Mortimers Cross marks the junction of the A4110 and the B4362 north west of Leominster. There is a pub/caff there ...
... which looked less than open when Streetview passed by.
Opposite the pub on the southbound side of the road is a perfunctory bus stop layby.
It was here that a Lugg Valley bus came to a heated end!
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From the above shot it looks as if it was an engine fire caused, possibly, by a fuel leak. The fire was extinguished and the vehicle looked intact but, well, burnt at the back! There were no reports of casualties.
The next event was a visit to the8 depot from His Majesty's Vehicle Inspectorate in January 2025.
Under normal circumstances, an operator of buses is required by law to have his vehicles tested (to higher than car MOT standards) at specified regular intervals; sometimes, for busy city buses, as often as every six weeks. This usually takes place at a DVSA testing station. Additionally, inspectors can arrive at the depot for spot checks or, under the authority of a police officer, check vehicles at the roadside. 
[Health warning : fbb has not operated buses for yonks and his understanding is based on the way things were several yonks ago. E & O E!]
Sanctions can range from the most severe ...
... to delayed prohibitions; i.e. get it done quickly or else. A vehicle might be called back to the testing station to check if the work has been done.
Items that always result in some VOSA action are faults with brakes, tyres and lights.
Although press reports are often unreliable it would appear that five Lugg Valley buses were "stopped" with immediate effect. Many other safety issues were found.
If deemed necessary, a full report goes to the Traffic Commissioner and either the company's licence to operate buses is revoked OR the key staff (directors and manager) are banned from holding their roles - OR BOTH. In this case it was and it did.
Sometimes an operator will accept the inevitable and close the company, even before judgement is passed.
Thus Nige, Lugg Valley's only director, was banned from holding that office for four years. The Lugg Valley company was also banned from operating buses for the same period - hence the close-down.
[Information health warning! Nigel Yeomans was born in 1956 which makes him 69 years old. Either the above is a very old picture or it is the wrong Nigel Yeomans.]
But, of course, he was not banned from holding office in other companies. And he has had roles in eight companies some of which still exist. He appears to have resigned from most current companies.
Mr Yeomans has definitely resigned from several varieties of the Lugg Valley company, but remains the sole director of some operations under the name of Yeomans.
This means that commercial bus services run by Lugg Valley can be transferred to Yeomans operator licence and all can continue unhindered.
In a further blog (which might be delayed as it is the fbbs' Fellowship meeting this weekend), your investigative blogger will try to unravel who is running what from 1st January 2026.
Yeomans Travel (now there's that familiar name!) ...
... in a strangely familiar livery, may be involved; but another independent operator in Herefordshire is Sargeants.
O, the tangled web of the UK's public transport services.
Maybe it is time for "Great British Buses" with a livery to match "Great British Railways"? .jpeg)
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Of course fbb is not serious - well not about the livery, anyway.
But the core idea ..... Hmmm?
Christmas Crisis
Sadly without photographic evidence.
One of the fbbs' Christmas Day guests is wheelchair bound. On taking his place at table, he managed to entangle his chair wheel with a string of decorative lights and drag down lights, curtain and a chunk of the curtain rail.
That sort of thing takes real skill but it did add a little entertainment to the festivities.
Later, in a feverish attitude of repair or replace, fbb cut the string holding the lights to the curtain rail and, in so doing cut the wire for the lights!
Twerp!
Also the old man could not remember the curtain rail and runner technology, well hidden behind the rail and installed 12 years ago!
A chunk of "chocolate block" ...
... ensured a free and uninterrupted flow of electrons to the lights plus several hours of physical endurance to produce an effective re-assembly of curtain rail.
The string of "twinklies" will remain in operation until 12th Night.
And so to the last of our "A to Z of Christmas" seasonal thoughts.
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Z ooming to Z ion
fbb listened, with some frustration, to the ABC's New Year Message.
In an attempt to be non-controversial, the message was about "The Social Gospel". She missed the point. Being helpful to others is a result of the Christian faith but it is not the core purpose of the Christian faith.
What Jesus preached more than anything else was the need to obey God's "laws" and when inevitable failure overtakes us, to seek forgiveness for our "Sin".
Why?
There, is on offer in the Bible, an eternity - and there are two possibilities. One is an eternity of darkness and sorrow, perhaps even of deep anguish ....jpeg)
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... whilst the other is an eternity of Joy, Peace and Goodwill to all with whom God is pleased..jpeg)
Don't miss out the phrase "with whom God is pleased". T & C do apply!
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Pictures of either the bad eternity or the good eternity can only be pathetic human attempts to describe something that must, by definition, be utterly indescribable.
The Bible Book of Revelation has battles between human and human (we see plenty of them every day) ; battles between human and environmental destruction (very topical!), battles between good and evil and one final battle between the Ultimate Evil and the Ultimate Good.
Wonder who wins in the end?
Zion was the hill upon which Jerusalem was built, more specifically, the Temple of the Old Testament. The hill gets a bit lost in modern Jerusalem but it is still there, honest!
By extension it became the hill of the poetic New Jerusalem, heaven - the 'temple' of eternal good!
Surely it is worth considering a personal Zoom to Zion, because that is what CHRIST-mas was for.
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Next Lugg blog (possibly) : Sat 3rd Jan
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