SHEFFIELD AND DONCASTER TODAY

Its sometimes hard trying to decide where our film destinations for a Saturday will be, the weather, distance,time, other commitments all play a part. Our decision was made in the car park of the Church inn at Mobberley last night before Trish and Derek arrived. What a splendid evening it was, superb food the panacotta was to die for and the treacle beef was enormou, we even had Mexican wine which I must admit I'd no idea they could make good wine and this bodes well for our visit in April.

So we decided on Sheffield as I needed to cover there and it's a main centre of bus activity which normally gets annual coverage and then Doncaster as I haven't done it for a couple of years and again lots of buses but it's a difficult place with the awful bus station they built, far worse than the old one underground, dark,gloomy and the old one is still not used for anything else at all. Now things go in two ways but it's only really practical to get about 70 or 80 percent from the main side and with cloudy weather I did pretty well and got hundreds of buses in some great shots. First has still got oodles of buses in the old barbie livery which is quite rare elsewhere in the country, Streetlites seem to be everywhere. Stagecoach had r reg deckers out, I thought it was preserved at first.

Sheffield presented no hassles but the old market is coming down and I couldn't use my elevated vantage point but nevertheless I got some pretty good shots in about four main locations in the city centre and caught up with developments quite well. First commerative or heritage liveries seem all the range in South Yorkshire, there must be hundreds or was it that I saw the same buses come around several times, I expect the latter is true.I managed to get Mandy's birthday card, we had coffee in Marks and usual Bakewell tart. We even found a nice clean cafe in Doncaster and had no problems filming there, very friendly drivers at both locations. It makes a change to report back on largely ok trip to this part of Yorkshire although I had an old fellow first thing at Sheffield who gave me a mouth full as he walked past, mental illness who knows? Anyway slide show tonight from Sheffield.

I've got the first 2 of the Manx Electric 100 week in 1993 ready and clips will be on Youtube this evening. Just had one of Mandy's home made curries and waiting for a rice pudding to brown up.