Bertie Bus Starts its Golden Year of Service
Bertie Bus has been serving the local community in an ever-evolving manner since 1975, meaning this marks its fiftieth year of service.
Adventures Galore throughout 2024
The numbers are in! Bertie Bus took 203 trips in 2024, totalling a distance of almost 7000 miles.
It can be hard to quantify the activities of a group like Bertie Bus, but it helps if you think of it in terms of individual days out. If we count every Bertie passenger as a person having a day out then Bertie Bus helped create 1661 days out in 2024. This is an amazing contribution to the local community, and it’s at the heart of what Bertie Bus does.
Every member of the Bertie Bus team is justifiably proud of their efforts. What they do helps so many people get out of the house and enjoy time with others, whilst visiting a huge selection of venues and activities throughout the year.
Throughout 2024, these trips were as varied as shopping trips, transport to and from local activities like cinema trips, lunch clubs, and tea dances, as well as a few longer trips like visits to Aberfeldy, Dunblane, and Stirling.
A locally funded institution
With all of this journeying around it costs just over £800 per month to keep Bertie Bus on the road and it’s thanks to the kind donations of local individuals, businesses, and groups that this is possible.
Where appropriate, we’ll be sure to spotlight these contributions as the year progresses but the Bertie Team is deeply grateful for the continued support of so many local residents and organisations.
Going nowhere without a bit of help from their friends
Of course, a fully functional specialist bus (with wheelchair access and other mobility modifications) isn’t all it takes to enable Bertie Bus to do what it does for the community.
Throughout 2024, 476 Passenger Assistant duties were performed in the year plus 232 drives by volunteer drivers (inclusive of drives for maintenance reasons). The efforts of their incredible team of volunteers make Bertie Bus’ continued operations possible.
A Golden Year Ahead!
The Bertie team are looking forward to resuming all of their normal services as we roll deeper into this new year, as well as a few special events linked to their golden anniversary down the line.
In terms of their regularly scheduled activities, the next fortnight or so will see their full programme of activity resume.
Included in this are activities like their Shopping Trips which take place once a month throughout the year (with a break of a couple of months to avoid times with the most adverse weather).
This coming month also sees the return of a regular monthly shopping trip for a group from Muthill.
We’ll also see the resumption of the Tuesday Richmond House trip for monthly trips throughout the rest of the year.
Their Tuesday Library trips offer service users a chance to stock up on some reading material and catch up with friends on reading materials they’ve been enjoying.
Meeting every Wednesday afternoon, service users will soon get the chance again to enjoy the ‘Wednesday Club’ where they enjoy an outing on the bus as well as a welcome stop for refreshments.
Their ever-popular visit to the Royal Voluntary Service’s lunch club will resume soon too and takes place every Thursday during term time.
To extend the range of services that Bertie Bus offers, they also offer a twice-monthly opportunity for people living in Comrie to enjoy a social outing.
The Friday Club won’t be far behind with their first run of 2025 in just a few weeks.
Bertie’s Cinema Run will also resume again soon. This is a bi-monthly service where the group are picked up and brought to a local cinema in order to enjoy a film.
It’s set to be a bumper year and one that the Bertie Team is all thoroughly looking forward to
Want to get involved?
Volunteering with Bertie Bus can take a variety of forms, each of which is rewarding in its own way.
There are so many opportunities to contribute to the quality of life for Bertie’s service users. If you’d like to find out more about volunteering with Bertie Bus, feel free to contact them by email at secretary@bertiebus.org.uk or call 07716 119414