The Thame Time Traveller

I've previously bemoaned the lack of interest in the modern-day bus scene on this blog. Thanks to accessibility legislation, all the interesting old step-entrance buses are now illegal to use on normal stage services and are confined almost exclusively to school runs, where they are difficult to photograph and impossible to travel on. Thus it was with great pleasure that I learned of an enthusiasts' tour on Saturday 5th May, organised by Chris Martin (no, not that one) of the Leyland Olympians Yahoo Group. Called the Thame Time Traveller, the aim was to sample seven of the Olympian school buses that form part of the fascinating fleet run by Walters Coaches of Oxford on various runs through the Oxfordshire countryside.

Very rarely does anyone other than schoolkids get to travel on these big beasts

The best of Bicester

Sunday 22nd April was the annual 'Drive It Day' so that meant no shortage of classic car shows. My choice of destination once again was the Sunday Scramble at Bicester Heritage, one of the largest and finest events of the year. Even in the twelve months since the last Scramble I attended, the site has continued to develop and expand, and its world-class reputation grows year by year. The place truly is a petrolhead's paradise and the great weather helped this Scramble become the biggest ever, with over 4000 tickets sold and more than a thousand visiting cars.

The spirit of Onslow is alive and well

There has already been a lot of media coverage, but these features always concentrate on the exotic stuff with arty photos of multi-million pound Ferraris and Bentleys. That's not my style so my self-declared mission was to search out the mundane everyday classics that so often get overlooked yet hold far more personal memories. There were plenty of these quietly hiding among the exotica, so here's my own round up of the highlights, a very different take on the event from what you'll read elsewhere.

Unsung heroes: Rover 600

My intention to profile an unsung hero every month has rather fallen by the wayside this year. I still have plenty of deserving candidates but seem to be short of time to write about them, so better late than never, my first unsung hero of 2018 is a successful British car that celebrated its 25th birthday this month yet is overlooked and almost forgotten compared with the rest of its manufacturer's sometimes inferior products. The Rover 600-series may be dismissed as nothing more than a Honda in a posh frock and doesn't have the following of its successor, but it was actually one of the company's best cars so I think it really deserves better.

Honda in drag or proper Rover?

A Hull of an auction

How could any car lover ever forget that famous moment in 2014 when Jaguar Land Rover announced they had purchased the entire car collection amassed by dentist Dr James Hull for a rumoured £100 million? This was believed to be the country's largest private collection and consisted of no less than 543 cars, which Dr Hull would only sell as one lot as he wanted it to remain intact with the new owner. Four years on, there was much excitement when news broke in February that a hundred surplus vehicles from this collection would be sold in a dedicated 'Affordable Classics' sale by Brightwells at Bicester Heritage on 21st March.

Just a small selection. Not what you might have expected from Dr Hull's collection.

I unfortunately wasn't able to attend in person but I've crunched some numbers and come up with my analysis of the auction. All figures quoted are the hammer prices, to which VAT and a 10% premium had to be added so the final costs were significantly higher.

Corneal surgery update

There's been another long absence from the blog but this time with good reason. Long-time readers may remember the corneal graft surgery I had way back in November 2016. As that was so long ago, you can be forgiven for thinking I was fully recovered by now but you'd be wrong as healing is a very slow process where eyes are concerned. On Monday 5th March I finally had the stitches removed from the graft, almost 18 months after they were put in, which meant another operation at the John Radcliffe Hospital, but this would be a day case under local anaesthetic.

A Tricentrol tribute

With my interest in the present-day bus and coach scene on the wane, I've started researching some of the many firms who used to ply their trade in my area but are sadly no longer with us. Very little evidence of the group's existence now remains and younger readers may never have heard of them as they went out of business about 30 years ago, but throughout the 1970s Tricentrol was one of the biggest and most familiar names in Bedfordshire and beyond. The Tricentrol empire was a substantial business, comprising not just a large fleet of coaches but also many other ventures in the car sales and truck industries managed from the head office in Dunstable, but has now vanished almost without trace.

I'm too young to have ever actually seen any Tricentrol vehicles in the flesh and not much has been written about the coaching side of the business, so this article has been compiled from PSV Circle records and contemporary news reports and there may be some inaccuracies as a result. Special thanks go to Frans Angevaare from the Netherlands for allowing use of photos from his extensive collection.  Read on for more on the rise and fall of Tricentrol...

A typical Tricentrol Bedford in London on one of the express services
(Photo: Frans Angevaare)

February Funfair

One thing I wasn't expecting to see last weekend was a funfair. The bonfire fairs typically mark the end of the season so most showmen return to their yards for winter during November and apart from a few small Christmas and New Year events don't go on the road again until mid to late February or sometimes March. The Kings Lynn Mart is the traditional season-starter and that didn't open until Valentine's Day, by which time this fair in Milton Keynes had been there for a week, so it is very early in the season for them to be open for business.

It was quite wet. This was as close as I could get to Denzil Danter's Volvo because of that massive puddle

Corgi buses for 2018

I've been meaning to write this for several weeks now but the announcement coincided with my busiest period at work and life has just got in the way since then, so better late than never, here at last is my review of Corgi's model bus release schedule for January to June of this year, revealed exactly a month ago. I didn't even bother reviewing the models from the second half of 2017 as there were only two of them and neither were worthy of note: yet another Borismaster and a second Harry Potter Gemini very similar to the one released the previous year. Things are slightly better this time around, with four all-new liveries, each available with a choice of two destinations. There are still no new castings though (unsurprising given the company's poor finances) and nothing of interest to me.

Wright Gemini, Brighton & Hove, Pride - all themes Corgi have already done recently

Very un-appy with eBay

My first proper post of this year is unfortunately another rant about the bizarre actions of a tech giant, this time eBay for their inexplicable decision to remove their mobile app's compatibility with older Android versions and woefully inadequate response to the resulting backlash. It all started when I did a factory reset on my phone. It's a Samsung Galaxy S2, which may be old but I've looked after it so it still works fine and perfectly suits my needs of reading emails, Facebook browsing, a few calls and texts, and the occasional photo. I deplore the wastefulness of modern society and can't stand to see perfectly functional products thrown away simply because they're old, so I can't justify replacing the old S2 to myself while it still works.

The reset installed Android Jelly Bean 4.1.2, the newest version of the operating system officially supported by this device. Everything was going well and all the apps I installed worked fine - until I tried to install the eBay app, only for the app store to refuse to download it as it is "not compatible with my device". Huh? The version I had before worked fine, going from version 4.0 to 4.1 isn't even a major upgrade and Android 4.1.2 was released only about five years ago so it's hardly an ancient obsolete operating system that no one uses anymore. Being unsupported but still usable is one thing but incompatible and totally unusable is quite another, so how come the eBay app is no longer compatible with my OS and why aren't eBay doing anything about it?

Apologies for absence

Just a brief update to let you know I'm still here and the blog hasn't been abandoned, even though it's more than two weeks into the new year and I haven't published a single post yet. I was back at work on 2nd January after an all-too-short Christmas break and straight into one of our busiest periods, which has meant a hectic schedule and working some overtime, leaving little time and energy to type up the blogs I have drafted in my head. Things are starting to calm down now so normal service will be resumed soon. I'll take this opportunity to wish all my readers a very belated Happy New Year and thank you for your support over the past three years. Rest assured there will be new material coming soon so stay tuned for updates!