100 British Bus Routes: Route 28
Taunton to Minehead ("The Quantock Line")
21 April 2024
ABOVE: Buses of Somerset 67701 (SN60 EAA), an ADL/TransBus Enviro300, calls at The Parade, Minehead, towards the end of its run from Taunton on route 28. All photos in this article taken on Saturday 30 March 2024.
Runs: Daily*
Operator: Buses of Somerset (First West of England)
Weekday daytime frequency: Every 45 minutes (Mon-Fri), every 30 mins (Sat)
Three extra journeys each way, Mondays to Fridays, as Express Service X28
Estimated Vehicle Requirement: six buses (Mon-Fri, including X28), seven buses (Sat)
Off-peak journey time: 89-92 minutes
Estimated route length: 28 miles
* Evening and Sunday services run via Cotford St Luke as 28A. No evening service on Sundays.
Operator: Buses of Somerset (First West of England)
Weekday daytime frequency: Every 45 minutes (Mon-Fri), every 30 mins (Sat)
Three extra journeys each way, Mondays to Fridays, as Express Service X28
Estimated Vehicle Requirement: six buses (Mon-Fri, including X28), seven buses (Sat)
Off-peak journey time: 89-92 minutes
Estimated route length: 28 miles
* Evening and Sunday services run via Cotford St Luke as 28A. No evening service on Sundays.
ABOVE: The approximate route of the 28, also showing the 28A and X28 variations, and the West Somerset Railway.
The former bus station in Taunton is a sorry looking sight, and a sorry looking site... It was closed in 2020 by Buses of Somerset to "reduce our cost base, to support future investment in and development of services in the area". Reportedly it needed huge investment to get it fit for the future, but it seems that no-one was willing to pay for it. Four years on, part of it is a car park and the rest is blocked off.
ABOVE: The entrance to the former Taunton bus station.
Buses are therefore dispersed around the Town Centre. It probably works because it's a small town centre, but it would nice to see the bus station site made more attractive and/or redeveloped, and there's definitely an irony in having buses parked up on the road outside!
I'm here to ride the number 28 service to Minehead. The service more-or-less parallels an old railway line (of which more later), and is a vital link across the Quantock Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, to the North Coast of Somerset.
After the demise of Taunton bus station, buses now start just around the corner in Castle Way.
ABOVE: Buses of Somerset 67701 (SN60 EAA), an ADL/TransBus Enviro300, turning into Castle Way in Taunton at the start of the journey to Minehead.
Taunton, the county town of Somerset, sits on the River Tone, and was the site of Bronze and Iron Age settlements. Taunton Castle was built to defend the town. The Normans built a stone structured castle, which belonged to the Bishops of Winchester. The current heavily-reconstructed building, Grade-I listed, houses the Museum of Somerset and the Somerset Military Museum.
ABOVE: Taunton Castle oversees the weekly market.
The 28 is operated by Buses of Somerset, a First-Group company that I have visited before. Buses are ADL/TransBus Enviro300s, in a special brown and cream livery that is branded as the Quantock Line. The buses are fitted with significant extra luggage space, because of what's at the far end of the route...
At the time of my visit, buses are running every 30 minutes, as they have done for many years (but see my Footnote below).
There are 11 of us boarding in the town for this Saturday 1000 service, which leaves three minutes late. First major call is into Taunton station, on the Great Western Main Line, which is where this route can get really busy... I know this because my previous ride on route 28, in 2019, was to get to the Butlin's Holiday Camp in Minehead. The bus picked up about 30 passengers at the station that morning, all with luggage, hence the provision of the extra luggage racks.
It's much quieter today. Butlin's changeover days are usually Mondays and Fridays, and the luggage racks on this journey remain completely empty, apart from one child who wants to ride in one (but his Mum says he can't - quite right too)! The stopping arrangements at the station have improved as well since my last visit, with the area outside the station having been redeveloped.
Buses towards Minehead stop on the south side of the station, but those heading for Taunton call in on the north side. Sounds confusing but it seems to work.
The reason for the single-deckers on such a busy route is to be found right here, at Taunton Station, where the bridge under the railway line is only 13' 9" high.
ABOVE: A chance photograph finds Buses of Somerset 67704 (SN60 EAF), another ADL/Transbus Enviro300, in front of the low bridge under the railway in Station Road, Taunton.
We're soon out of Taunton and onto the open road. We join the A358 road, which will be our companion for a significant part of the journey ahead.
At the edge of the village of Norton Fitzwarren stands The Cross Keys, an 18th century coaching inn. The website tells us that the settlement of Norton Fitzwarren dates back thousands of years, as evidenced by the nearby Norton Hillfort, a large fortified hilltop site occupied since neolithic times. Legend has it that a fearsome dragon once inhabited the hillfort and terrorised the local people until it was slain by a medieval knight.
ABOVE: The Cross Keys, near Norton Fitzwarren
About three miles up the road is the village of Bishop's Lydeard. The main road bypasses the village but we take a detour. It's a pretty village. Parts of it look quite modern, but other bits are older. Some sections of Station Road are pretty narrow; none more so than when we pass the Lethbridge Arms, a 16th-Century pub. (What a lot of drinking establishments I, as a teetotaller, am showing you today!)
ABOVE: The Lethbridge Arms, Bishop's Lydeard
After the village we head over to the station, which represents one end of the heritage West Somerset Railway. The line to/from Minehead was originally part of British Railways, linked to the Great Western Main Line at Taunton, but became a victim of the Beeching Cuts and was closed in 1971. Buses do a double-run into the station, but only on days when trains are running. (The link line to Taunton is still in place.)
ABOVE: 67710 (SN60 EAW) calls in at the preserved station on the West Somerset Railway at Bishop's Lydeard, en route to Taunton.
This is a busy journey. We have picked up several in Bishop's Lydeard and are now adding more passengers as we pass the turn for Crowcombe. Less than two miles to the north-east, deep in the hills, is a pre-historic earthworks known as Dead Woman's Ditch. This is sometimes associated with the murder, in 1789, of Jane Walford by her husband John, but it is now suggested that the name pre-dates that incident.
ABOVE: Looking north-eastwards across the Quantock Hills near Halsway
We reach Williton, a large village less than two miles from the northern coast. Here the A358 meets the A39 Bath to Falmouth Road, which will take us to MInehead. Before it does though, we take a detour to the north, to call into the Harbour Town of Watchet.
ABOVE: The West Somerset Railway passes through Watchet, and we cross the line at Swain Street
A lengthy double-run (best part of a mile) takes us into the town centre, where a quick run into Harbour Road, and a turn around the Public Toilet block (at least they have one!) brings us to the station.
ABOVE: Photographed from a train, 67704 (SN60 EAF) is seen in Watchet, heading for Taunton on route 28. Behind is the splendour of the Watchet Methodist Church, completed in 1871 and Grade-II listed in 1982.
The Visit Watchet website, which includes a live webcam feed, tells us that Watchet was first recorded during the Dark Ages, when St Decuman arrived from South Wales and acted as a physician, arbitrator and pastor to the local community. In the Iron Age, Daws Fort was built above Watchet to protect the port and area. Watchet's natural harbour made it an early trading centre, and in the 10th century coins were minted here for Ethelred II and five more Saxon Kings.
ABOVE: The opposite view to the previous one - looking across from the bus to Watchet station. Out of sight, down the platform, are sufficient poised photographers to suggest that a train is imminent!
It's a busy town, well worth a stop (sadly, I don't). If you don't stop and walk around, the best views of the harbour are probably to be found from the heritage train.
ABOVE: Watchet Harbour from the train.
We come back to the main A39 road at the village of Washford, which lies next to Cleeve Abbey, one of the best-preserved medieval monasteries in England (and another Grade-I listed structure). The abbey was founded in the late 12th Century as a house for Monks of the Cistercian order, but closed in 1536 by King Henry VIII in the course of the Dissolution of the Monasteries; it was then converted into a country house (source: Wikipedia).
This route seems to be paved with interesting historic buildings. A few miles up the road is Dunster Castle. The 12th Century Castle is positioned on a steep, 200-foot-high hill, sometimes called the Tor, overlooking Dunster village.
The heavens decide to open briefly at this point, and my photograph of the Castle can best be described as "not good enough for publication" (and, given what I do sometimes publish, that's going to be a poor photograph)! To see what a good picture looks like, and for that matter what Dunster Castle looks like, go to the National Trust website.
And soon enough, we are in the environs of Minehead itself. Sitting on the edge of Exmoor National Park, it has a population of just under 12,000 people.
According to Wikipedia, the earliest known fossilised forest was discovered near Minehead, in the Hangman Sandstone Formation. The trees, identified as a species resembling modern palm trees, known as calamophyton, date back to the Devonian period, between 419 and 358 million years ago. Rather more recently - 1917 to be precise - the science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke was born here.
ABOVE: The Parade, in Minehead Town Centre
Minehead also represents one end of the South West Coast Path, a 630-mile long footpath that runs all around the coast of Devon and Cornwall, ending at Poole Harbour in Dorset. It starts somewhere behind North Hill, which dominates the landscape on the seafront.
ABOVE: North Hill overlooks the town of Minehead.
Buses come to the seafront once they have left the town centre, and pass the other terminus of the West Somerset Railway. It's only really once we get to the Town Centre that the bus starts to empty out (on Butlin's changeover days, of course, it doesn't until the very last stop). It's been a busy run all the way through and capacity has been tight at times.
ABOVE: 67101 again, heading back to Taunton along the seafront on Warren Road, Minehead.
The finishing point is right outside the main gate of the Butlin's Holiday Camp. This camp opened in 1962 and is credited with bringing several thousand extra visitors to the area each year. Television personality Stephen Mulhern was a Redcoat here, aged 17, in the early 1990s.
ABOVE: The Skyline Pavilion forms the heart of the Butlin's Holiday Camp, and can be seen in the background (right). Butlin's marks the terminus of route 28.
So we have reached journey's end for the 28. But my story has not quite reached the same point. I just have to make the return journey, as far as Bishop's Lydeard, via the West Somerset Railway. Lots of people probably bus it one way and take the train the other, but I'm probably the only one for whom the highlight is the bus!
The well-preserved platform at Minehead is buzzing with people, as bookstalls, gift shops and cafés jostle for attention. The 1220 departure to Bishop's Lydeard, being platformed at the far end of the (very long) platform, seems almost secondary to everything else that's going on.
ABOVE: Minehead station. On the left is locomotive 9466, which was built by Robert Stephenson and Hawthorn Ltd and entered service in 1952 from Gloucester depot
When still part of British Railways in 1964, The Beatles visited the branch to film part of "A Hard Day's Night". They shot a short scene at Crowcombe Heathfield, in which Ringo Starr and George Harrison apparently cycled on the platform alongside the train.
ABOVE: My motive power on the West Somerset Railway is locomotive 9351, built in 1934. It is changing ends at Bishop's Lydeard to prepare for the next trip back to Minehead. Looking broadly south here, the track ahead continues back to Taunton, but there are no regular passenger services over that section.
Back at Bishop's Lydeard, I am very lucky when an expected 20-minute wait for a bus turns into a fraction of that, thanks to the previous journey coming in 11 or so minutes late. Again, it's busy, with 20 or so passengers already on board.
As we head back through the village of Bishop's Lydeard, three young people board, one of whom is carrying a guitar. "Can you play something my husband can sing along to", asks a passenger? "Sorry, no," says the owner of the guitar, "it's horribly out of tune". "So is he," comes the reply!
I've said a lot about how busy route 28 is. There's good trade on this vital North Somerset link and the half-hourly service seems to be just about adequate, and possibly barely so on Butlin's changeover days. And yet, Buses of Somerset has just, as of last week (as I write this), reduced the Monday-to-Friday service frequency to every 45 minutes.
Admittedly the Saturday Service that I sampled is unchanged, and admittedly things on the weekday service will be different now to how they were in 2019, but this still feels unwise to me. Buses on this route are busy, and there are few other public transport options around here.
There is a new Mondays-to-Fridays X28 designed specifically for Butlin's customers. It skips Minehead Town Centre, Watchet and Bishop's Lydeard (station and village), and knocks the journey time down to 63-64 minutes, a saving of about 25 minutes. This is impressive, but there are just three journeys per day, and only one of them from Minehead, at 1030, really coincides with the time that people might be exiting the camp. Both the X28 and the ordinary 28 may struggle on changeover days.
It would be a shame if the customer base was to be damaged by these changes. The 28 is such a lovely route - well worth a ride if you're in this neck of the woods. Perhaps try it on something other than a Monday or a Friday, though.