Regarding a two way journey from North Devon to Southampton docks.
We always travel with the same guy in a 2008 VW Transporter. Very pleasant chap, polite, clean motor etc. Nothing much wrong on the surface…..except when I arrive I feel so uncomfortable, so much so as to set me off on the wrong foot for the holiday. Seemingly un-compliant suspension, front seat squab too short and limited leg room. For the first time last week I decided to sit mid-ships thinking that between the axles would be better. It was marginally, but less legroom and still the ride issues. My Wife though thought that this VW was the best thing since sliced bread and that I was just a whingeing old Git. Moi!
However…………our man informed us just before drop off that the VW would be going in for some work last Friday and that it was unlikely to be back in service on the pick up day (yesterday) and that he would be sending a colleague (if that was OK with us). Better than walking I thought, do I have a choice? It would either be Charlie or his wife Julie. Both drove Ford Galaxy’s. His a 130bhp Manual and hers a 115 Auto’. Our man also informed us that Charlie was a bit slow (slower than his Wife) and never had a hope of getting any points. This didn’t give me much to smile about I can tell you and it was Julie I prayed for (careful you lot).
I know how super intelligent you all are and that you will have already guessed the outcome at departures. Yep……..right again, CHARLIE. In we get and orf we go. 130 bhp 6-speed manual, Ghia no less, not the Ghia standard I remember though and I have had one or two in previous lives. All Galaxy’s (taxi’s) I have been in felt that they were falling apart. This one didn’t, but everything looked so cheap and so tacky. I am in the front and Erin is now fast asleep and snoring in the back. My seat squab fine. Legs outstretched, chilled water and blankets provided and a crisp copy of the Times to peruse. Probably required to get through the boredom of steady Eddie’s driving………….Not so….Oh! no…….no way………Mrs. MD has now apologised to me for the whingeing old Git thoughts and that the Galaxy with Charlie at the helm is now the way to go.
Facts: He was steady, but I hardly noticed it and the journey just disappeared and for once I was relaxed, (despite being violently ill on the Friday night) We made two stops, the first at the Podimore Little Chef for a pee (nice clean place) My my, haven’t they changed. And the second at Morrison’s at Tiverton for supplies. Total down time thirty minutes. Journey time difference between the two legs was I guess about fifteen minutes longer coming home. Charlie NEVER exceeded 70 mph once and where poss’ stayed 63-65 mph. If there was any minor frustration it was dropping into 4th at 30mph regardless of the circumstances. However this loading of the flywheel has clearly had no detrimental affect as the thing is now on 347k (He bought it at 31k) and in this time apart from routine servicing it has suffered one puncture and slipped auxiliary belt!! Yesterday he travelled from Barnstaple to Bristol to Southampton to North Devon and returned 48.1 mpg. For info he gets just shy of 47mpg in the auto’. I know who we will travel with next time
BTW. He sold a previous galaxy to a guy to haul around a large family which he informs me is now on 660k without incident!
Well there’s Sunday’s sermon Chap’s
Regards…………….MD
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Interesting stuff. We (well, the Mrs) has a sharan 130bhp 6 speed. on about 75K now and we have had from 6 weeks old (5 years ago).
Our experience is much the same - only fault to date is that the aircon has just stopped which I gather may or may not be a pain to sort.
We can get 50 mpg on a gentle run, but mid 40's is more the norm, and the Mrs can be a little heavy on the gas so it gets a fair workout.
BIL also has one which is used as a taxi - around 250K on the clock, although he tells me its starting to get a little troublesome now.
Part of me wants to change it (I like the new Sharan) but the sensible side says to keep running it.
Looking on the net they do get varying reliability reports, but in my experience they are pretty good, although I would say that I think the Sharan variants look slightly better and the interiors are not quite so tacky :-)
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A friend and I went on a Battlefield Tour with the late Richard Holmes a few years ago. The "hub" was Ashford, to get there Titan Tours had laid on Transit Minibuses to bus us from the nether regions there. The female driver was slightly dotty but an excellent driver - the Transit was as comfy as any bus could be and the bonus it was just the two of us on board.
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The driver makes a lot of difference to comfort. Unless some buses have ON/OFF brakes and steering wheels that only move in 30 degree increments, it's hard to understand why some drivers use them that way. The ultimate expression of this seems to be airport car park shuttles.
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The bus we had from Ashford was the Gillingham FC team bus - very plush !
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Martin, my geography is not very good but is that not a helluva long taxi journey??
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>> Martin, my geography is not very good but is that not a helluva long taxi
>> journey??
>>
Standard for cruises - it's part of the deal.
My father-in-law is a regular cruiser (if that's what they're called :) ) and they messed up a recent trip so he was driven down from Chester in an E Class Mercedes (with 300K miles on it, but an effortless journey).
Coming back, they still hadn't sorted it out so the cruise company called a local taxi and gave the driver £145 in cash. Strikes me as not a lot for circa 450 mile round trip which would have taken a good 8 hours. And it was in a oldish Toyota Avensis, although to be fair FIL made no adverse comment about it.
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Not included from North Devon I pay for it.
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Hey Dog, what you muckin about at, you have the taxi, get in there are start earning money.
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I fail to see the 'earn' in it.
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>> I fail to see the 'earn' in it.
you begrudge paying the taxi driver?
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Taking fuel, wear and tear and the hours involved it wouldn't be for me Z.
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>>Hey Dog, what you muckin about at, you have the taxi, get in there are start earning money<
I was thinking that only this morning as it happens, I've never had a go at cabbing, even in my sowf lunden days.
K9 cabs :)
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>> I've never had a go at cabbing, even in my sowf lunden days.
I have, and I used to commute to South London from the Capital every day to do it.
It's a doddle if you can drive and decipher the A-Z, and I knew much of the Wen already before I did it. But in London a 12-hour shift is very knackering and unhealthy, and there's a lot of wear and tear on the car. Perhaps the right modern car, properly maintained, would stand up a bit better than the Singer Vogue I used. But it would suffer all right. I would expect a rural beat to be much easier on both car and driver.
You could make a sort of living in my day without robbing the punters. Judging by today's prices you still can, if you put in the hours. But what used to be a noble profession staffed by lumpen-capitalist hooligans with a bit of esprit de corps and a bit of style, driving an immense variety of gleaming or dented steeds, both suitable and unsuitable, is now a depressed regiment of mimsing, randomly swerving people carriers driven by recent immigrants fixated on their satnavs.
Eheu! Eheu!
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>>I have, and I used to commute to South London from the Capital every day to do it.
It's a doddle if you can drive and decipher the A-Z<<
There were several times I almost got into cabbing - I tried van and small lorry driving for 5 years back in the 70's so I knew my way around London and the home counties with one eye tied behind my back,
I rather fancied nights rather than days - to avoid all the traffic, I can remember the times I used to get a cab back from the Beaverwood club in Chislehurst at some awful hour and thinking how nice it must be to drive around London at night.
I well remember the Singer Vogue, I'll wager yours was the Hunter but my brother (the gangster) had one of these in the early 60's ~ en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SingerVogue.jpg
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>> I rather fancied nights rather than days - to avoid all the traffic,
Easier on the car and the driver. You do more miles and make less money than in the daytime. The real disadvantage is the unsocial hours. You can go short of sleep if you let yourself.
Yes Perro, mine was a Hunter bodied Vogue. It needed an overdrive gearbox which mine didn't have - not so much for minicabbing, just to make it a decent car. It wasn't as quick as say a Ford Corsair but it could swim along all right. They had a Hillman Super Minx with the body yr brother's Vogue had as a pool car at the tobacco company HQ I worked at in the City in the sixties. It was a nice car for those days and did have overdrive. But I preferred the beige Morris 1800 they also had.
We used to do terrific speeds along the South Bank all the time really, but especially late at night.
Punters are interesting but wearing, not often alarming. Two criminals offered me a job as a getaway driver once. I was flattered, but declined politely. They were nice about it. One could worry even in the seventies about drunk young girls too, either being sick in the car or getting molested on their zigzag way to their front doors.
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>>One could worry even in the seventies about drunk young girls too, either being sick in the car or getting molested on their zigzag way to their front doors<<
Ah ... that would have been my sister then, she was 64 last friday, and has myloma :(
I luv all those old cars really (fond mammeries) Minx, Corsair, A/M 1800 etc., I spent 78 - 92 tuning those critters at the roadside but - I don't think I'd wanna drive a Hillman Hunter today thanks :)
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>> Punters are interesting but wearing, not often alarming. Two criminals offered me a job as a getaway driver once. I was flattered, but declined politely. They were nice about it.
Mind you there was this bunch of spade kids who blagged me on the street at night in Battersea. That was illegal and I only did it twice although others did it all the time.
They were going to Stoke Newington or thereabouts, a good trip. I incautiously passed one of them the doobie I was smoking. They finished it incredibly quickly, gipped me for half the fare and scarpered giggling, the little carphounds.
I was quite annoyed for a minute or two... But at least they had the decency not to beat me up and rob me which I suppose they were more than capable of doing even in those gentler times.
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Eh, I've changed my mind about working nights A/C :(
Mind you, I used to do 7 nights a week at the Shell garage, top of Brixton Hill (on the RH side)
I'd get 'ladies' of the night coming up to my little window, asking me to get some f/letters out of the machine for them!
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AC,
Ever have to go to the cop shop with a punter who was so inebriated they couldn't/wouldn't wake up?
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>> Ever have to go to the cop shop with a punter who was so inebriated they couldn't/wouldn't wake up?
Several more or less catatonic Wp, but not quite one of those.... a hospital job perhaps rather than old bill. Tooting hospital - St Geore's is it? - had an account with my firm, urgent blood supplies across town, low mileage rate and no tip.
'Don't drink it all at once,' the Gothic haematology department wonk said gloomily as he handed over the insulated flask of precious fluid.
I did hang about and watch a couple of utterly ripped girls to their front doors though. They had tattered remnants of ladylike behaviour and felt embarrassed to be in that state. Rather sweet really.
I have to say though that minicabbing lore, culture and language made a good start but palled after about six weeks, a bit like working in a gay coffee bar. You start to feel that this is where you came in and it's all going to scroll round again.
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>> Not included from North Devon I pay for it.
>>
I guess it depends on the cruise line - my FIL pretty well only goes with SAGA and they include collection from home and travel to Southampton. I think there's a distance limit and he's failry close to it so maybe it's 250 miles.
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I wouldnt do it for 150 quid. Think the BIL charges about a ton for bristol to heathrow which is around 1.5 hours depending on time of day.
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150 ish miles from here. £340 for the return journey up from £300 a year or so ago. As I said I can't see the fun in it.
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>> 150 ish miles from here. £340 for the return journey up from £300 a year
>> or so ago. As I said I can't see the fun in it.
>>
The bonkers thing is that, for the cruise trips, they're one way. I guess they might be able to organise round-trips for those who live fairly nearby but anyone further afield needs to be leaving home at the same time as the previous cruisers are leaving the ship.
Seems ridiculously ineffecient, but the alternative is to leave passengers hanging around for hours either wating to embark, or waiting for their taxi home.
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Not quite like that. These folk do airport/dock runs and there are times when it can suit them quite well, but ya gotta like driving for sure. It would get to me all those hours being virtually immobile. On the latest journey to Sarfampton our man also carried a lady from the locality then dropped her off in Portsmouth, then made his way to Gatwick for an overnight stay to bring 4 persons back the following morning, so slightly more lucrative if it works out like that. We received a £40 discount for 'allowing' the other passenger to travel with us and of course he then had her fee.
Martin.
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Out of interest, anyone know what it would cost to park long-term at So'ton docks for the length of an average cruise (say 3 weeks)?
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...I wouldnt do it for 150 quid...
Looks to me like the driver has worked this quite well.
He's taken £170 off Martin, maybe £70 off the 'passenger', and then must be at least £250 to bring the four punters back from Gatters.
That's £500 - more with tips - for two longish, but not ridiculously long, days driving.
I wouldn't fancy it as job, but were you a taxi driver, I think you would find that schedule and remuneration acceptable.
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I didnt realised so many people got taxis to airports from far away till my Auntie in Hereford said she got one to Heathrow.
When you look for them, there are cabbies from the 4 corners of the UK at the London Airports.
If I lived out in the sticks I would do airport runs. Good solid money, long runs.
Round here its cut throat, a run to Heathrow is now down to 20 quid, and Gatwick is 30.
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...Round here its cut throat, a run to Heathrow is now down to 20 quid, and Gatwick is 30...
A fast black from central London to Heathrow is anything from £42 to £80.
Dont you just love black cab drivers?
"How much to Heathrow, mate?"
"Well, it could be forty quid, or it could be double."
www.tfl.gov.uk/gettingaround/taxisandminicabs/taxis/1140.aspx
And don't forget the extra £2.40 if you are being so difficult as to want to do the journey the other way.
At least they no longer charge extra for luggage.
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If you want to annoy a black cab driver at Heathrow, ask to be taken somewhere close, we have an office in Feltham, always a popular ride.:-)
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Lazy git, get the free shuttle to T4 and walk to Bedfont!
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>> Lazy git, get the free shuttle to T4 and walk to Bedfont!
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Yes, over the bridge to the Hilton and you are well on the way.
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>> If you want to annoy a black cab driver at Heathrow, ask to be taken
>> somewhere close, we have an office in Feltham, always a popular ride.:-)
>>
In the past I have always tried to play fair with them by saying that I understand the law re "must take you" but if you can find me an alternative cab ( usually one just dropping off a fare) them I will take that.
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Trouble with heathrow is they get Queued off site with a ticket system before they are allowed "next in". They can wait for hours for the chance to get in, and they have to pay to do it.
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...and they have to pay to do it...
Well, you have to pay because they charge an extra £2.40 for picking up from Heathrow.
www.tfl.gov.uk/gettingaround/taxisandminicabs/taxis/1140.aspx
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>> they get Queued off site with a ticket system ..... They can wait for hours for the chance to get in,
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I was aware of the queues hence my offer to the cabbie. I used to live in Hounslow - another short trip location
>> and they have to pay to do it.
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I was not awre of that added factor.
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I believe the position used to be that if they were back within 15 minutes they did not have to go back in to the remote queue again
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...I believe the position used to be that if they were back within 15 minutes they did not have to go back in to the remote queue again...
I knew they had a way of dealing with local runs.
Couldn't remember what it is, but I'm sure commerdriver is right.
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The charge to enter the taxi feeder park at heathrow is £6.40
Taxis can wait 5 hrs plus on a bad day to be sent down to one of the terminals to get a job
The local ticket system allows 1hr return time if the journey is within a certain radius of LAP
the return time was extended some time ago to stop the wacky races on the A4
I avoid the place
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Does a lot of gambling still go on in the feeder park?
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I think so, personally I am not prepared to gamble 5 hrs and £6 when the downside could be a local
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An interesting difference - mikeyb
