I was boarding the last bus of the day from Salisbury to Winchester when a passenger got on and showed me a weekly ticket isued by Go-Ahead. “Sorry, that’s not valid on Stagecoach” I told the intending passenger.

“Then why do all the Winchester Stagecoach drivers accept it in Winchester?” he demanded to know. I told him that was a lie, that I was a Winchester driver, and was disproving his claim by refusing a Go-Ahead ticket!

Rather than buy a ticket for the express service which runs at this time of day and takes 45 minutes to Winchester he opted to get off and then wait for a Go-Ahead bus to Southampton where he’d then take another bus to Winchester. Total journey time was likely to be over 2 hours!

Maybe he does sometimes get away with using it in Winchester because it bears an uncanny resemblance to our own weekly tickets – Wayfarer ticket encapsulated in a plastic fronted sleeve which is also blue in colour like ours and identical in size! You have to read the words on it to know it’s not a Stagecoach weekly ticket.