Cold, Windy, Dull and Very Quiet.

Just in case no one believed me. And one other point, there were over 150 other drivers receiving a similar Diploma so we are providing a very safe bus service here in the Bay.

Yesterday was very windy, as was today and being an easterly it was cold. But yesterday the sun shone all day where as today it was dull. Yesterday was busy, today was very quiet.

An other difference between today and yesterday was today the waves crashing over the sea wall were 10 feet high and the road was closed at 18:30, ten minutes after high water. Yesterday the waves were 25 feet high but no one told the powers that be and the road remained open. Strange.

Tomorrow the wind is forecast for easterly, which brings the sea over what is laughingly called the sea wall and 23 mph which is certainly strong enough to give everything on the road at Livermead a drenching. High Tide is for 18:52 by which time I will have finished for the weekend. I might go down and get some photos of buses vanishing under the sea.

No Killer 50 Foot Waves

Bit of a disappointment, the wind mostly blew itself out during the night and changed course a little to the south which meant Berry Head protected the Bay, which is it's job with all those Napoleonic Forts up there. Anyway it seems to be a good job we didn't end up on the diversion. Some from the depot apparently took a bus round the diversion just to make sure the trees hadn't got too big since we last used the route, which was almost a year ago. It wasn't trees that were the problem though but parked cars along the way which made it almost imposable to get the bus through. And that was without all the other traffic that has to use this road when then sea front is closed. A couple of years ago it was so bad the 20 min trip from Torquay to Paignton took an hour. In the past we have used the ring road which though longer does tend to take less time, the problem is it misses 7 bus stops out. The complicated route past all the tree branches and between all the parked cars only misses out 5 stops. We will have to wait for the next storm to see what happens. Another problem was that some newer drivers on the 12/12A route haven't been route learned on the diversion, a bit like me the first time I used it and ended up in a 9 foot wide road with a hill in the middle and a nasty bend just over the hill. The tricky part was when 3 cars suddenly came the other way and had to reverse 50 yards.

No East wind forcast for the next 5 days so no chance of the sea front being washed away just yet.

Maybe the council will build a bigger sea wall (but only if they win the lottery).