OPEN top buses are back as Yellow Buses begins its summer timetable.

The newly-branded Buster's Beach bus will initially run every hour, daily, from Sandbanks to Boscombe, from Sunday, April 7.

The service, which will also include Branksome Chine, Alum Chine, West Cliff, Bournemouth and East Cliff, will run half-hourly from the Whitsun school holidays.

Adult day tickets will be £6.20 to hop on and off all day or £15 for a group of five travelling together. The service will run daily until the end of September.

Other changes include:

• Extending route 6 from its current end point at Bearwood through to Wimborne via Merley, every 30 minutes Monday to Saturday daytime. This provides a new link across the conurbation serving the Bournemouth University campus.

• Extending route 1a from Sainsbury’s at Somerford to New Milton. The service will provide new links between Highcliffe and Sainsbury’s and between New Milton town centre and Tesco.

• Extra journeys throughout the evening to take account of changing customer travel patterns with the frequency on route 5/5a doubled to every 15 minutes. This means that up to around 10pm there will be a bus operating every seven/eight minutes from the town centre to the railway station and Charminster between routes 3/5/5a.

• A new night bus service – Night 1 – on Friday and Saturday nights operating - every 30 minutes from 12.30am to 4am between Westbourne, Bournemouth, Boscombe, Pokesdown, Iford and Christchurch. Night 5 will also run Fridays and Saturdays every 30 minutes between the Square, railway station, Charminster, Winton, Moordown and Bournemouth University campus.

Yellow Buses has also worked with Royal Bournemouth Hospital to introduce additional direct journeys to and from Christchurch. It is introducing a Saturday only service from Bournemouth to Poole’s Tower Park, running between 10am and 10pm.

David Squire, Managing Director, said: “These are significant changes to our network for the summer which we hope will prove popular with both locals and visitors to the area alike.

“I’m particularly delighted to welcome the return of our iconic open toppers on a new expanded route from Sandbanks to Boscombe. They’re always very popular with our passengers.”

Full details of the new summer timetable can be found on Yellow Buses’ website at www.yellowbuses.co.uk