On the Coaches . Part 1

On the Coaches (A little deviation)

At last, I am able to spend some time on this part of my life on the Coaches, as requested, ooops, I meant demanded by the lovely Linda Wigzell Cress and you know how bossy she can be.
I had always been interested in coaches. Yeh sad, I know. I had been on many holidays with Mum and Dad, and mostly by coach. As a young lad I wondered how they managed to find their way around so many different places without getting lost. I was later to find out.

You will, no doubt, remember a few comments with regard to coach work in my Ch.7 of On The Buses.
Here I hope to bring my 8 years of Coach Driving to life.

After moving to Peterborough and spending 3 years with the local bus company, we found the wages to be considerably lower than London. This we managed for a while but after seeing an ad in the local paper for jobs in Perkins Engines I thought why not have a look. Well, what a mistake. The money was definitely better but what a crap job. Dirty, noisy, stuck inside all through the shift. Not my cup of tea this. After 2 and a half years, they wanted to make redundancies. I was first in the queue with my application and left a few weeks later with £2.5k in the bank and a new job with a local coach company.

So here we go Linda

This was a family business run solely by the boss Harry. He was an oldish fella and not in the best of health, but he gave me the job and I started on an 8 year excursion (No pun intended) into coach driving.
Being a local company out here in the fens, the majority of the work was contracted school runs and some businesses used us for moving their staff around. Nothing really exciting until the weekends when we had a few private jobs. In the summer this could be days out to the coast, Skegness, Gt. Yarmouth, Hunstanton and some school trips to theme parks. In the winter it was mostly schools, cleaning in the yard and Christmas piss ups. This was when we became janitors, cleaning up all sorts of mess. No glamour in the job so far. I even had a lady (used loosely) throw up in a bucket and lose her false teeth in it. Oh boy, this isn’t quite what I signed up for.

A year or so later I was asked to take a group on holiday to Paignton. Ah I thought, this is better. Away from the yard at last. This was for an elderly group who always had their week away in the West Country. Great, I love Devon and Cornwall and fortunately know my way around down there.

Friday night, pack case for the week give the girls a hug as I would be gone before they woke up then Saturday morning off to get the coach that I had spent all day Friday getting ready. Pick up the group, quick introductions and off we go. Being early I suggested a stop at the first service area for a comfort stop and breakfast. I was starving after an early start so the fry up was just the job. Back on the wagon and off for a couple of hours before we stretch our legs again. This motorway driving is all very well, but boring. This was the first time I noticed how poor our coaches, Bedfords with small engines, were for this kind of work. They were ok for local and seaside trips but when you had a full load of luggage and punters it was a different kettle of fish. Hills, well, small inclines became mountains and all the way down the gearbox to keep it going while everyone else just flew by. Anyway, we got there in pretty good time, unloaded and settled everyone in their rooms in time for a rest before our evening meal.

We had a good week, visiting many places of interest along with coastal drives, which are without question, breathtaking. Lots more of this as we travel on through 8 years of coaching.

Our Boss Harry was taken ill and later passed away. The family 2 sons and a daughter decided to take over the business and things carried on as usual for a while. The daughter (Jane) decided it was time for a change and holidays were the future. Oh boy, excellent me thinks. Jane was excellent at putting these holidays together. In fact she was probably the most efficient person I had ever met. Get it wrong and you knew it, but generally do a good job and all was well. We started off with 8 seven day tours and several weekend breaks in the first year just to see how things went. Shared out between the drivers that were suitable for this kind of work gave us 2 tours each and several weekends. Ok, well, it’s a start. At last the brothers decided, after a few comments by us, that they needed to update their fleet to a more tour related type of vehicle. In came 3 more Bedfords. Oh come on, get real!! More crap but this crap had turbo’s. Yeh slightly better but only just.

Eventually we had a couple of DAF’s. Now we’re talking and lucky me had the use of one of them on my tours. It was a beauty with all the extras you expect with a tour coach and oh boy! Did it make a difference when away. Excellent!.

Two tours in the West Country in the first summer and then we had no end of groups wanting to go to Blackpool for the lights. Now Blackpool is probably one of the dirtiest places I have ever come across. Every other shop was a Chippy, Kebab, or Café. Every time the wind blew you had a chip wrapper in your face and the smell!!! Awful.

The lights were amazing the first couple of times but after that it was just a bore. It took at least 4-5 hours to drive through them as everyone was doing the same thing. It got to the point where we begged not to be going to Blackpool for weekend light trips.

We had a contract with the Peterborough Pirates Ice hockey team to take them to all their away matches. This became my regular job, mostly on a Sunday night. My eldest daughter came to several of these away matches with me. Trouble was, we didn’t get back home until the early hours on some trips. They played teams as far away as Blackpool (Yep, back again) and Bournemouth. The matches were, as you can imagine, very quick and very physical, bordering on sheer violent. I am sure Joanne didn’t swear until we started going to these games. Well, I never heard her anyway.

Anyone who thought coaching was all fun and games will be put right here and now.
As I have already mentioned, you sometimes feel more like a bog attendant on a Saturday night. Once we got into the tours, the day trips to France (Booze cruises) began. Some were quite good days others were a bloody nightmare. Always with 2 drivers as these became almost 22 hour jobs. 4am pick up, off to Dover to beat the traffic at the old Dartford crossing then hopefully reach Dover in time for a coffee before loading onto the ferry. I must mention here one particular trip when Chris, one of our bosses came along for the ride.
We went into the drivers lounge on board for the usual fry up and mugs of tea. The ferry had only just started to move out of the harbour and Chris was looking at the menu while we were ordering a full English. He was looking a little pale already so I said to him. Don’t worry have a breakfast then have toast and plenty of strawberry jam. He said ‘will it stop me feeling sick then’ I replied ‘NO but it will taste better when it comes up’. That was it, he flew out of the lounge and we didn’t see him again until we docked at Calais, He spent the whole of the crossing leaning over the side. Many years later when I saw him in town he reminded me of this and had to laugh.
One of the worst day France trips we had was for the local Police. The coach was a wreck inside by the time we arrived back in the early hours of the morning. It took both of us drivers nearly 2 hours to clean it up inside so that it could be used the next day. Mostly though these trips were good days though very long.
Oh yes, I must just add this one. Coming back on one trip, I had one bottle of spirits too many. Normally I would just wait until we arrived in customs and declare it saying it had been bought for me by one of the passengers after I had bought my own. This was normally ok and they just had a look inside the coach while the passengers were all walking through customs with their purchases in hand. They were always told to take anything that should be declared with them as customs would take anything they found left on the coach. On this occasion with my extra bottle, I thought I would hide it under a panel in the front of the coach. Just as we were arriving in Dover I changed my mind and took it out, relying on the trusted system of letting them know I had extra. WOW!!!
As we drove towards the customs check area we were stopped as usual, they boarded the coach and “Bloody Hell” they pulled it apart. Every nook and Cranny including the one I almost used for my extra bottle was searched. They almost looked disappointed when they found nothing. I realised after, there must have been a camera on the load deck of the ferry and I was seen doing the dastardly deed.
Oh well, enough of these. Let’s go to some nice places.

I will be back soon. Busy Busy with the ol’ Crimbo stuff

A very happy Christmas to you all and a peaceful New Year