Our park and Ride service started from the outer car park and travelling to the inner harbour and return. A friend of mind who owns an ex-devon general, Albion Nimbus, also provide the same service.

We drove virtually, non-stop from  9.30am. to 5.00pm and carried between us, around 700 passengers through-out the day.  A few passengers complained because we were not able to take them into the town area, ( approx 5 miles away) and some “locals” tried to cash in on the free rides to do their shopping run as Asda was on-site.

The only thing that spoiled the day, was that we stopped for a cup of tea at 5.30pm. and the bus failed to start again. The symptoms of a flat battery was diagnosed and so a phone call home to Sue for help was required. It wasn't long before Sue turned up with a pair of freshly charged batteries, but after fitting, they also failed to work.  We changed batteries with the Albion and that failed, but my batteries started the Albion? I had noticed that when I fitted the last cable to the battery, the connector flashed like a firework display, so I thought that we must have something still switched on. A thorough check was made, and I discovered that it was our new Speedo head as the culprit. Unplugged it, fired up the bus and it went first go, so another trip back to the garage to complain would be in order.

We were quite surprised to meet a couple of people from Abertillery, who we had previously met, when we were there in June. Also, we had quite a few other welsh folks on board at various times, through out the day. So, at the end of the day, we all enjoyed ourselves, and have been asked to do it again next year.

I case your wondering, this dragon racing is where you get teams of oarsmen, in a boat, two feet wide and about sixteen feet long and race from one end of the harbour to the other. the boats are very unstable as they are only about twelve inches high !! A man stands on the front waving a dragon shape flag.  (which makes the boat very unstable, also). draw your own conclusions !!!!