Today's Sunday Lost Scenes reminisces about my first Yellow Buses photo...
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Transdev Yellow Buses 186 - SK07DYB - Christchurch (Bargates) - 28th January 2010
The Bournemouth and Poole area has historically always been a strange gap my photographing geography. While I've concentrated well on the south coast from Portsmouth to Lymington, Lymington to Swanage was once a great chasm in my collection. The 28th January was the first time I ventured into the gap, seeking out Christchurch, where Transdev Yellow Buses had just introduced their brand new Optare Tempos. Not knowing the area well, I made things more difficult for myself that I needed to as I went on market day...
Walking from the railway station, I was first struck with how busy the traffic was. This caused any photographing opportunities to be aborted, until I reached the Bargates. This is the location where the 1a, 1b and 1c stopped on market day, as they could not access the high street. Unique Enviro 186 (SK07DYB) was strangely the first bus I ticked off the Bournemouth Transport list - one that I thought would be challenging to find!
Following those first steps into the great gap, I've since filled in most of the locations. However, I've never done Bournemouth properly as an enthusiast - a couple of trips outside the railway station to the travel interchange but not a long period in the town centre. I tried yesterday - even achieving the satisfying photo that is now my title image - but aborted due to the crowds.
Bournemouth Transport have indeed also come a long way in those three and a half years. Now owned by RATP, there has been a constant improvement in the fleet, coupled with a never-ending increase in variety - it really is the perfect fleet for the enthusiast!
Blog note - I've been concentrating on the FHD enthusiasts website recently by adding new features, updating everything etc- so therefore the blog has remained a little neglected. Now the majority of the work is done (apart from continuous updates), I should be able to find time to post more blog entries again. And as one commenter said - the first rule of self publicity is to provide a link - so here you go this time!
i miss the days when yellow buses had open top buses during the summer they were the best times to visit bournemouth its also one of my fav places to take pics if there buses and they also have the veriety factor
ReplyDeleteGreat to see you back bus80d, been a while but as always, I enjoyed seeing your photos
ReplyDeleteAnother bus had an accident today
ReplyDelete18512, the 10:45 69 service from Fareham to Winchester which I was on.