Smile and wave boys!

My intention wasn't to use a similar title to my last post for this one, but the jolly crew at Simonds followed Anglian's example today on their first day of operating services 85 and 86. I planned to travel the same route as I followed on Friday to photograph Simonds' vehicles in the same spots as the Anglian ones I took that day. Due to the lack of sun though, and other unforseen issues I didn't quite manage all of them.

Enviro200 MX11JYP looking a bit confused on the '86A'

MX11JYO passes 'the pink tree' as I shall now refer to it

The first stop of the day was on The Street, in Bergh Apton where I could see through the bushes down the road quite far so that I could see the bus about thirty seconds before it would come round the corner which gave me plenty of time to get into position. As it did appear, I nearly forgot to take the photo because I was marvelling at how the driver had seemed to have driven all the way from Norwich displaying 86A rather than just 86. The 86A operates from Simonds' depot in Diss, to the 86's starting point in Haddiscoe, at 0550 in the morning. It's purely for operational purposes so they don't have to run empty all the way to Haddiscoe but I wasn't expecting to photograph it, not until the summer anyway!

Having done that, I headed to Rockland St Mary in order to photograph the 85. I had timed it just right to photograph Enviro200 MX11JYO coming past the same cottage and blossoming tree that I'd watched Anglian's 959 AU08GLY go past just a couple of days earlier. Although the sun wasn't out this time it still made for a rather picturesque photograph.

Smile and wave boys!

Rather pleased with the results so far, I decided to head back to Bergh Apton to intercept the 86 again as it made it's way back from Haddiscoe. The idea was to photograph it displaying the correct destination screen this time and fortunately for me, it was! After a twenty minute wait for the scheduled time sat in my car, MX11JYP re-appeared in the distance so I took my stance at the side of the road where I photographed the bus driving past, complete with three happy looking Simond's employees all waving back at me. 

Thanks to those chaps for making my photo 100 times better with your kind gesture and I'll probably see you again when the sun decideds to make an appearence this week so make sure you save a wave for then!