HARD WORK THE 14 HOUR DAY!

Up at 5am, out on the road by 5.30, roadworks a pain as ever and traffic still grinds to a halt by Walsall even at an early hour, so much for the SMART motorways. The head of the valleys road courtesy the EU continues to be a pain as they blast what is left of rocks in it's path in an effort to get this lonmg term project finished before we jump out of the plane named Brexit- shame it's at 30,000 without a parachute. I arrived at Merthyr about 8.40, there wasn't much of a rush hour to witness but it's fairly busy all the time, there were many oddballs wandering around, the sick of mind, the weary, the drunk, just another day in the life of aimless Methyr where a few new paving slabs aren't enough sticking plaster for a deep malaise. On the bus side there no longer seem to be any deckers working from the bus station at least not while I was there, this marks it down the ranks no end and really there is little to set the blood racing.

The next stop was at Pontypridd, casual street violence where not even the dossers would dare to tread, it's a shame decent people have to survive and live their lives among such squalor. The bus side  saw about 6 or may be 7 operators with a good assortment of buses and really as always doesn't let the place down with NAT continuing to provide the odd deckers. Time was pacing by and no chance of stopping for a brew as I had yet to reach Cardiff. There were the usual friendly bus drivers, full marks to all on that score. There were millions of French people falling out of coaches all over the place, storming into the stadium and out again 5 minutes later, I wonder what that's all about. There were random chavs providing the annoying backdrop and the weather which had started off with snow across the Midlands had been bitterly cold and seen some sleet, snow and clouds rolling around annoyingly disrupting the exposure when I use manual settings so I don't get 'rolling' destination blinds, one thing London is good for it's buses use the old fashioned roller blinds still. There were a lot of buses to be seen, time eventually started to overtake me and it was nearly 4 pm when I set off home just stopping to report progress from the services before Birmingham and I made it back to catch the end of Emerdale soap. Photos from Merthyr Tydfil from our first stop this morning.