Our first Edwards’ trip in quite a while, so some comparisons with Leger are inevitable.

It is, without a doubt, easier to travel in our own car, park it for free at their deport (just 40 minutes away) and hand over the suitcases. Previously it was taxi, wait for feeder coach, possibly transfer to another coach and travel to Folkestone to change coaches again.

There’s a comfortable departure lounge at their depot and we board our tour coach on time. There is the possibility of a coach changeover at Cardiff West; we missed out on this but it may happen in the future.

A similar thing happens at Magor Services for passengers from the Gwent area and this is where a problem arose (which web found a bit amusing). 

There were only 2 tours departing today and so, by Magor, the drivers (only 1 per coach) thought they’d nailed everything down, and didn’t bother to head-count their coaches. After all, on our coach we all stayed on-board, and only 6 passengers were joining - simple! Not so. Complaisancey has its own rewards.

Two additional dim-wits had crept aboard and, when the driver began describing the tour they announced they weren’t going to Eastbourne, they were going to Weymouth. Oops. There’s not a lot of the routes that overlap, so we diverted to a service station on the M5 to hand them over. Forty minutes of our lives never to be recovered.

Apart from that everything was fine. Comfortable coach (not a Luxuria but good enough). No on-board refreshments (note to selves). There was a 45 minute lunch stop in Reading. We arrived around 16:30 and checked in.