DLR

Something I've had the pleasure* of driving recently. The Yutong TC12. Daf engine in these bigguns, unlike the smaller TC9 that got a Cummins. It's the only redeeming feature. The Chinese-built bodywork is rusting away, the interior is falling apart (anything made of plastic has gone brittle and snapped) and nothing seems to work. Grim in every sense of the word and I can't wait to move on to pastures new at the end of the week.

I've made a return to coach driving for the summer. Only this time rather than doing day work, I'm tour driving. Started with 3 days in the Forest of Dean on a school trip, followed by 5 days in Somerset on a garden tour, with a cheeky day trip added on to Weston-super-Mare, then a couple of days off to wash my pants and I'm now away for a total of 20 days on a cricket tour. As I type this, I'm sat in the bar of my hotel in Croydon. There's light jazz playing, I'm working on a writing project for my MA dissertation and I'm 7 days into my 20 day stint. Tomorrow we transfer to a hotel in Cardiff for 9 days where I will be driving everywhere but cardiff - Devon twice, the Midlands and Wiltshire. The handy aspect of this part of the tour is I can nip home to Barry to break up the constant hotels and sleep in my own bed. I've always considered tour drivers to be an odd bunch. How do you know a coach driver is a tour driver? Don't worry, if the waistcoat doesn't give it away they'll soon tell you! But this small foray into tour driving has given me a new respect for them. It's draining being away from home so much and I can't wait to find some day work again. Considering a return to trucks, but I really want to try my hand at something new and be on the road less. But! This is the Bus Shite thread. So what of the vehicles? For the first two tours I had a little Plaxton Panther Cub, which is essentially a shortened Panther. Powered by Volvo and drove rather well. Full of quirks, like a loo that flushed when it wanted to and a drivers door that would only shut off the switch on the dash before killing the power. This made every exit at the end of the day something akin to that scene in Indiana Jones when he slides through the closing door, only less graceful and I occasionally got stuck. My vehicle for the 20 day tour is a Jonckheere something-or-other. Again, Volvo underneath. Has had a retrofitted wheelchair conversion, which means that one of the lockers is half-full of wheelchair lift and takes up valuable luggage space. Handy, when every passenger has a suitcase and a cricket kit bag! My only complaint of this coach is it still has haunting reminders of the previous allocated driver. These coaches have a nice window above the windscreen, only this one is a bit too "live laugh love" for my liking... Of course, this jump into tours followed a very chequered few months of jumping around, including Chinese coaches for Welsh operators, a shift on a Megabus in a coach I'd driven for an old employer, service runs round the Cotswolds in Evoras and a small spell on the Open Tops in Cardiff - happy to share if there's any interest?