'The Road to Elysium'
The Life of a Coach Driver
by Barrie J Haynes
ISBN 1-900467-17-8 Price £5.00
Softback. 148.5 x 210 mm
80 pages, 8 black & white images

'The Road to Elysium' may be ordered from:
Mr. Barrie J. Haynes,
56,The High Street,
Tattershall,
Lincs.
LN4 4NN
Telephone: 01526 342886
(00441526342886 from outside the UK)
email: barrieandvicki@yahoo.co.uk

Price £5.00 including p&p
(second class UK).
Please add further £1.00 to cover post & packing for orders outside the UK.

Please make cheques/POs payable to
'Barrie J Haynes'.

In the words of the Author . . .

"I am not sure if this is the first book on coach driving that has ever been written, but I’m pretty certain it’s the first to follow this format, where every page is a little story in itself! Like all professions everybody says that one day they will write a book about their life and experiences, well that’s what I’ve done here. I have, of course, changed a few names and locations to protect the innocent - and the insane - and it’s all true, more or less, but how I came to put pen to paper arose out of one incident . . . I LOST MY JOB!

Now it wasn’t the sack, I simply was given no more work from a large well respected coach company, because I committed a terrible sin in their eyes - I refused to go to Birmingham! Now the reason that I refused was because they said it was company policy that coach drivers had to share bedrooms when working away from home, something I have always refused to do, after all why should I? So, being of an independent nature, like all tour drivers and having paid the mortgage and having an understanding wife, I left my job and spent a little more time down at the allotment and had weekends off, like normal people. It was at this time that I wrote most of which you will read here.

I am now back driving (it’s in the blood!) for a smaller family business, where I am treated better and I have just passed my medical check, so I hope to do a few more years before I retire. I do believe, however, that the industry is changing and not for the better. A lot of fun has gone out of the job and we are snowed under with many new rules and regulations. Also many of the ‘characters’ of old have passed on and I believe the time is right to record something of the ‘Good Old Days’, which in my case started in 1951, when my father purchased his first coach, a pre-war Bedford 25-seater with an old fashioned (even then) Duple body.

I hope my book gives an idea of what life is like when you’re ‘coaching’. It’s not an autobiography, or a book for ‘bus spotters’, more a journey of over one million miles, with no blood spilt and a few laughs on the way.

So, please take your seat, we are on our way to nice views and old plumbing - we are on ‘The Road to Elysium’ . . ."