There was not wi fi connection at the B&B unlike previous years and an attempt at the pub on Friday night met with failure so here I am with lots to catch up on and little time to do it. We went up to Scotland on Friday early setting off to try and avoid the bad weather which we knew would hit about mid afternoon. We had a good enough journey up, we now refuel at ASDA at North Carlisle turn off near Stobarts it usually has the cheapest fuel anywhere in nthe UK. We then carried on up to Fife stopping for a drink just before the Forth road crossing, it was fascinating to see how far work had progresses on the new bridge. We covered Kirkcaldy, Glenrothes and then back to Dunfermline, my luck ran out about 3pm when it started to rain quite heavily. Dunfermline had lots of new buses and I got a good selection before I had to retreat from the weather. We them headed up to Lathalmond museum and got the PMP stand set up. The nice clean and polished van didn't look quite so striking by this time, I'd also touched up all the blemishes on the wheel hubs, getting ready to keep it for the long haul as hopefully the fuel injector problems are well sorted. We then headed on to our digs with Pat and Norman at Loch Fitty near Kelty and then got a taxi down to The Ship at Lime Kilns near Dunfermline for our evening meal. The waitress gave me the wrong wif fi code only we had already given up when the manager told me the correct one and it wouldn't then accept anything else so we didn't even get to try a blog or check the weather which we knew was going to be very wet in central Scotland so i decided that on Saturday after dropping Mandy off at Lathalmonmd museum I'd carry on up to Inverness. It is a long slow trip north but the weather did come through for me and after a slow start I battled on to get the required hour of film before i needed to set off returning by 2.30 in order to get back before the hangar was locked up with Mandy left sitting on the doorstep. It took some doing but there is usually something interesting happening at the Inverness bus station and this time it was a festival of some sort with a local independent bus operator doing a shuttle service, a couple of fire engines also showed up and Stagecoach has a half hearted display of 'green' credentials around their local electric bus services. I did manage to get back in time and recued Mandy, we had dinner at a pub in the country we'd neeb eyeing up for some time, the food was ok but it was very crowded. We went back to Pat & Normans and after fuelling up a bit at outrageous price we watched a bit of the Olympics before the news,. Sunday was a much better weather day and I spent it at the museum. Numbers of visitors and visiting buses plus Lothian collection on view were all well down but there was a great selection of interedting buses on the free services around the museum site and this made up for it. Lorries were down to just 2 which is another facet of Sunday at Lathamond which has just about vanished now. All very friendly but not so many people that knew us and 'old' faces getting thinner on the ground but with the PMP vest on I made contact with several of our customers or net viewers which was pleasant. We also caught up with some of our friends and regulars although I'd missed some being up north on Saturday. On the way back we stopped at the Plough pub near Kirkby Lonsdale, superb food and service again top class establishment I must do a review. The new printer arrived this morning, a bit ofiddly to set up on wifi but i got there in the end and caught up with DVD covers which needed printing. A huge number of DVD orders received while we were away, all cleared plus I've got the replacement stock ready save for covers. The new prints look very sharp and it is much quicker printing. I've nearly finished creating the DVDs from the weekend and have about 5 covers to create before I can list Norfolk and Scotland. I'm in the Netherlands Thursday and Friday this week covering Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Den Haag and Arhem. I must dig out the models I picked up at Lathalmond, there is a stack awaiting building of the new shed, I also got the book from MDS courtesy Mark Senior on Japanese trams which will help planning next years scheduled trip although not 100% yet. The new kitchen blind has just been fitted, I've also stacked up all the 16mm cine film waiting to be copied and made some space getting rid of all the packaging, only went to the tip last week there is another pile of boxes to go already. A few jobs still to be done but a lot achieved today. Photos from Fife last Friday. Lathalmond was our best rally regards sales in last couple of years most of this years events have been up a bit although as we go to fewer this makes sense. Comments are closed.
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PMP Sponsors the North West Vehicle Restoration Trust at Kirkby.
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