After much debating the decision was to perform the Wisbech Historic Vehicle Club Run… in the Coach.. Neither the Matchless or the Ariel are ready yet.. and we could not all fit in the Alvis.

The day passed without any bus issues – with the gearbox behaving much better – although third does still like to hide.

It was a lovely run from the middle of Wisbech through Spalding to Perkins at Peterborough. Then back to Wisbech. The surprises for us was that the route – one that we have taken many times on the fast roads… was really interesting with some lovely sights along the way. The turn out of the fans to wave at us all was huge and really made the day.

From Matilda Age 5

We went to Wisbech on the bus. We had fun. We waved at lots of people from the bus.

We had lunch on the bus. We had chocolate cake.

With 2 days to go to the run the bus was in bits.. with a broken alternator and waterpump. On the Thursday a marathon session in the rain resulted in the bus getting a waterpump and alternator fitted, the radiator back on and everything ready for a test run. The test run was postponed till the Friday due to the weather being so awful. All thankfully was fine following the run.

Well the run is completed… 400 miles in 2 days…

165 miles to the Services for the night’s rest… Discoveries made on the way:

1. The coach is happy at 50 -55mph all day long.
2. Diesel at Birch Services is a rip off at 10p per litre more than at most places!
3. The coach averaged about 15mpg….
4. Birch Services food is awful (there is a pub round the corner but we did not know about that until after we had eaten)
5. 3 people can sleep OK in the bus

After a rest we got up at about 7am to make sure the bus was all clean and tidy, and check the water levels etc.

The Sunday was the 43rd Historic Commercial Vehicle Trans Penine Run.

Deciding that we did not need to be one of the first off we watched some very old vehicles leave…. Then decided at about 8:30 to set off with all the other buses.  Quite quickly we found ourselves on our own… Apart from Mark missing reading out one instruction the turn left at the bridge all went well. With a slow run across with a brief pause for a lovely filling proper bus breakfast from a roadside cafe. One of these days I will master the changes down from fourth to third…. We did not need to use crawler gear on any of the roads apart from setting off…

The slow amble up and down the hills suddenly seemed to end as we arrived a Harrogate. After parking up, grabbing some lunch and having a stretch we then carried on to get back to Norfolk.

Our thanks to the organisers of this great fun event…