The future of rallies in the North East
The future of rallies in the North East
Did anyone bother with Seaburn today? I did and to be honest, I wish I hadn't bothered.
Whilst I'd say there were fewer in attendance from previous years, there was a good selection of buses, but there didn't seem to be much going on. Everything parked up tightly together in a bit of a mix and match, which makes it difficult to get any decent photos of stuff standing static. I noticed there were fewer non-PSV in attendance this year too, with more cars than commercial vehicles.
Arriva brought nowt, Stagecoach brought a single gas bus and GNE brought about five buses with them. Six if you include the one they'd sent up from EYMS.
I tried for a couple of bus runs, but this ended up being its usual unorganised chaos. The programme for the rally doesn't include a bus timetable, and there is nobody on hand at either of the stops, so you've no idea what was going on. I tried a run from the Tram stop first, which was supposed to be on the hour. The hour came and went, and about 10 minutes later, Darlington Corporation AHN 451B pulled in. The driver had just pulled up to drop a previous load off, and I don't think was really expecting to take a second load out, but nobody else had turned up for the couple dozen of us standing waiting. So kudos to the driver for taking us out for a run. This is a really nicely preserved bus and one I had never travelled on before, so it was worth the wait.
The second run we tried to wait for was from the usual stop at the top of Seaburn Park. We'd got there about 20 past, and there was already a queue waiting. This stop was timetabled for 00 and 30 past each hour. By quarter to, there was still no sign of the heritage bus, and the queue was backed up right along the street. We decided to just give it a miss and head off at this point.
Its a bit disappointing that there wasn't a steward around at either stop. They could have given us somewhat of a clue what was going on, or at the very least, they could have left a crystal ball for us instead.
In summary, I'd probably give the event a 2/10. The 2 is generous. I continue to remain baffled at how unorganised our rallies are up here (500 Group's day is the exception to that), compared to anywhere else I've been to in the country. We seem to be too content on having four poor rallies a year, rather than focusing efforts on having one brilliant rally each year.
