Fifty Parade

Sometimes you just get too much choice when you want to catch a bus. I have realised recently that there is an extra 50 leaving Derriford Hospital at around 17:10 which is a double decker. This brings out the anorak in me so I have started to leave work a bit earlier to try and catch it as I prefer the Volvo's to the plastic Darts any day, Because this run is an extra bus it does often follow a standard low floor Dart on the 50 run anyway. This means I have to let the single deck 50 go by and then hopefully flag down the double decker - one more than one occasion the single decker has pulled up to the stop and the double decker has overtaken.

Tonight there was really heavy traffic around Derriford so I expected a bit of fun - I was at the bus stop watching three 50s all following each other coming towards me. This time there was a bit of a gap between them so i let the two Darts go by and managed to get the proper bus to stop. Driver was amused I had let the Darts go by but understood my preference for real buses. We then followed in typical leap frog fashion with all three 50's in convoy. Each having a fair load of passengers but they could all have fitted onto the one double decker.

Having arrived home in style and having a joke with the driver about the situation I was even more surprised to find another 50 right behind us. These four 50's will then have travelled all the way into town in convoy. Great fun for me - but surely there must have been a lot of passengers getting cross tonight as somewhere there must have been a 45 minute gap in the service at least!