As the old line goes, show me a marathon, I’ll run a mile.

This weekend I’ve covered some 400 miles, albeit few of them on foot, but still with the same mixture of exhaustion and satisfaction that running promises to provide.

Here are 26 highlights from my weekend…

#1: The Tuckers Maltings Beer Festival. Last year I travelled for three hours to enjoy Devon’s finest array of 270 West of England brews. This year it took me 35 minutes on the train, and cost £3.50 in train fare.

#2: Box Steam’s ‘Dark & Handsome’, the best of the beers I tried. “Massive flavour, subtle finish, 9/10” say the scribbled tasting notes in the margin of my programme. Sums up my evening beautifully.

#3: Being pursued by a drunk woman looking for beer advice, and being gently warned off by her boyfriend. She thought I was an expert; he thought I was a threat. The wonders of beer.

#4: Breakfast at Cap’n Jaspers, the Plymouth legend who supplies hot-dogs by the yard, and whose ‘shack’ sports an array of gadgets powered by old wiper motors. His many relishes have become my bi-weekly treat. Twice a week.

#5: Finding my newly washed Beetle had survived the night without accumulating a single streak of seagull shat.

#7: A journey to Clevedon on a Bristol Lodekka, sitting behind the driver. He took a wrong turning, and ended up performing a three-point-turn in a side street opposite Clevedon pier.

#8: Being recognised by a friend of my father, despite not having seen him for fifteen years. “How are YOU?” he asked in a familiar brummy accent. “Haven’t you grown up like your Dad?”. Yes - though you’d never catch him riding on a Bristol LH…

#9: Roaring through the North Somerset countryside and spotting Diana Thomas driving the other way, 100-odd miles from our respective homes.

#10: Being called back by Diana Thomas, who’d spotted “the kind of bus David Sheppard would mess about on” coming towards her. Lovely to catch up – let’s arrange that binge.

#11: Listening to Clifford T Ward’s beautiful ‘Mantlepieces’ in the places it always makes me think of.

#12: Playing Clifford T Ward’s beautiful ‘Mantlepieces’ on the radio, to the places it always makes me think of.

#13: Having this week’s Countdown Challenge resolved by Mary in Melksham, whose calls I used to answer at Radio Bristol back in 1485. I still remember her number by heart. Just as well – we had to call her back…

#15: A post lunch walk down towards Portwrinkle and Whitsand Bay. The post-lunch walk back up wasn’t such a highlight, however.

#16: Completing ‘the other end’ of the 81C, surely one of the world’s most breathtaking bus routes, and just as surely my favourite for so many reasons. I won’t bore you further.

#18: Being engrossed in conversation at the bar by one of life’s most entertaining beards, itself a shield for one of the most engaging raconteurs you could wish to meet.

#19: Discovering that the engaging raconteur behind the beard was in fact a retired BBC Editor, now living in the South West to indulge his passion for lifeboats.

#20: Becoming so engaged in conversation that I failed to notice the Cremyll ferry arriving, and departing, from the other side of the landing stage, and having to catch the bus home. The 81C at sunset… Shame.

#21: Having my first wee on the Torpoint Ferry. Surprising this, given the frequency of my visits of late (to Torpoint, I mean). I should add that there are facilities on board, and not just a deck.

#22: Cooking with my beautiful new garlic bulbs from Bideford. Ever since my visit to a garlic farm on the Isle of Wight (not such an unlikely garlic capital, it turns out), I’ve toured the UK’s greengrocers in search of decent stuff – and finally I’ve found a good source. The cloves are huge, peel easily, and taste marvellous. When I told the woman behind the counter hers was the best garlic around, she seemed content. “Ohh”, she said – “we’d bett’r make a sign”.

#23: Buying a DVD copy of The Titfield Thunderbolt for a fiver, from a man who clearly thought it was porn. In a way, it is… more breathtaking views of Somerset.

#25: Taking my new models to meet their big cousins. The colours aren’t quite right, but we’ll let them off. It’s the weekend.

#26: The serenity of Torpoint depot at sunset, where buses are being washed to the sound of classical music on the radio. Roll over, Beet-hos'em.

As the other old line goes, I’m back at work tomorrow – for a rest.

You won’t be surprised that I’ve many stories to tell about buses breaking down.

I could regale you with tales of bump-starting a fully laden 70-seat double-decker on a hill in the middle of Southampton, or the time we (and 40 passengers) had to help a friend by pushing his coach off the forecourt at Marylebone station. Or I could recount the hours I spent in the middle of the A303, cooling down our Bristol SU after it just squirted gallons of boiling water over itself and my father, who happened to have the driver’s window open on a hill…

But tonight’s story floats to the top. Not only does it involve two buses breaking down, neither of which was my own, but much of the drama takes place away from dry land. There: I’ve got you.

At 2024 this evening, I was mildly disappointed when a bus arrived at the stop outside Torpoint bus depot to take me home to Plymouth. It meant an evening’s adventure had reached its final stage, and I would soon be crossing the River Tamar back home. (At this point you need to know that the 81 bus route - one of the world's finest - crosses the river that separates Devon and Cornwall by literally driving aboard the Torpoint chain ferry.)

Lucky, then, that the passengers were immediately ushered off, and told the bus wasn’t fit to continue its journey. Instead, the driver was despatched to retrieve a replacement bus (same type) from the depot itself, and we all climbed aboard the saviour bus with much contented tittering.

As the driver made his mercy call back to base, you could sense there was much jeering from his pals.

“Yes, yes – same bus as last week. Yes – same problem. Same place – yes, ON the ferry …”

That’s all very well, but when you’re a man in no particular hurry, with no aim other than to enjoy the adventure of a favourite bus route, it would be rude not to stay and see the resolution.

So… back and forth we sailed between counties, every other time with the bus facing the ‘wrong’ way, until finally a First engineer’s van turned up on the Devon shore to boost start the bus.

“We don’t f*cking need this, this time of night” the mechanic told the driver.

“You’re telling us”, said the driver, nodding to his solitary passenger, who was secretly delighting in the whole episode.

“We’ll go the pretty way” he said, cutting off the twists of the normal 81 route. It was like getting a big taxi home.

As I stepped off the bus at Bretonside bus station, he earnestly excused the evening in the most heartfelt apology I’ve ever received from First.

“Sorry about the f*ck ups”, he said – “we did change the batteries on this thing last week – must be something else”.

“Don’t worry”, I reassured him – “I’ve had much worse”.

Good old Bank Holidays.

In just four days, I’ve caught up with four of my best friends, spent a night in a caravan, sipped a non-alcoholic cocktail, visited my beloved Bristol, been held hostage at my own gate by two teenage strangers who forced me to drink vodka, eaten an ice cream which turned out to be a ball of clotted cream (come to Devon soon), been a witness to a glassing, and got myself sunburnt on one boat and soaked to the skin on another. It’s no wonder I feel so relaxed.

I’ve also had one of the most charming encounters of my life.

You’ll remember (from this tale) that I’ve become quite keen on collecting my eBay purchases in person. What was once a policy of convenience to save on postage costs has quickly turned into a pastime in its own right; the adventures that ensue are often every bit as satisfying as the win itself, especially when one has interests as, erm, ‘specialised’ as mine.

“How uncanny”, I ventured.
“I have in front of me a photograph of some buses taken at Cheltenham Racecourse in the ‘70s”.

“FLFs?” he asked. “Six of them, lined up nose to tail? Under heavy cloud?”

Indeed.

“I took that”.

Wow. Granted, there was always a high chance that the seller of a Bristol Omnibus sign might be something of a bus enthusiast; but as for being the photographer who shot the picture I bought from a little stall in Bristol some years ago, now enlarged and framed on my living room wall…

It was uncanny, a great meeting of minds. I was invited into the house by the seller’s wife, and shown to a room so full of bus memorabilia that I almost mistook it for my own. Over tea and biscuits, I was treated to some tales of what it was like to ride the buses in Bristol in the ‘60s, illustrated by more photos from one of the most extensive collections I’ve ever seen. Thirty years between buyer and seller, we talked like old friends for an hour.

I’m delighted I plumped to collect. Normally when something like this changes hands, a little bit of its history is lost in the jiffy bag. Thanks to the kind hospitality of Colin and his wife, this has not only reached its new home intact, but with a new chapter of sentimentality attached. If only all Parcel Agents were that good these days...