Adrian Morton visits Bluebird Coaches of Weymouth, which this month is celebrating 100 years in business
If someone said to me ‘I need a coach in Weymouth,’ my initial thought would undoubtably be ‘Bluebird.’ I wouldn’t say that would just be confined to me because I work in the industry, though. I would imagine the locals would be hard pressed not to have seen a Bluebird coach in the seaside town as they have now been prevalent for 100 years. It is for this reason that Commercial Manager Gemma Bennett invited me to the sunny South West to enlighten me on this formidable achievement.
Having arrived the previous evening, in the morning I took a gentle stroll along the seafront to what is known as ‘King’s Statue’ to catch a local bus to the company’s depot in Chickerell. Until my visit I had always considered Chickerell to be a suburb of Weymouth but it is now a town in its own right. The statue, situated on an island with bus services radiating from around it, is of King George III, and was installed in 1809 to mark the King’s Golden Jubilee.
Also located by the statue in buildings on the seafront, which consists mainly of wonderful Georgian architecture dating from the period during which he was in power, is the travel shop of Bluebird Coaches, with its offices above. Immaculately presented, it was hard not to notice, with a good number of old-fashioned A-frame boards on the pavement outside advertising a host of day excursions and holidays. Bluebird is clearly an operator that has moved with the times but a company with a seafront office, advertising trips to locals and holidaymakers alike, is hugely traditional and now sadly just a memory in many other resorts around the country.
Depot visit
After a 15-minute bus ride on one of First’s Jurassic Coaster open-top buses, I found myself outside the Bluebird Coaches depot in Chickerell. There were several lorries present adjacent to the coaches and after meeting Martyn, the current owner and Director along with his wife Christine, who looks after the accounts and payroll, he enlightened me as to why. Firstly, the company is also a tachograph calibration centre. Secondly, it offers vehicle steam cleaning services to outside companies; indeed, all of the Weymouth and Bridport depot-based buses from First Bus are so treated here. Thirdly the company is a DVSA approved testing station for class 4 and class 7 MOTs. Lastly, they look after a small number of local haulage operators’ maintenance requirements. This grew somewhat during the Covid-19 pandemic, which was a very unexpected but much welcomed additional source of income when much of the coaching fleet was stood idle. In addition, Bluebird services all types of air-conditioning, including on coaches. If you are an operator who regularly has coaches in Weymouth, you now know where to come!
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