With all drivers present and correct and a calm day in store, Taz and I went on a road trip today!
The day started early - after yesterday's rain, all the buses were filthy, so Taz, Jamie and I were all in the yard around 0530 and managed to wash and mop all three DAFs before they went out, and mopped the white Dart as well. Tiring, but rewarding. To prove the point, we rewarded ourselves with breakfast after all the buses had gone!
Our excursion took us to the Ringwood area. It is likely that at some point we will seek to run the 35 & 300 from a base somewhere in that area to minimise dead mileage, but that requires finding an off-road site suitable to house one of the DAFs. We therefore went on a top secret (until now, that is) reconnaissance mission of a number of possible sites and to be honest, didn't really see anything that fired our imagination, so we'll have to keep looking for the moment. Bright ideas welcome, if anyone has any by the way!
We also paid a visit to Solent Coaches just to say hello while out on our travels and what friendly, nice people they seem to be!
On the way down, we passed V11 going the other way on the 1045 300 Ringwood - Soton. Sparkly clean V11, with the sun glinting off the roof, looked absolutely stunningly gorgeous! I wish I'd had my camera! (And not driving at 70mph in the other direction!!!) Was so excited I forgot to check how many passengers there were!
Our route back to Eastleigh took us via Winchester where we ordered new football kits for the Monday 5-a-side football time hitherto known as 'Solent Blue Line' but shortly to be officially renamed (whether they like it or not lol!)
Back in Eastleigh by around 1700 hrs and off to do the fuelling. Everyone was in very good time tonight, obviously not much traffic around, so in came Steve with the Crazy Frog Bus (don't ask) at 1810, Paul with V14 at 1815, Matt with V7 at 1845 then Ant with V11 from Ringwood at 1900 - the earliest return yet!
Off to bed now - alarm set for 0445 (I'm opening up instead of Taz tomorrow) ready for a new round of fun and frivolity! But this time with no buses to wash!
About Me
- Phil Stockley
- Welcome to my blog! On these pages you will find a series of posts dating from 2010 to 2018, spanning a period of my career in which I ran my own bus company in Southampton (Velvet), then moved on to Wellglade Group to run TM Travel before moving into the Group Development Director role; then finally ending up at HCT Group - latterly as Commercial Director. These days I'm working for FirstBus as part of their franchise bidding team, and time and circumstances mean it's no longer possible to keep this blog up to date. But I'm happy to leave my musings in place for anyone interested to read. Earlier posts tend to concern themselves with the day to day minutiae of running a small bus company in Hampshire; in later posts I talk about wider industry issues. I hope you will find something of interest and, who knows, maybe in the future circumstances will allow me to get out the virtual pen and start writing again!
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