2012 - Day Out 12: Salisbury, Bournemouth and Swanage

Date: Saturday 16 June 2012

It is the second day of our weekend away in Weymouth, Dorset and after a good nights sleep at The Alendale, it is time to explore Dorset further afield as we visit quite a few towns and villages using our Explorer Day Tickets on First and Wilts and Dorset buses.

I wake up early so I decide to have a walk across the seafront up to The Kings Statue and get myself a newspaper from the local convenience store, walking back along the sea front enjoying the morning sea air to have a read before I meet up with Mr UKBuses for our first Alendale breakfast of this year. At 08.00 we take our seats at our breakfast table in the window and our host's Moira and Jim (Denise and Jim, the owners are away for a few days) greet us and take our order, Mr UKBuses opts for the standard English breakfast, but I opt for the Scottish breakfast complete with Potato Scones and Haggis. After devouring our breakfast we crawl back up the stairs to get ready for our tour of Dorset. We pay for our rooms before we leave for the day, and then make our way up The Esplanade in glorious sunshine (weather was wrong again) to The Kings Statue where we have time for a few photographs before catching our first bus of the day. Wilts and Dorset's service 183 to Blandford arrives , see picture left, and we board buying our Explorer Day Tickets (which can be used on both First in Dorset and Wilts and Dorset buses) and taking our seats upstairs before the bus pulls off at 09:10 giving us a chance to let our gut-busting breakfasts to go down. We make our way through Puddletown and Milborne St Andrew before arriving at Blandford. This is not our first destination of the day, this will be at the end of the next service which is service 184, which the bus that we are sitting on changes to, so we don't have to move from our seats.

We make our way from Blandford and arrive at Blandford Army Camp where a soldier boards and checks up and down stairs before we can move on from the entrance, I'm surprised that Mr UKBuses was not chucked off the bus as he is always looking suspicious. We spend the next five to ten minutes riding around the camp before arriving at the entrance, where unbeknown to me the soldier that checked the bus when we arrived was still on board, but he alights and opens the gates for us so that we can make our way onto our first destination. It has been nearly two hours since we boarded the bus, but at approximately 11:20 we arrive at our first destination, Salisbury - We won't be passing Stonehenge today but I did ask Mr UKBuses what it was like to be a part of the construction team, I cannot inform you of his reply. Mr UKBuses gets his camera out straight away, whilst I get my "fresh air" tablets out straight away and have a "break" whilst Mr UKBuses is snapping away. We make our way through the town, getting lost along the way but eventually we find the local Wilts and Dorset bus depot and after taking a few more photographs, we make our way into the Town Centre to have a little explore before heading back to the bus station to get to our next destination.

Wilts and Dorset's service X3 arrives and lays over for a few minutes before we can board, just in time as there are a few raindrops starting to fall, and at 12:10 we make our way to the next destination, Ringwood, home of the Ringwood Brewery, but we won't have time to sample any today as we are virtually just passing through. After a journey of forty minutes, we arrive at Ringwood, which is in fact across the border in Hampshire and with the brief rain shower now stopped, I get some more "fresh air" whilst Mr UKBuses crosses the road to take a few photographs. I cross the road to join him but as I cross the road he is nowhere to be seen and I walk up and down the street for about five to ten minutes looking for him, I return to the bus shelter and he suddenly appears saying he had been their all the time (but I doubt that). We only have a few minutes to wait before our next Wilts and Dorset bus turns up, which is service X6, a recently introduced Express service to Bournemouth. The bus turns up on time at 13:06, but departs the stop a few minutes late after an enquiring passenger holds up the driver. Despite this delay, we still arrive in Bournemouth for an impressive 13:32 and after taking a few photographs along Gervis Place we decide to have a quick one in J D Wetherspoons, "The Moon In The Square", Mr UKBuses does his usual trick by going to the toilet which means that I am the one having to pay for the round. Fortunately for me, this plan didn't work as when he came back from the toilet I was still waiting to be served and looking like it would be some time before we would get served, we decided that we wouldn't wait any longer and make our way along Gervis Place to our bus stop to wait for our open top bus to take us to our next destination.

It is just after 14:00 and our Wilts and Dorset "Purbeck Breezer" service 50 arrives and we board taking our seats at the back of the open topper, which now as a door between the open top part and enclosed front part, but I wouldn't like to be sitting close to it as it had a nasty habit of swinging open quite quickly whilst en-route. We have a few minutes to wait before we are on our way and we make our way through Bournemouth and into Sandbanks (with a bit of sand getting into our eyes). We wait at Sandbanks for a few minutes for the ferry. We finally board and after a couple of minutes of swaying on the top deck, we decide to continue our journey on the bottom deck, which means that there won't be a chance for Mr UKBuses to be hit over the head with a tree branch, even though his Brylcreem needs to be taken back as his hair has moved!! We come off the Sandbanks ferry and carry on our journey with us reaching Swanage at 15:10 pulling up outside the Swanage Heritage Railway Station, we thank the driver even though it wasn't the pretty driver that we had last year - even though I did keep my eye out for her. We take a few photographs and walk down by the track to Wilts and Dorset's little depot and after taking a few more photographs we make our way back to the bus stop to get our next bus, which is where I see a flaw in Mr UKBuses plan, the next service is not until another half an hour with the summer timetable not actually yet in operation. We decide to have a walk into Swanage town and decide to have a quick pint in The White Swan where Mr UKBuses has a piddle and I have a pint of Piddle (which luckily was not the same thing), see picture right. After finishing our drinks we make our way back to the railway station where our next bus turns up, Wilts and Dorset's service 40, which departs at 16:05. The journey to our next destination takes just over an hour passing through Corfu Castle and Wareham before arriving at Poole at 17:15.

Whilst we wait in Poole we have time to take a few photographs at the bus station and we also have a walk around the corner to the Wilts and Dorset's Poole depot to take a few photographs, with buses being parked up ready to be cleaned for the next day's service. After a walk by the depot, we head back into Poole bus station where we will catch our bus back to Weymouth, and this will be the one and only time today that it will be a First in Dorset bus, but as we board the driver does allows us on as we explain that it is a Explorer ticket and at 17:40 we reverse out of Poole bus station and head back passing through Wareham and Preston before arriving at Weymouth at 18:50. We head back to The Alendale to have a freshen up before we hit the town. I tell Mr UKBuses to meet me in my regular, "The Waterloo" when he is ready and after I have a quick freshen up, I make my way around the corner to my regular and wait for Mr UKBuses. After about half an hour, Mr UKBuses arrives at The Waterloo and times it right as I am just about to go to the bar. Drinks purchased we sit down and he says that he doesn't mind The Waterloo after he thought that it wasn't a good choice when I discovered it a few years ago, but his mind has been changed. We finish our drinks and head up towards the town centre.

Our first stop in the town is a place that Mr WME discovered on our visit last year, "The Globe", and we sample the Jail Ale, there is no room at the bar so we take a seat in the corner. Mr UKBuses also enjoys this discovery and whilst we are in The Globe, we notice that there are a few deaf people that use the pub with a bit of sign language going on for a table discussion. After our visit to The Globe we also take a walk around the corner to another one of our favourites, "The Cutter", a pub that we nearly decide not to go in as the is a fracas going on outside as we near, but it soon dies down and we decide to enter. Mr UKBuses regrets this decision once he finds out that the pub is being host tonight to Karaoke, and even though I cannot tempt Mr UKBuses to get behind the microphone, I belt out a couple of tunes, mainly Metallica and even though we are about to go for a curry, I delay proceedings by about half an hour by belting out a few more of the heavier tunes of Metallica before we leave. After leaving The Cutter we make our way around to Chillies for our curry. After we have devoured our curry, we have a look at the First Depot which is virtually opposite, but we can not go for a drink in The Brownlow as we noticed that the pub has been boarded up as we went past it when we arrived on the train yesterday afternoon. After a look around the depot, we make our way back to The Alendale where Moira and Jim are still up, Mr UKBuses decides to retire, but me and Jim decide to have a nightcap around The Waterloo, but when we arrive it is closed, so Jim goes back to the guest house but I return to The Cutter to sing a few more tunes to the unsuspecting punters, I choose a couple of Metallica tunes, a couple of Bon Jovi tunes and a Robbie Williams tune before I decide to have a slow walk along the sea front with the new lasers lighting up the beach before returning to The Alendale for a good nights sleep, ready for the Weymouth Vintage Bus Running Day.

Another excellent day exploring Dorset followed by a tour of Weymouth and a return of "The Rog" to Karaoke, I enjoyed it even though I could hardly speak at the end of the night.