Luke has now also sent me a photo of 414 in the depot yesterday, quite fittingly 'Love' is displayed on the wall behind her.
Derrick Cuff came across this today while browsing the web. These are official First Group shoes in the 'Converse' style. As you will note the material is the First Group Moquette - taken from real bus seats. The rubber has been taken from used tyres as well making the shoe totally recycled. And all this for just £70! Get down to the shops quickly they're "Selling like Hotcakes" according to First.
I couple of days ago I received an e-mail from the man in charge of marketing at Western Greyhound asking me if some of my pictures of the WG fleet could be entered for possible inclusion in this summer's publications. Pictured above are a couple of examples of the photos be may use. I must admit I was pretty chuffed at this so fingers crossed one of two may be used in the coming months! Though looking at the weather outside now, I think the photo of the Solo is somewhat optimistic weather wise!
Unfortunately I haven't caught the blind on this one but here is Leyland Olympian K615 LAE. If you'd jump to conclusions she was on a 3 today - you'd be wrong. Infact she was on the extended X80 which runs up to the City College in the mornings to drop the students off. Quite a trip on this old thing! Though when you think about it even though its the same age as one of the K-ORLs, they are much better suited to the route than this would have been. 
Not the best photos in the world but here is my Cross Country Ticket Wallet that I sent off for just a few days ago. There was an offer of a free give-away on their Facebook site. There may still be a few of them available. If you would like to try and get one simply send your address to the e-mail address below and hopefully they'll send you one! 
y shortly after (the next bus into the Truro!) was local legend Simon Coates driving L637 LEU, one of the Palatine 2 bodied Olympians. Though he soon departed with the BMC (big yellow school thing!) back upto the depot. This seems to be used as a crew bus most weekends seeing as the Transit is now up in Plymouth.
So seeing as time was short for the F reg I took a trip on her right down to Penzance via Helston on the 82/2. Indeed she still goes very well for a bus of her vintage, if anything better than some of the K regs! Annoyingly though, I passed one of the R regs on the way into Penzance, and never saw it again all day! But better luck next time I suppose. 
While in Penzance there was again a few interesting things to see. Firstly one of the last remaining FDC Varios, 52557 out on the 6s.
Another one I've been after for a while are the Nocton Lynxs and I finally managed to snap one at Penzance! This one looked particularly good, though the driver caught the edge of the blind box on the canopy about Penzance bus station as you may be able to make out, and made somewhat of a gouge into it!
After that it was upto Truro again on one of the new S reg Olympians that FDC have acquired from FSA. This particular one went very well on the run on the X18. 
I then caught up with Simon once again in Truro driving 34197 and had a quick run upto the station before heading back upto Plymouth.
The day started unfortunately not on the bus but in the Fiat Multipla as there was no bus that really gets in early enough to make full use of the day. So having a lift with dad into work made me able to use the 0655 service for the leg upto Exeter. This was led by 43002 with 43035 on the rear. After that it was a quick hop upto Exeter Central on 153377.
Then came the the journey on the X53. This was my first journey aboard a Volvo B9 and 37582 seemed a very good example. In fact I was quite surprised by the sheer amount of power these have, though really over the 3 hours I spent on the bus, there were few opportunities to show off what the bus could really do, though it did fly up some of the hills!
So after a pretty pleasant journey I arrived in sunny Weymouth - a very different picture to what Cawsand was when I left! JHU was parked right in the front of the depot but was not being being used. Round the back sat C414 again out of action! So after a text to Mr Farley about what could be happening I found that they likely wouldn't be put on the road til about 4pm. So that gave me a few hours to get some photos and sample Weymouth's other buses. 
Weymouth has several of these H registered Leyland Olympians which were new to London, as you will note they retain the London style destination box. The ride I had on H142 FLX was very nice - if anything better than the similar K-LAEs we have in Cornwall.
I also had a ride on this Volvo Olympian - P530 EFL new to Cambus in 1996. This was pretty nice though the turbo seemed to be making quite an alarming scream and so the driver took the decision to take her into the depot and get something else out to replace her!
So it was then over to the King's Statue to catch a 31 upto Axminster - a journey I'd been advised to take, rather than using the X53 again. The bus turned up about 15 minutes before the trip, but as 17:45 drew nearer there was no sign of anyone to drive it! In fact it wasn't until around 18:00 that the driver turned up to take her on! And with only a 10 minute gap in Axminster between the bus arriving and the train leaving I was quite tense for most of the journey! The bus really did seem to be suffering from power distribution problems. At times it would blast along but then simply loose power. This meant in the whole 2 hour journey we made up just 6 minutes, mainly gathered by the quick driver change in Bridport. So on arrival it was a dash across the footbridge with the 20:05 to Exeter already in the station! I did just make it and then it was a nice relaxing run down to Exeter St Davids.
Just found by Derrick Cuff was this admitantly small photo of what we believe to be 50301. This was found on "Friday Ad"'s classified listings and looks to have been sold on. Who knows what for but it will be interesting to see if she will work again in the future!
The Cremyll Ferry – Northern Belle is now out of Mashford’s boat yard after her yearly refit and is pictured just coming into Cremyll this morning, taken from the Tamar Belle. Note that this year ‘Cremyll Ferry’ has been reapplied to the side, a feature that has not been included for a few years now. But she is now looking superb once again and is a credit to Tamar Cruising and will soon be running in her 84th year!
