Finally with the Cliffs situation resolved I can return to our history and I promise to all my fans (both of you!) to blog more often as I got a new laptop on hols so it makes things easier as I can write while our passengers are enjoying our various stops.
We left the story with our house in England sold and a house in Ireland bought, this was about September 97 and at this point I left my job only to be offered about 6 months more work as a consultant! At this point we both lived with my mother for a few weeks before Chris took the brave decision to move to Ireland on her own to start generating some business and sorting the vast amount of paperwork while I worked at delivering new trucks inEngland! It was a hard life living with my folks and being spoilt rotten but I made the best of it!
I really must mention the move before I go any further; we had quite a lot of furniture to move and half a bus – honestly! I bought another very rotten Bristol like Bertie which I broke for spares, so with my contacts in haulage I managed to buy a 40 foot trailer very cheap which I packed with the parts and the furniture. I then managed to borrow a 38 tonne tractor unit for a weekend (only a local job – honest!) to take the trailer to Ireland with my dad helping with the driving where it lived in our yard until the previous house owners had moved out – I then sold the trailer for a profit – ever the salesman! We then went across in our trusty Ford Escort van to do the move and get Chris settled in – I could only stay a week and so flew back with a heavy heart but it was the right thing to do as I could still make good money in England.
Chris came back for Christmas 97 and I was thrilled to see her at Teeside Airport although it made parting again in the new year even harder, in the meantime between working and trying to keep my old banger car going (company car long gone) I had time to put the finishing touches to Bertie often helped by my faithful pal and best man – Neil (thanks again!). Finally in February 98 Chris flew across and we made the best journey of all. With Bertie who typically never missed a beat and settled into his new home in our garage where he lives to this day! I then had to head back and finish some final business before I made the break together with Neil and headed across with our Sherpa Minibus (the only Barratt bus never to carry a paying passenger!). Neil stayed and worked at all the many jobs for six weeks and its fair to say we would never have got the work done without him. Finally we got to May and had all the red tape behind us and were set to operate our first tour but one small problem remained – we had no brochure, our printer at the time let us down badly and they were finally delivered a week late. I often think about the man at a certain Limerick print company who laughed at us when I complained – it gives me quite a laugh now 10 years and probably 250.000 brochures later – none of which they printed! I’am quite enjoying this revenge thing now so heres to the Area Manager at a well known Irish Bank (not Bank of Ireland who we are now with so there is a clue!) who told me that I was mad to start a tour company and would be better getting another job selling trucks! Well Mr Harry G – I think we have proved you wrong in fine style!
So our first job was a Private Hire for a well known Irish Professional Organisation and this was really a practice for our first tour on 12th May 98 – how did it go? WATCH THIS SPACE ……..
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