24 Hours To Norwich

A Blog with quite a story as far as i am concerned this morning, my weekend began by spending 24 Hours on Harbour Radio doing a Charity Sponsored Marathon from 8am on Saturday, finishing at 8am on Sunday morning then having an hour and a half to go home, freshen up and return to Caister Road in time to board Routemaster JJD480D at 9.30 for the trip to the Norwich Classic Bus Running Day based at County Hall. Sleep was not an issue as i had been looking forward to attending and also the fact that blog owner Roy was away on family duties and he insisted i appear on behalf of the blog! (Only Joking).

First Public outing for former ECOC Bristol VR JNG50N with new owner Viv Carter, a credit to him for the work done!

Chris Speed invited myself and Colin White from the Eastern Transport Collection along for the trip aboard 39480 which did not look out of place amongst many classic ECOC vehicles attending and also found itself in use doing shuttle journeys around the city and a trip to look round First's Roundtree Way Depot for an insight into how First maintain their Norwich Fleet and what entails keeping the services running on a day to day basis.

Inside Roundtree Way Depot, Trident 33159 is up in the air awaiting a new engine to be fitted

A Journey around the city aboard Ipswich based heritage liveried ALX400 32479 was an eye opener simply seeing the volume of people who were in the city observing the classic buses and wanting to ride them, we pulled up at Thorpe Station (in a vehicle driven by another Thorpe, Joe in this case!) to be greeted by at least 40 people waiting to grab a ride back to County Hall which deemed difficult for us as we were already near to capacity!

32479 sits at Roundtree Way, about to have a new Headlight bulb fitted! (Good Job you were driving Joe)

County Hall proved an excellent base for the event with parking and plenty of good photo spots on the site, also nice to catch up with fellow bloggers, Sam Larke, Steve W, Clive Nixon as well as our Beccles reporter Tim Miller and Chris Dugdell & David Smith from Konectbus.

The Very Smart Eastern Counties RLE747 GNG349N in the Sunshine with Colin Apps at the wheel

All my photos will be uploaded to my Flickr site in due course as i did book today (Monday) off work for recovery purposes following my 24 Hours in a Radio Studio, which i shall be back to my normal slot of 7pm on Thursday Nights on www.harbourradio.co.uk  (Shameless Plug, i know!)

Lodekka 557BNG at County Hall (Note Photo Bomber Chris Dugdell!)

A very enjoyable day was had by all i am sure, well done to Neil Chilvers of the EATM for his organisation and members of both the Eastern Transport Collection and Ipswich Transport Museum and finally my buddy Chris Speed for his part in orgainising the County Hall site and the depot trip to Roundtree Way and also non Bus related thanks for the Kebab at 2am on Sunday morning in the studio!

Final photo is JJD480D returning to County Hall with a full load after a trip into Norwich with Chris at the wheel

 Yours Sincerely, Tired of Ormesby St. Margaret.