Southampton to Four Marks (Bluestar and Stagecoach) - can it be done cheaply?

[nw1]

Hi,

Wanting to travel by bus from Southampton (on the BlueStar 1 route) to Four Marks via Bluestar and Stagecoach. This is an occasional one-off journey.

Wondering if there is a way to do this without paying around £16 or so for two return tickets (Southampton-Winchester and Winchester-Four Marks) which seems very expensive for a journey of total distance 20 or 25 miles. In the 90s and 00s you could get multi-operator Explorer tickets to cover this sort of journey, but looking at the respective operator websites I can no longer see such a ticket. The only thing available is the Solent Go, but that won't get you beyond Winchester.


Thanks,
Nick

 

[mancnq]

I'm afraid there is no ticket that is fully valid on both services.

As you said, Solent Go is valid on both companies, but isn't valid on the full route of the 64, only for local journeys within Winchester.

I was going to suggest the Discovery ticket, but Xelabus no longer issue or accept it, so it's no longer any good for using them to get to or from Southampton.

A return on Bluestar 1 between Southampton and Winchester is £7.30 and a return on Stagecoach 64 from Winchester to Four Marks is £7.10, meaning a total of £14.40 return for the journey.

The only other thing I can suggest is maybe starting the journey from somewhere near Southampton with a Stagecoach service, if you can. Then you can use the Stagecoach South Dayrider Gold at £8.20. Your options for this near Southampton are Eastleigh, using Stagecoach E1/E2 to get to Winchester; Romsey using Stagecoach 66; North Baddesley using Stagecoach 46; or Fareham/Bishops Waltham/Fair Oak and using Stagecoach 69 to get to Winchester.

 

[Harbouring]

Train to Eastleigh is £4.40 from Southampton Central and a then a dayrider gold on E1/2 changing to a 64 would be £12.60 in total.

The train to Winchester is also seemingly cheaper than the blue star bus but I guess it does save walking to the bus station

 

[Mainline421]

In the 90s and 00s you could get multi-operator Explorer tickets to cover this sort of journey, but looking at the respective

Explorers are still available (http://www.bluestarbus.co.uk/page.shtml?pageid=788). Although their validity on Stagecoch South is unclear.

 

[Lrd]

Explorers are still available (http://www.bluestarbus.co.uk/page.shtml?pageid=788). Although their validity on Stagecoch South is unclear.

That Explorer is a Go-ahead thing so wouldn't be valid on Stagecoach (or First, Yellow Buses etc)

 

[Mainline421]

That Explorer is a Go-ahead thing so wouldn't be valid on Stagecoach (or First, Yellow Buses etc)

It's actually the same Explorer all along and was definitely still valid on other operators in 2015 (though not Yellow). There has never been any announcement that this has been discontinued, however every operator seems to have stopped mentioning this.