Imberbus 2019

Date: Sat, August 17, 2019

Venue: Near Warminster, Wiltshire

The date for this year’s Imberbus service on Saturday 17th August has now been confirmed.

As usual it is intended that there will be a few Routemasters in operation this year......

For those who do not know what is Imberbus, here is an extract from the explanation on the Imberbus website.

The village of Imber is no longer inhabited as the residents were evicted just before Christmas 1943 by the MoD, in order to step up army training in advance of D-Day. The villagers were promised that their village would be returned to them after the war but this was not to be and nearly 72-years on it is still uninhabited, much of it having been damaged or destroyed. It remains in use for army training purposes but the connecting road is open to the public on a limited number of occasions each year and previously only accessible to the public if they had their own transport.

Following lengthy negotiations with the Ministry of Defence at a very senior level, the Bath Bus Company was permitted, with the cooperation of several other operators, Transport for London and Wiltshire Council’s Transport Department, to run a bus service 23A from Warminster to the village of Imber on 5th September 2009. Operated as an ordinary local bus service using former London Transport Routemaster buses, the service proved to be very successful and so has now become an annual event, with services now extending beyond Imber to the villages of Market Lavington, Tilshead and Chitterne, plus other remote locations on Salisbury Plain, such as New Zealand Farm Camp and Brazen Bottom.

The 2014 event proved to be the most successful yet with 7 vehicles in operation and more than £2000 donated to the Imber Church fund and the Royal British Legion.

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