Rame Beer & Buses

Sadly I was unable to attend this year but Mark Bailey has once again stepped in with some great photos he has been kind enough to share with us…

The Rame Beer & Buses annual event, now in its fourth year, seems to be growing in popularity, as despite the gloomy drizzly weather on Saturday many hundreds of people were out enjoying a pub crawl around the Rame peninsula, with around 20 buses providing the transport.  The participating pubs appeared to be doing a brisk trade with food and drinks, and many buses (including double-deckers) were fully laden and with standing passengers.

Devon General 942 (VDV 142S)  Bristol VRTSL6G / ECW convertible open-top loading in Crafthole on route C.

Plymouth 201 (DDR 201C)  Leyland Atlantean PDR1/1 / Metro-Cammell arriving in Millbrook on route C.

Tamar Coaches T500 TCL Volvo B8RLE / MCV eVoRa loading in Millbrook on route A.   This was the only non-preserved bus to participate in the event.

Western National 1254 (VOD 124K) Bristol LHS6L / Marshall arriving in St John on route B.

Western National 1557 (FDV 787V) Bristol LHS6L / ECW loading in St John on route B.

There has been a follow up post on Facebook from David Jory which I am sure he wont mind me posting here in case people miss it on Facebook (or more likely its weird algorithms lead to people not seeing it…)

A big thank you to everyone who attended and supported our event yesterday. The day was a great success and reading the posts/comments I am glad to hear that so many people enjoyed it, it certainly makes it worthwhile. Please do share your photos, they are great to see! Additionally a big thank you to all the volunteers, bus crews and vehicle owners, who without them we could not put on this event. We operated a record number of buses with a route plan/timetable based on the feedback and lessons of previous years. We feel 'on the whole' we got it right this year and we will stick to this years route format with a few minor adjustments. The overwhelming feedback was that the day was smoother than previous years which is great to hear.

A big thank you from myself to Laurence Mayhew who did the majority of the planning and organising and was the overall lead for the days event. The credit must foremost go to him.

A big thank you to everyone who bought a program or otherwise made a donation in some way. The proceeds of which helps us with the fuel and other associated costs. We are sorry to those who wanted a program but were not able to get one, a lesson for next year is for us to also sell programs at Polbathic so people on that end of the network can purchase a program. Now that we're happier with the overall plan, we hope we can get programs out earlier next year for pre-order.

We thank you all for your understanding when we did have issues. We had a bus breakdown at Millbrook which meant we missed a journey. We had a tow truck on standby which enabled us to get the bus on the move quickly which was good for passengers, crews and other road users. We appreciate some people were home later than expected, but we did our very best to get everyone moving as quickly as possible and ensuring no one was left standed at the end of the day.

Unfortunately we did experience damage to C412HJN, owned by Laurence Mayhew. I would like to thank everyone for their support. The person/party responsible has got in contact and it was an accident but was by their own admission preventable. I would like to publically thank them for getting in touch. We all make mistakes. The emergency window is there for just that, emergencies, and is designed as an exit point for persons only. We are on the hunt for a replacement window and have spread the word around the vintage bus community.

I drove the replacement vehicle which had to finish it's journey before I could carry on with the last C service. Thank you to those who did bare with us. Apologies to those who arranged alternative transport, we hope it hasn't put you off next year. We did call in each of the pubs on that route to make sure everyone who needed a bus was on one so hopefully no one was left behind.

We will be having a meeting shortly and will discuss our plans for next year, however our intention at this stage is to hold the event next year. We will publish a date shortly.