Imberbus

Anyone else do Imberbus this year? It’s a great event, when normally inaccessible parts of Salisbury Plain used by the MoD are opened and given a fantasy bus service running at London style frequencies.

This year was very busy indeed, the queues at Warminster were said to be up to 90 minutes. I opted to drive to Chitterne and start there. I avoided Imber and stayed east of Gores Cross.

it was great fun, but the size of the crowds has taken the edge off, for me the glorious bonkersness of having a hop-on hop-off service picking up at every barrow, church and pub in a remote corner of the countryside was the attraction.

I wonder if next year they might persuade the MoD to allow a 2-day event. Or maybe consider a fixed number of tickets sold in advance?

 

We did it this year - despite living locally, it was the first time. Think we arrived at Warminster just after 11am by train and got a bus at 12:30 ...

We went Warminster - Imber, looked round, then on to Gore Cross - Brazen Bottom - the Lavingtons - Gore Cross - New Zealand Farm - back to Gore Cross (all in one journey). The queue was bonkers for the bus back to Imber and Warminster, so we got one going the other way, another loop round the Lavingtons and stayed on all the way back to Warminster. Not being a bus expert, not sure what the first one we caught was other than something 1970s; then two different Routemasters.

A few photos:

"Yay, we made it to New Zealand"



"Queues" (This was at Imber)



"You have 6 weeks to vacate your property. We'll pay for any unharvested vegetables - possibly ..."



Imber Church



The MoD village from the churchyard (there are a few remaining older buildings further east).



"Just a normal scene from a bus window"



Unfortunately both GWR and SWR seemed to be having a bit of a meltdown when it was time to catch a train back to Salisbury. We squeezed onto the last No. 24 bus, standing room only and people turned away at the bus stop.



Was a good day out, helped by good weather. But blimey, the queues! Someone I knew and co-incidentally bumped in to mentioned that it had been picked up by the national media and was even in the New York Times, which probably explains the popularity. When we got off the train in the morning (unsuspecting ...) there was a steady trickle of - how shall we put this - middle aged single men with cameras and flasks of coffee. So we sort of expected a quiet event like that, then turned the corner and - bam! All humanity - probably a mix of families with young children; young couples down from London for a day out in the country and the aforementioned single middle-aged men, in roughly equal proportions.

Tom