It’s one month to go until a fleet of old London routemaster buses will enter the military firing grounds of Salisbury Plain to visit an abandoned village.

You can look at it as a chance to ride on buses to an abandoned village, but that is almost to belittle the totality of the day out – riding through an empty landscape where trees have replaced tower blocks, where burnt out tanks are more common than Uber taxis, where a church in the middle of nowhere will serve you a cup of tea.

It’s a surreal experience.

There will be at least 25 London Transport Routemaster buses (including a few new ones) providing a bus service from Warminster Station to Imber and onward to other isolated locations on the Salisbury Plain with some of the weirdest bus stop names you will ever see.

Departures will be roughly every 15 minutes from Warminster Station to Imber from 9.45am onwards. The buses will then be serving Tilshead, Chitterne, West Lavington, Market Lavington, and Brazen Bottom twice an hour throughout the day.

The full timetable is here.

Although made up of old London buses, it’s operated by the Bath Bus Company as a fully licensed public transport bus service (ie registered with VOSA, collecting fares, running to a published timetable) running as route 23A.

All profits are donated to charity.

If you fancy a fine day out in the countryside, to visit an abandoned village, see military outposts, and do so in a fleet of London buses, then put the 17th August in your diary.

My review from last year is here.

Note – if travelling by train from London to Warminster, it’s usually much cheaper to buy a return to Salisbury, then a separate return to Warminster. A return from London to Warminster costs (at time of going to press), £40.10 without railcard discounts. If you split the ticket at Salisbury, then it’ll could cost just £18 + £7.90 = £25.90.

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