LOCALS in a village in southern Scotland have hit out at an "utterly ridiculous” new bus timetable.
The residents have taken particular issue with the fact the last bus home on a Saturday to Glentrool from nearby Newton Stewart leaves just five minutes after the first one arrives – at 11:35 and 11:30.
There used to be return services until 17:20.
The changes come after Stagecoach effectively left Dumfries and Galloway.
"Our village is quite remote and a lot of our residents are elderly – some don't drive," resident Jayne Mee told the BBC.
"We all rely on the bus service in one way or another – to get to appointments, to get to the shops, to get to work, or just to get out."
"On non-school days we simply cannot use the service to Newton Stewart because the last bus back is five minutes after the first bus in – utterly ridiculous," she said.
"This has caused a lot of upset and inconvenience to our residents."
Another local, Susan Hutton, also told the BBC: “It's a beautiful place and we welcome people coming up here and it's great, but we are stranded if there's no bus.
"We say hello on the bus in the morning, you know, it's massive – it's a massive thing to people and we're trying to stop loneliness in the community – this is not helping at all.
"There's chatter on the bus on the way in in the morning, there's chatter on the way back – which doesn't seem a lot when you're perhaps in a working environment where you see people all day – but there's more people that don't."
A statement from Dumfries and Galloway Council and transport agency SWestrans said it recognised the concerns with the timetable, adding that the new bus network had seen 45 long-term contracts awarded with an investment of £2.66m in providing "reliable public transport".
"Without this investment, and without DGC Buses stepping in to run services throughout Wigtownshire as operator of last resort, this part of the region was at risk of having no services running at all," it said.
