romsey Bus Station)


 

It was a race against time as we stepped off the W1 and ran to the back of the queue to make sure we definitely boarded the Bluestar 4 that was loading at the stand. We agreed that we simply could not afford to miss riding it, as it turned out to be not a Bluestar bus, but a Unilink double decker (1198 - HF58 GZN). This is an extreme rarity, as the route is nearly always Citaro-operated. A massive photo opportunity indeed. Our journey was to Lordshill (in an extremely heavy downpour), to meet our final bus and our final journey of the day.

Stopping briefly in Sainsbury's for refreshments, we made the perilous journey in the pouring rain and wind to the bus stop for the First 3 (rebranded as "the three" shortly before Christmas). For this reason, we were extremely keen to ride one of the newly refurbished vehicles (recently transferred to Southampton from Portsmouth where they would be found on the Zip services to Waterlooville and Clanfield etc.). The weather was dire, it was getting dark, and rush hour was looming, but we were in luck. Taking the risk to not board the 3 that was actually waiting at the bus stop when we arrived (due to its lack of red livery), it wasn't long until what would be the next bus pulled up on the opposite side of the road, and to our delight it was a freshly branded one. A minute or so on and the 3 we could have boarded departed and we excitedly waited the 10 minutes until the next one was due to leave. When it did we were nothing short of impressed, and we had a lovely (reasonably traffic free to our surprise) journey back to Thornhill.

 

(69401 - HY09 AZG with it's new look)

 

All in all we had a great day. The weather was rubbish but it didn't matter; we achieved all we wanted to and more. We now need to come up with some more ideas for our next one, which we are looking at doing in the summer maybe. Who knows, maybe the weather will be nice too?