Probably my earliest start of the year and perhaps the longest trip so far but a wonderfully sunny and dare I say warm day although there was ice on the van windscreen when I got up. A straightforward journey with no roadworks other than the M6 around Wigan which is going SMART motorway - didn't they say there would be no more of these stupid lethal  ideas. Anyway pleased to find Stockton gave 3 hours free in municipal car parks. Plenty about first thing, lots in Stagecoach new livery. Although route brandings come and go nothing by way of new buses but I did catch some school services by luck.

Next it was on to Darlington, very much my old stomping ground when I had a day job. I remember one winter I commuted back and forth from home to Darlo. There was not a cloud in the sky to be seen. It was soon time to skip back to Middlesbrough. The light is never great in sunny weather, its always a bit into the sun but hoping it will look ok, much busier all round than last years lock down pandemic visit, I've no idea what we were thinking then but certainly not that another year would go by under the draconian restrictions for people.

Next was our last stop of the day and the most interesting and colourful at Durham. THe old bus station is being rebuilt. The road outside is one way at the moment and buses stop the length of it. Chaos reigns really, not the best temporary bus arrangement I've see but guess its a hard place to find space. Here are some Durham shots taken this afternoon. Editing tomorrow, clips perhaps on Youtube before tomorrow night.

A surprise was a sudden hoot and steam on the viaduct, I believe it could have been LNER K1 62055 on its way to Carlisle, after about 30 minutes of passing through a few lads with cameras headed back to the car parks with the heavy duty equipment.

 I'll be brief as it has been a long busy day, we have Stockton, Darlington, Middlesbrough ( bus station now open again) and finally Durham ( bus station now closed). I've added several new digital downloads of recent releases to the PMP shop and found a few minutes spare to prepare the short film covering the awful time we have had with the VW Caddy van. I've done several household maintenance items plus the ongoing rodent situation has escalated and last week three Cheshire West and Chester council rodent control, vans were in the village. We saw a total of 4 at any one time today. Reports now coming from all quarters, we've tried to get media interest to help the council get itself into the problem, normally they avoid, hide, skive as much as they can.

I've almost got to looking at the downloaded Caucasus trip which I'm trying to put on as clips on Youtube and in full as archive unedited footage available on the PMP shop. We had a lot of DVD orders but mostly small amounts so we got them all cleared. I must get a bit of a sit down down so I'll put on some North East photos to whet your appetites.

The main news today in the wider world is the handover of power in Cub from Raul Castro to his deputy. The country has as many sanctions against it , if anyone doubted Biden would in European terms, be to the right of Attila the Hun. Only Obama could see the opportunities and welcome other modes of government. The influx of Chinese vehicles has probably reduced the vehicle interest, reports I've seen looked rather poor but then I discovered the ex Havana camels working in the provinces, horse buses were common in many cities when we were last there.

Not at all bad weather with lots of sunshine but still bitterly cold. It looks as if it will remain similar through next week. The only day which was light cloud is supposed to be Tuesday but we have other things to do then but will pick the best day for perhaps Oxford or Bristol plus I want to go up to the North East. As soon as spring looks settled  and warmer and hotels, pubs etc fully open we'll be getting to the South, South East, South West , Essex and East Anglia and Wales then most of Scotland plus updates on Northern Ireland and hopefully ROI eventually.

Today I went back to Mnchester as it is the last day of school holidays and more importantly the last day of Tyrers double deckers unless the strike goes on into the summer months. A couple of buses that I haven't seen before, you'd need to cover Bury and Salford in quick succession to see the majority but it was quite a new mix as Tyrers were on the Salford routes when it all kicked off. Who would have thought the strike would go on this long, mind you in the never would have thought sector the pandemic takes the biscuit for things exceeding our wildest guesses. Clips to go on Youtube later and cover for this weeks 5 DVD releases.

The slide show is from today in Manchester

Mandy had her appointment for a hair cut, style and colour and got back in amazingly quick time about 10.30. I'd got the DVD orders ready, done some work on loading downloads to the shop and then we dropped off the post and headed to Ellesmere Port, about 45 mins wait to get in to the barbers but it seems that was nothing compared with Monday. Then weekly shop at M&S and when we got back a message to say the PMP vans was fixed so picked that up. That was nearly the day gone. I've made the Wrexham bus DVD and will get Birkenhead out of the way tonight. Then it will be time for making covers. I'm still not 100% sure where I will film tomorrow, I must check the weather. Meanwhile some shots from Birkenhead yesterday

The weather was quite reasonable with a misty start but no wind and later a lot of sun, it got up to 14 degrees this afternoon. I don't think many more Wrexham shops have shut as most were shut long before Corona pandemic. The second lodge we were going to stay in on the Pantanal in Brazil has changed the booking same days but 2022. Thats just leaving the hotel which has never responded and the only part that had a small deposit paid. After filming at Wrexham it is less than an hour away to Birkenhead which was busier than Wrexham by far, I would think services were near normal schedules there. Wrexham in contrast was a trickle.

I managed to get all my digitised films on to an external drive overnight ready to return to Bridgeman Associates who will represent our commercial use of film, with the hope of increasing revenue to support the archive especially as we will struggle to do many rallies with the stand particularly with my right hand being useless at times.  It is reality this that also drives me to get the dioramas finished before I cannot hold the glue, paint and more importantly the knife safely.

Tomorrow we are out after Mandy gets back from, her hair do, we'll then go on to Ellesmere Port and get mine done and go to their local M&S for the weeks shop. I'll get the clips on from Immingham on Youtube a littler later they are all ready, I couldn't do them while the cine film files were uploading all night. Here are some shots from Wrexham.

I'm working my way through the three volumes of Immingham trucks taken yesterday then I have an overnight transfer of data for digitised films to go to Bridgeman who will be marketing the films for commercial use. This will only apply to the various collections owned by PMP. Tomorrow I'm filming at Wrexham and Birkenhead. I've also made more progress on the diorama with street furniture sprouting up all over the place. Here are some more shots of the lorries at Immingham yesterday. There will be clips on Youtube as soon as I can manage.

This morning we went shopping in Manchester, Mandy got her birthday present and some clothes, we had coffee and a cake at a cafe, the first for Mandy this year.

The rat situation has got up to a group of four at the bottom of the garden, the traps have arrived and in place, first indications are they are far too clever to step where it hurts!

A quite early start this morning and the reality of traffic getting back to pre Corona levels even with the kids on holiday. Lon, long queues stretching out through the snowy Pennines and then the crawl east through West Yorkshire, came to a halt at Halifax then stop go. The next bad congestion was on the M180 East towards Scunhorpe, resurfacing work three lanes down to one. The petrol station near the Immingham refineries is being either knocked down or rebuilt and the transport cafe now has huge barriers and a payment machine to get entry, looks like lorries only now. There were plenty of wagons there and the light stayed until lunch time then clouds gathered as I staggered to the end of the third film. I'll get the DVDs done asap, also working on the Caucasus region transport films taken 1999, a lot of them are now uploaded to the computer but need saving so they can go on the external drive and on to the shop as unedited masters.  Anyway domestic stuff tomorrow, filming buses Wednesday and Friday, hair cut Thursday. Here are shots from Immingham this morning.

The diorama is still taking up a lot of time and effort as I stitch together the first and second sections with traffic lights, pedestrian crossings, street lighting and street furniture being installed.

A quick blog as dinner is nearly ready, I've been getting all the DVD orders ready fopr mAndy to pack tomorrow while I'm over at Immingham with our first visit of the year to this popular lorry destination which always delivers a great sequence of scenes and several DVDs. Hoping for a clear run over, it is motorway / dual carriage all the way. We've had a house clean session  today, coming to terms with losing our cleaners, ok saves money but time is so precious to us.

Tomorrow the shops and hair dressers etc reopen and you can eat and drink as long as it is outside. Our local is not opening until we can sit inside, really it all depends on the weather. I'll probably go filming in Wrexham some time this week to celebrate the welcome back to people from outside Wales, may be even down to Cardiff, I doubt if I'll ever want to visit Newport after the awful time I had with the shopping centre thugs who are next to the bus station, even the local police couldn't get them to listen, obey the law and calm down. How can we tolerate such behaviour but then it is no different from the right wing terrorists who are sheltered by bus companies.

I have got all the recent photographs from March and April trips filed away and put the digitised film of Portugal 1990 on to the drive I keep for OTA. I have also been downloading or should it be uploading the results of my Sept 1999 tour of the Caucasus which despite a slightly broken video camera managed to capture scenes so transient that they are now but distant memories to people in the three main countries visited and adds to the material we will have as raw archive footage, much of it has not been on DVD, those we produced were pruned down to exclude much of the non transport scenes now much in demand. It will give me things to put on Youtube.

Meanwhile among the photos I filed were those from Doncaster last week so here is a slide show of them. I have also done a lot of work on the junction outside Derby bus station on my diorama, which although not actually depicting Derby does retain a lot of the accurate layout and now is stitched to the 1980/90s scenes to the left whiich has also gained vehicles this week.

At St Oswalds this morning we had a service which was shared throughout all C of E churches which reflected on Dike of Edinburgh.

A slightly frustrating day as I'd mis numbered the latest 4 DVD covers so had to print them out after altering, the only hassle is the printer which like all Epson products has a mind of its own at times, today it was mis-feed day. We had gone out shopping early in the day and it was frosty but sunny however when we got to Handforth Dean it was heavy snow, good job Mandy has her wheelchair she would never be able to walk at all on slush. Good news though M&S was very quiet so that was a win. We got back and after lunch I cracked on with these DVDs and a bit of additional detail on the diorama including the first non bus vehicles. I've now started on the junction leading into the bus station linking the first two elements. Its quite a job keeping the scale and perspective as it blends into the backdrop. I also had a go at the SMS modern phone box model, first go I used card which was too thick so reverted to heavy paper which worked a treat and it actually looks the business. I've done some weathering on the models put in place, with the out of scale shiny finish I've found that a good old pencil eraser aka rubber vigorously applied will give a surface for weathering power to adhere to, a few nice Oxford models now look better and certainly Base models vehicles need some attention. I find the dirt colour powder best as a restrained finish, good to get those hard black tyres toned down.

Its a bit heavy going with all the Prince Phillip stuff, he would have been well brassed off by now with the fuss, I thought we could have had one day of mourning while the funeral took place at Windsor, we could have stopped the country as best we could and had a quiet day of reflection and no danger of social interaction. well Monday sees non essential shops opens and I think we can go to Wales which means a start with Wrexham, I wonder if there are any shops left open there. Mandy was reading up on Trafford Centre opening times, there is a lengthy list of shops will not reopen ( ever). Heyho never mind, here is a look at Lincoln buses Thursday in the sunshine.