I'm sitting with a cup of tea in a lovely B&B in Bournemouth. That tells you that we made it down to the South Coast yesterday, but our journey on the bus didn't go quite as smoothly as I'd planned....

After a great deal of careful preparation we set off pretty much on time yesterday morning. Oil, water and fuel were all checked and everything looked good until we pulled up after an hour or so for our first break.

The water level was surprisingly low, with no apparent explanation - until Andy spotted the gloopy greenish-blue liquid pouring down the inside of the windows on the lower deck of the bus. It looked a bit like the ectoplasm I remember seeing on the ‘Ghost Buster' film I watched back in the 80's, but Andy assured me it was probably just radiator fluid. Still not nice - and I didn't know whether I should be more worried about our lovely hemp covered seats being ruined, or the implications for us continuing our journey to Bournemouth.

Fortunately, the scenario was nowhere near as bad as when the engine shot a con-rod through its casing last October on our way to the bus's first event in Bath - and Andy reckoned that all we needed to do was isolate the pipes, so that the bit that was leaking (somewhere in the heat exchange system that's supposed to keep us warm inside the bus but doesn't...) would stop pouring ectoplasm/radiator fluid all over our nice hemp seats. Of course the seats wouldn't have been the only thing to be damaged if we hadn't spotted the leak; the radiator would have lost more and more water and the engine would eventually have overheated which would have caused serious problems.

We have a good set of tools on board for emergencies, but didn't have everything we needed to fix this particular problem, so, as we were not far from Swindon, I called Bob Gillespie at Thamesdown Transport, who sent someone out to help us. (Thank you Bob!) A few hours after we first found the leak, the problem had been fixed and we were able to continue on our way to Bournemouth.

We finally arrived at Transdev Yellow Bus depot just before 8pm last night and were met there by Transdev Supervisor Don Whitemore who came out especially to greet us and show us where the bus will be safely parked overnight for the next ten days.

Today (Friday) is the launch day for Bournemouth & Poole's Big Green Fortnight so it's really very exciting to be here - and I feel really proud that the Big Green Bus is playing such a major part in it.

We're going to have a late breakfast this morning and then have a busy day ahead of us so I'd better get up!

B