Nearly
fifty
years later, reorganisation and an implied threat of potential
competition on lucrative
local routes in the Weymouth area by Barrys led to an agreement whereby
the
local Dorchester routes passed from Southern National to Barrys
Coaches of Weymouth in 1982. The fleet name of Interbus was
chosen
by Barrys for the new independent operation, which replaced National
routes 455 and 456 (Dorchester town services) also route 459
(Dorchester-Wool Station
-Bovington Camp).
Some
of the off
peak journeys on the erstwhile 459
between Wool and Dorchester were now to be provided by Dorset Queen Coaches of East
Chaldon, whilst the hourly shuttle from Wool Station to Bovington Camp
and the
peak journeys running through from Wool to Dorchester were
provided by Interbus.
Using
principally
three 1972 ex-Burnley and Pendle Seddon Pennine 46 seaters,
working from the Barry's garage in Weymouth, the
hourly operating pattern of the five radial arms of the Dorchester town
services was reorganised.
On
the country route to Bovington new links were introduced between Wool
Station
and Lulworth Cove - a section of route that had been unserved since
1971.
And we are still very much in Hardy Country - we have crossed Egdon
Heath from
Casterbridge to the locale of Tess of the d'Urbervilles.
These
routes were
operated by Interbus with full size single deckers from July
1982 and ran for five years until October 1987. But following
deregulation
of buses in 1986, Southern National came back to Dorchester with a new
minibus
network in April 1987, and competed with Interbus. There was
insufficient
traffic for two operators so Barrys took the decision to withdraw from
Dorchester and concentrate on their contract and private hire
operations in
Weymouth. But Southern National were not to have it all their own
way for
long as in January 1989 Bere Regis Coaches also started a Dorchester
town service but with
full size vehicles again.
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Thomas
Hardy, The Mayor
of Casterbridge
As soon as they had
wandered about they could see that the stockade of gnarled trees which
framed in Casterbridge was itself an avenue, standing on a low green
bank or escarpment, with a ditch yet visible without. Within the avenue
and bank was a wall more or less discontinuous, and within the wall
were packed the abodes of the burghers.
Though the two women did
not know it these external features were but the ancient defences of
the town, planted as a promenade.
The lamplights now
glimmered through the engirdling trees, conveying a sense of great
smugness and comfort inside, and rendering at the same time the
unlighted country without strangely solitary and vacant in aspect,
considering its nearness to life.
The difference between
burgh and champaign was increased, too, by sounds which now reached
them above others--the notes of a brass band. The travellers returned
into the High Street, where there were timber houses with overhanging
stories, whose small-paned lattices were screened by dimity curtains on
a drawing- string, and under whose bargeboards old cobwebs waved in the
breeze. There were houses of brick-nogging, which derived their chief
support from those adjoining. There were slate roofs patched with
tiles, and tile roofs patched with slate, with occasionally a roof of
thatch.
The agricultural and
pastoral character of the people upon whom the town depended for its
existence was shown by the class of objects displayed in the shop
windows. Scythes, reap-hooks, sheep-shears, bill-hooks, spades,
mattocks, and hoes at the iron-monger's; bee-hives, butter-firkins,
churns, milking stools and pails, hay-rakes, field-flagons, and
seed-lips at the cooper's; cart-ropes and plough-harness at the
saddler's; carts, wheel-barrows, and mill-gear at the wheelwright's and
machinist's, horse-embrocations at the chemist's; at the glover's and
leather-cutter's, hedging- gloves, thatchers' knee-caps, ploughmen's
leggings, villagers' pattens and clogs.
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