Now that we have had chance to recover from last week’s Imberbus event, we would like to say a big thank you to all of you who attended.

2023 was by far our busiest year yet with around 4000 passengers carried and more than £38,000 raised for charity, partly due to good weather and strong advance coverage in the national media. 

This resulted in some very full car parks and long queues developing at Warminster and Imber with our buses running continuously in order to shift the loads. We understand that even the village halls in the villages that we serve ran out of food in the early afternoon, so if any of these issues adversely affected your visit, please accept our apologies but we really were not expecting to have more than double the number of passengers that we normally get!

We are still assembling links to videos and reports of our 2023 event, but here are three that you can view now:

• Imberbus 2023 – official video (including exclusive footage supplied by the MoD)
• BBC South report on Imberbus 2023
• ITV Meridian Imberbus Coverage

Links to other videos and photographs will be provided on the Past Events page on our website in due course

As with any big event, there were a few items of lost property found at the end of the day, so if you believe that any of the items listed below may be yours, please email us at imberbus23a@gmail.com, but be aware that you will need to cover postage costs if you wish them to be returned:

• A pair of glasses
• A ladies fold-up raincoat in bag;
• A child’s wet weather/wet play coat;
• A baseball style hat;
• A sleeveless fleece with zip fastener.

Finally, if you were unable to join us last week or would like to visit Imber with fewer people around, the road through Imber will be open to all vehicles this August Bank Holiday weekend but you will need to use your own vehicle to get there as no buses will be running. Imber Church will be open between 11am and 4pm tomorrow (Sunday) and on the Bank Holiday Monday as well. Please remember that the only sensible access points for cars are along Imber Road in Warminster, or from the A360 road at Gore Cross (2.5 miles north of Tilshead).

We are now considering what changes need to be made to our event in 2024 in the light of this year’s experiences and once the date for next year’s event is agreed, we will obviously let you know.

Regards

The Imberbus Crew

As the Imberbus event uses so many former London Transport buses, we are often asked if there is a way to travel to Imberbus direct from London.

Unfortunately it is not possible to use the Imberbuses themselves for this purpose, but you can do this trip using National Express or South Western Trains.

This year National Express have agreed to run a special service 23x direct to Imber on the 19th August, starting from from Victoria Coach Station in London at 8.30am and picking up at Basingstoke on the way at 10.10am. The coach will return from Imber at 5.10pm.

Tickets for this service currently cost £10 each way and can be booked on line at www.nationalexpress.com using the destination “Imber Village”. Please note, however, that this service does not call at Warminster town centre, so passengers using it will need to pay for their Imberbus tickets in cash to the conductor on the bus, as there are no cash machines or bank card payment facilities available at Imber !

If you would like to depart slightly later, South Western Railway operate a train from London Waterloo at 0850 that runs all the way to Warminster, calling at Clapham Junction, Woking, Basingstoke and Andover (this is the train to “Frome” if you are looking for it on the departure boards).  Their are several choices of times for the return journey, but please note that those will all require a change of train at Salisbury. Discounted “Advance” tickets are currently available for travel on these trains, but there are only a few available and prices will increase as you get closer to the day of travel.

If you are travelling to our event from somewhere else, advice on how to do this can be found on the “How to get to Warminster” page on our website. Further details of what we have planned for this year’s Imberbus event can also be found there on our Imberbus 2023 page and if you have only recently signed up to our website mailing list, you may wish to click HERE to read our previous email as well.

We look forward to seeing you all next month.