Old buses in Folkestone

It's amazing how many people like old buses.
The M & D and East Kent Bus Club have been running a few events every year sponsored by Stagecoach. The latest of these took place on Easter Monday in Folkestone.
In these events the vintage buses take over some of the routes in and around the town and run to the regular Stagecoach schedules. Passengers travel for free.
My brother brought his son (aged 9) and a friend and this was their first experience of travelling on a double-decker bus. They chatted to an old man who told them how he and his friends used to collect bus tickets in their teens.
The youngsters were fascinated to hear that in those days just after the Second World War, tickets were made of card and had every fare stage on the route printed on them. The conductor used a hole punch to indicate which stop the passenger could travel to.
There were six different values colour coded to enable them to be easily identified.
The bus I was on made two trips to Folkestone Harbour, one to Hythe, two to Cheriton and finished up with one to Hawkinge Battle of Britain Museum.
The last one was a bit of a challenge for the old bus as the final hill up to Hawkinge is very steep and she was fully loaded. In total she carried over 300 passengers and the other buses were just as full.
I wore my Garmin Foretrex 201 Wearable Personal Navigator throughout the day and it coped reasonably well with being inside a bus. The last trip was so full that I couldn't sit by a window, so it couldn't see any satellites. The rest of the day provided some useful results.
In total we travelled about 75 miles, the top speed was 45.5 mph although the manufacturer only claimed a top speed of 42mph when the bus was new.
The Dover Transport museum will be running some old buses from Whitfield to Dover on the 29th April and the The M & D and East Kent Bus Club are having another open day in Herne Bay on 5th August 2007.