S is for Salisbury

Saturday 1st October 2022

I’m sorry Scunthorpe, I was intending to feature you in my fortnightly AtoZ visits to mid size towns as suggested by a correspondent but Northern Trains’ incompetence at organising rail replacement buses last weekend coupled with TransPennine Express’s penchant for cancellations meant I had to give up on the idea for last Saturday’s planned trip. I’ll try and make it on another occasion soon as it’ll be interesting to make a north-south comparison with my selected alternative Salisbury,m; another suggestion from blog reader Ian.

The former Wiltshire County Council became a unitary council in 2009 with the old Districts including Salisbury disappearing but the city gained a ‘town/parish’ type council known appropriately enough as Salisbury City Council.

It’s a well placed city with good regional connections to Bournemouth due south, Southampton south eastwards, Winchester easterly and Swindon due north all about 40-45 miles away with Andover (north east), Warminster (north west) and Shaftesbury (west) a little closer around 30-35 miles away.

The first thing to observe regarding the city’s public transport is that for it’s size of around 40,000 population,Salisbury really does enjoy a splendid bus service with an amazing number of different bus routes serving the city itself as well as a good selection of inter-urban routes and destinations reached directly by train. It also has five Park & Ride sites.

Despite all this, largely due to there being no by-pass – either north to south or east to west – the city is famous for its traffic congestion around the inner city ring road, not only at peak times but also all day during the holiday season when the city is besieged by tourists visiting it’s renowned cathedral.

I reckon Salisbury’s got the most bus routes per head of population of any similar size town/city I’ve visited yet. The network is run by Go-Ahead owned Salisbury Reds part of the Go South Coast empire which stretches from Swindon to Shanklin and from Southampton to Shaftesbury and Swanage under the brilliant leadership of the much respected Andrew Wickham who despite the large geographic area covered ensures each area has a localised effectively managed unit in tune with the local market.

The only downer at the current time is Salisbury seems to be particularly badly hit with a shortage of drivers impacting reliability. When I was there on Tuesday last week there were a number of buses missing from the schedules and I picked up a sense of frustration among both staff and passengers that things were not as everyone would want. Things had got so bad the previous Thursday manager Alex Chutter posted a well written statement of apology on the company’s website which was good to see but obviously not something that’s desired.

Let’s hope the situation improves soon as it really is a great bus network for the population size of the city.

As you’d expect from a Go-Ahead Group company there’s a clear colourful network map online for both the city network and one showing bus routes extending further afield.

Bus stops in the city centre have some of the best information displays you’ll find anywhere. It’s a feature of the Go South Coast area. There are clear posters on the outsides of bus shelters advising which route stop there….

…. and on the inside a clear map showing “where to catch your bus”. It’s all colour coordinated.

There are fourteen city routes either using a prefix R for Reds or PR for Park and Ride. In timetables and maps a block capital letter R is used but on destination displays on the buses it’s a small r just to annoy us pedants, I guess.

Not surprisingly the R1 is the most frequent route running every 15 minutes across the city with double deck buses between the District Hospital to the south of the city and the Bemerton Heath area to the north west of the city. I took an enjoyable 78 minute rounder on the route which was a busy run especially as there’d been a long gap without a bus ahead of us. I can see why it’s the number one route.

Routes R2, R5 and R10 each run half hourly to Bishopdown, West Harnham and St Peter’s Place respectively while hourly routes are the R4 to Paul’s Dene and R6 to Laverstock both north of the city, and the R8 to Ditchampton west of the city but with no journeys before 10:10.

Routes R3, R7 and R11 are PR3, PR7 and PR11 on Mondays to Saturdays linking the city centre with three of its five Park and Ride sites every half hour at Bulbridge west of the city (PR3), Bishopdown Farm north east of the city (PR7) and Old Sarum north of the city (PR11). On Sundays the car parks are closed and the routes run as R3, R7 and R11 serving the residential areas nearby as they also do in the week. Route R3/PR3 also serves Wilton. The other two Park & Ride operations are PR9 to the Britford site to the south of the city centre and PR15 to Petersfinger to the south east of the city, both running half hourly.

Least frequent of the city routes are the R12 with just six off peak journeys to Stratford Bridge north of the city and the R14 to Harnham Hill south of the city running roughly every 65 minutes in the off peak with an afternoon school journey.

I hope that snapshot of routes and frequencies together with the map gives an idea of the impressive comprehensive bus network the city enjoys. I also took a ride up and back on route PR7 to the Bishopdown Farm residential area as well as the Park & Ride car park served on the way up and back. The 11:25 deoparture from the city centre carried an impressive 17 passengers with nine alighting at the Park & Ride site with 11 travelling back into the city on the return journey.

Observations of other routes indicated similar numbers travelling.

As already mentioned Salisbury also enjoys an impressive array of inter-urban routes, including some with high profile branding and an X prefix.

Route X3 runs half hourly south via Fordingbridge to Bournemouth taking 75 minutes for the journey. This is a long standing and popular route and well worth a ride. I didn’t have time on my most recent visit but have enjoyed a ride on this in the past.

Route X4 also runs half hourly but heads north to Amesbury before continuing to Larkhill while sister route X5 runs similarly to Amesbury then heads further north to Pewsey, Marlborough and Swindon taking 2 hours for the complete run; another route I’ve travelled on in the past, and very much enjoyed. It currently operates every 90 minutes.

Route X7 and X7R run hourly to Southampton with the former via West Wellow and the latter via Romsey ….

…. and the oddly branded Activ8 runs half hourly jointly with Stagecoach South to Tidworth and Andover as featured in my very first AtoZ visit in January as well as being one of eight jointly operated routes in Britain (see my recently updated compendium page of such routes).

Then there’s a whole host of other routes at varying frequencies including route 2 running hourly to Devizes; route 20 with four journeys to Blandford (operated by sister company Damory); route ls25/26/27 to Tisbury (seven journeys) and Zeals (three journeys with one continuing to Gillingham) and East Knoyle (two journeys); …

….route 29 running seven journeys to Shaftesbury; route 37 with four journeys to Lockerley, route 44 has nine journeys to Woodfalls; …

…. routes 66/67 running hourly to Idmiston; …

…. and routes 87/88 with four journeys to Winterslow Gunville with one continuing to Middle Wallop. Phew, quite a selection.

They all look to be enticing rural routes and I only had time on a one-day visit to sample one so I picked route 37 as it looked an interesting circular ride. There are three inbound journeys from the villages at around 07:00, 09:15 and 13:00 with return journeys leaving Salisbury at 12:10, 14:00, 16:20 and 18:05. I caught the 12:10 departure which returns at around 13:00 from its circular foray serving the villages of West Grimstead, East Grimstead, Farley, West Dean, West Tytherley, East Tytherley, Lockerley and East Dean.

It really was a lovely 90 minute ride but sadly not many passengers. We left Salisbury with six of whom four alighted within the first fifteen minutes by Alderbury and one more at West Grimstead leaving one who travelled all; the way to Lockerley.

As we headed back we picked one up in West Dean and another in Alderbury.

Salisbury has a rather splendid railway station about an eight to ten minute walk from the city centre. It has four platforms (numbered 2, 3, 4 and 6) and sees trains operated by both South Western Railway (SWR) and Great Western Railway (GWR).

The former run hourly trains between Waterloo and Exeter via Basingstoke, Andover, Salisbury, Yeovil and Axminster among many other stations. Currently there’s a restricted service west of Yeovil due to track issues. Indeed this ‘West of England’ line has become something of a ‘Cinderella service’ in recent years which is a great shame.

SWR also run ‘shorts’ between Salisbury and Basingstoke calling at all stations between the two every hour and an hourly stopper to Chandlers Ford via Romsey and Southampton.

GWR operate an hourly train between Portsmouth Harbour and Cardiff calling at Southampton, Romsey, Warminster, Bath Spa, Bristol Temple Meads and Newport as well as other stations along the route.

Immediately outside the station visitors will find the Salisbury Reds operated bus for The Stonehenge Tour which is hugely popular with tourists. The route includes the city centre, Stonehenge itself (from where there’s a land train or a walk to the actual Stones) returning via Old Sarum.

The current timetable (for the winter) sees hourly departures from the rail station from 10:00 to 14:00 with the last bus back from Stonehenge at 17:00. Later buses run in the summer. There’s a range of tickets including admission to various attractions including the Cathedral and Old Sarum as well as the bus ride. A bus only ticket starts at £11.50 for online purchases.

All in all, Salisbury has an impressive public transport offer.

Roger French

Previous AtoZ blogs: Andover; Bracknell; Carlisle; Durham, Evesham, Folkestone, Grantham, Harrogate, Inverness, Jarrow, King’s Lynn, Leamington Spa, Maidenhead, Neath, Oswestry, Potters Bar, Queensferry, Runcorn.

Blogging timetable: 06:00 TThS with occasional Su specials, but not tomorrow.