Y is for Yeovil

Saturday 10th December 2022

Welcome to my final A to Z fortnightly exploration of public transport provision in Britain’s mid sized towns which brings me to Somerset.

Yeovil is the county’s second largest town after Taunton, having a population of around 48,000 making it just a bit larger than Bridgewater and Frome. Its in the same ballpark size as Salisbury (my featured S) in nearby Wiltshire but as we’ll see, the extent of both towns’ bus networks couldn’t be more different.

Yeovil is surrounded by Glastonbury due north, then heading in a clockwise tour we reach Shepton Mallet, Wincanton, Shaftesbury, Dorchester, Chard and Taunton all roughly 15 to 20 miles away with Sherborne in neighbouring Dorset the nearest town six miles east.

All these locations, aside from Taunton, are relatively small which impacts the inter urban bus network serving Yeovil, limiting its extent and reflecting the relatively low demand for such travel.

Yeovil currently comes within the purview of South Somerset District Council but this is all set to change next April when Somerset County Council merges with its four District Councils to become a single tier Unitary Council.

For a town of its modest size it does well to have two rail stations on two different lines served by two different Train Operating Companies.

Yeovil Pen Mill (above and below) is more conveniently located of the two, being about a 12 minute walk from the town centre on the east side of the town.

It’s served by GWR on the line from Weymouth to Bath, Bristol and Gloucester with eight trains a day…

… as well as a smattering of trains provided by South Western Railway (SWR) on a circuit with most journeys originating in Waterloo then via Basingstoke and from Westbury via Frome, Bruton and Castle Cary to Pen Mill ….

….. then continuing on the connecting track to SWR’s main haunt in the town, Yeovil Junction station. Two trains run anti-clockwise and four run clockwise around this loop.

Yeovil Junction is much less conveniently located being almost two miles south of the town with a country road offering no footpath to and from the town centre making walking a very unattractive option. But Yeovil Junction has a better service being on SWR’s main line from Waterloo to Exeter now back to hourly after a few months of a reduced timetable east of Yeovil with only a two-hourly service beyond Yeovil to Exeter via Axminster and Honiton due to speed restrictions.

Towards Waterloo the hourly service serves Andover, Salisbury and Basingstoke as well as many other stations.

Both Pen Mill and Yeovil Unction stations are well looked after for provincial town stations offering a certain charm.

Somerset County Council runs an hourly bus link connecting the two stations and the town centre.

Route 68 was perviously contracted to South West Coaches but after a period of withdrawl during Covid returned in June this year being run directly by the Council with a 16 seat minibus.

At Pen Mill the bus stop is conveniently located right outside the station entrance/exit and is clearly marked while at Yeovil Junction there’s a small pavement build out and shelter by the Blue Badge bays in the car park.

The bus route also takes in a couple of Yeovil’s residential areas on its route including Barwick to the west of Yeovil Junction (where it has 10 minutes layover) and returns back to the station 25 minutes later and after the bus station (another 9 minutes layover) takes a circular route to Yeovil Pen Mill station via Highfield Road.

The timetable on display could really do with a map (like below) to explain the route.

It would also be helpful if the Onward Travel poster displayed at Yeovil Pen Mill could be updated to actually include the one route that serves the station – ie route 68….

…. but at least the poster at Yeovil Junction includes reference to it.

Aside from route 68, bus services in Yeovil are provided by Buses of Somerset (from First Bus) and South West Coaches.

Luckily Buses of Somerset produces an attractive timetable book for Somerset including not only a town map…

… but also an inter-urban map.

Sadly, there’s nothing available for the bus routes run by South West Coaches which is a shame as the county desperately needs co-ordinated information, Cornwall style, so passengers can see what’s available.

The town enjoys a rather extensive bus station with nine drive on/reverse out bays and three drive throughs.

First Bus closed their Travel Office a long time ago but drivers still have a relief point in the bus station and a small facility in the former Travel Office with a desk chair in its entrance, while passengers have a waiting room.

It’s all a bit grim with some of the bus shelters having seen better days.

As with so many similar cases around the country there’s obviously no maintenance budget and local authorities just leave infrastructure like this to deteriorate and become increasingly vandalised.

I found the same situation while riding around the town. One bus shelter on the way to Yeovil Pen Mill station was well past its best.

The timetable display doesn’t exactly encouraging bus travel either, even if you could work out what it’s telling you, you’d have no confidence the information was up to date.

Another shelter and timetable display at a popular sub district retail centre in the town called The Forum …

…. was equally grim…

…. but at least it had a timetable display for both the town routes, 11 and 51, which serve the stop, as well as a rather ironic notice advising “it is against the law to smoke in this bus shelter”.

No wonder passengers were sensibly giving it a wide berth.

Routes 11 and 51 are Yeovil’s two town bus routes. The former operated by South West Coaches and the latter by Buses of Somerset. Both run half hourly to Abbey Manor Park and Houndstone on the north western side of town and an Asda (although the 11 reduces to hourly on Saturdays) …

…. with the 51 also providing a cross town link with three buses as you can see on the map above.

You might notice from the maps both routes travel along a similar stretch of road – Larkhill Road – and while I travelled around the town during my visit on a recent Saturday – I noticed departure times for the two routes heading into town have a six minute gap between the 11 and 51 and then a 30 minute gap until the next 51 followed by a 24 minute gap until the 11 comes round again as it’s hourly that day.

Inevitably the route 11 I was on picked up a good number of passengers being just six minutes ahead of the 51 and we arrived into Yeovil with a good load on board. It’s a shame the timetable can’t be tweaked to provide an even 15 minute gap between buses, especially on Mondays to Fridays when both routes are half hourly.

It was also a bit odd to see First Bus (not Buses of Somerset, note) bus stop flags around the route (as above and below) …

but only a timetable below for South West Coaches route 11. 

The main Buses of Somerset inter-urban bus route serving Yeovil is hourly route 77 to and from Glastonbury and Wells. This provides connections in Somerton with hourly route 54 to Taunton and was by far the busiest route I saw during my visit.

Routes 58 to Wincanton and X10 to Blandford Forum both run two-hourly but are coordinated to provide a combined hourly timetable as far as Henstridge. Route 6 provides three journeys a day to Bridport.

South West Coaches operates two hourly routes: the 52 to West Coker 25 minutes to south west of the town and the 81 to South Petherton 45 minutes to the west …

… as well as route 96 to Chard on a five journeys a day timetable (three on Saturdays).

The company also runs route 52 seven times a day to Martock with three continuing to Bower Hinton, route 1 to Castle Cary and Shepton Mallet with five journeys a day (three on Saturdays) and route X11 (renumbered to 5 from last weekend) to Dorchester (an 86 minute journey) six times a day on Mondays to Fridays.

Finally, Somerset County Council operates a number of one journey a week routes for shoppers including route 5 to Babcary (Wednesdays), route 8 to Pilton (Thursdays), route 39 to Bruton (Fridays). I haven’t been able to track down whether a couple of other routes run on Mondays and Tuesdays. If so, they’re fairly secret ones.

There was talk about replacing Yeovil’s town bus routes with DRT a couple of years ago and I was approached to contribute to the discussions as to whether this would be a good idea. So far it looks as though the idea hasn’t come to anything, and fingers crossed it won’t, as routes 11, 51 and 68 seem to do the job fairly well. And although the inter-urban routes and those to neighbouring villages are relatively sparse (compared to Salisbury, for example), they do seem to satisfy the demand that I noticed.

Yeovil’s shopping centre is undergoing one of those public realm improvement schemes which is welcome ….

…. but Glovers Walk by the Quedam shopping centre immediately adjacent to the bus station, like the bus station itself, has definitely seen better days and doesn’t convey a very positive image.

Which is a sad image to end my A to Z odyssey around Britain’s mid sized towns over the last twelve months, but then you can’t sugar coat what is in many cases a very challenging situation. However, more positively here’s one from Harrogate in April.

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, Salisbury, Tunbridge Wells. Uttoxeter, Ventnor, Weston-super-Mare, Yeovil.

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