As we said at the
beginning of our 2020 visit to Cornwall, this county in England’s southwest has
always been a magnet for both holidaymakers and bus enthusiasts alike. A lot has changed from the Tilling and
National Bus Company days of Western National through to Deregulation in the
mid 1980s. Today in the first quarter of
the twenty-first century the main bus operators are Firstbus and Go-Ahead. Up
until the early part of 2020 Firstbus (First South West) was the major player,
branding some of their buses at Cornish depots as Kernow in a smart
two-tone green livery as well as other colourful liveries and route
brands. Open-top routes are all painted
in a two-tone teal colour base with relevant branding and look very smart.
These variations of the livery are seen on this DVD as well as a number of
‘cascaded’ buses from other Firstbus fleets still wearing their previous
liveries (Norwich for example!).
However, at the time of editing this programme Firstbus announced that
no open-top buses will run on the ‘Coaster’ services in 2025 and the local
branded names and colours will go in favour of their new national identity
livery of grey and purple. The Go-Ahead group began to operate into Cornwall
from the Plymouth area with their Go Cornwall Bus brand and in March
2020 Go-Ahead won an eight-year contract to run all of Cornwall Council’s
supported routes. The new operation is
branded ‘Transport for Cornwall’ and the livery is all-over red.
This DVD programme was filmed during two
visits to Cornwall in April and May 2024.
We begin our visit to the county at Bodmin and then move to St Ives, St
Erth and then onto Penzance where our April visit coincided with the excellent
Penzance Running Day, which can be viewed on our ‘Penzance Running Day’ DVD
production. The filming at Penzance on
this programme features the contemporary buses of the day and a further visit to
the town was made in May. After leaving Penzance
we call at nearby Mousehole before returning to the town to complete more
filming. We then call at Helston bus
depot, Camborne, Truro, Falmouth, St Austell, Newquay and Liskeard. We then go over the border to Devon and film
the action at Plymouth. Here we see
Plymouth Citybus, a Go-Ahead company running alongside the ‘Transport for
Cornwall’ buses. We hope that you enjoy
this programme featuring the colourful bus scene in picturesque Cornwall that
will see more changes from 2025 onwards.