Until I started driving a bus I had no idea that bus ‘trainspotters’ existed, if you know what I mean! My first introduction to a spotter came in Portsmouth: where this bus spotter’s film was made.

As I slowed entering the first roundabout after the motorway a photographer took a picture of the bus, an odd thing to do I thought. My route was to Southsea and about half way there, as I rounded a corner, the photographer was there again …. click. I began to wonder what was going on. When my passengers got off they made the comment that I seemed to be popular today. On the return trip I’d just passed the roundabout shown in the first part of the film when I spotted the photographer taking my picture again! This time I could pull up safely so I asked him what his interest in me was. “That’s 16156” (or whatever, I’m not a spotter!) “came down from Macclesfield …….” I got the full history of the bus and I think he could have told me the engine number if I’d asked.

Since then I seem to have attracted more. One guy got on the bus and said “I don’t want to go on this bus so don’t drive off. But I thought you’d be interested to see this ticket, I got it last week”. He’d got it on a Stagecoach bus in Scotland and it was printed by some new ticket machine. Absolutely fascinating, I thought :-(

A few of the drivers in the local depot are also spotters. One went on a Norwegian Fjords cruise to see the Land of the Midnight Sun ….. he came back with a photo of a Volvo something or other bus!