Well, made it to Victoria!! traffic was light, but had a few 'incidents'
Started even before I had left Bath. I had reversed out of the bay and had just started to make my way out of the bus station when a bus appeared alongside, not a problem but then a guy appears running along side the coach. This is so dangerous as if he slipped he would go straight under the wheel. This is one situation that I do not stop for. Once I have closed the doors and started to reverse next stop is, the next stop. This guy did not give up and chased me round the bus station! I have not heard whether he got on the next bus.
Had a call from control, could I pick up some extra passengers from Swindon? their coach had been delayed, I assume by the flooding around Gloucester. Arrived at Swindon on time and started to load, I came back from loading some luggage in the rear locker when a passenger informed that 'a couple of druggies had got on' I wandered down the coach and in fact I could smell them before I could see them! I decided to act cool and asked them for their tickets. They said they wanted to go to London. I gave them 5 seconds to leave before I called the police. One of them said could I count, so I did and got to 4 before they got up. At this point and wondered if this had been such a good idea. I kept out of 'striking' range and herded them off the coach. They then started to get aggressive so I just kept pushing!! They got off but then tried to get in the lockers!! I did consider dropping the locker door but did not fancy wiping the blood off. They finally wandered off into Swindon. I continued to load the remaining passengers and called control and Bath to warn other drivers.
Off we went again and another call from control. Can I pick up a stranded passenger from Reading services. No problem, but wondered how I would find them, should not have worried as I a pulled into the coach park they was a young man holding a National Express ticket. No further problems even Heathrow was fairly quite despite the problems on Thursday.
Had a long lay over in London so had a nice lunch and did the shopping and read a book until 1715 when it was time to return to Victoria for the 1800 departure.
1 comment:
Interesting about the druggies, in the sense that they were able to get on without you noticing. I sometimes use NatEx (with only 1 Megabus a day from Winch to London I'll go up on 'our' bus and come back on 'yours' if I've something to do in London) and I've noticed how lax the ticket checking appears to be :-( For example, at Heathrow the NatEx driver organises luggage going into the hold while those pax who've had their luggage loaded just climb aboard as do those who have only hand luggage and haven't seen the driver! I've never seen heads counted - only a check that there aren't more pax than seats by ensuring no one is standing!
When I pick-up I close the door as I get off, load the luggage and then open the door and check ticket references as each pax boards.
Malcolm http://loades.net/megabusblog
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