day one - Berwick to Gosforth

First the crossword. Araucaria has done us proud today. The crossword includes 'national bus pass', April Fool, Cornwall and Umbria. And one clue mentions 'bad girls! We were met at Berwick station by a crew from Tyne Tees Television who actually came on the bus- clearly a rare experience for them - and interviewed and filmed us. But we got our own back. Manju has been given a camcorder by the BBC with which she is increasingly confident. So she filmed them filming us. The BBC should love that. At Alnwick we were met by Look North who trailed around after us for over an hour. We spent some time in the wonderful Barter Books shop which fills the old railway station in Alnwick where we took a call from Jeremy Vine and did a live interview. Both our buses were exactly on time, clean and comfortable. The only unpleasant thing was Alnwick bus station which is cold and has no proper waiting rooms or toilets. The Northumberland countryside of Northumberland is gorgeous and, most of the time, the sun shone. Manju has started to accost strangers and film them describing their experience of buses.

We are completely bewildered by the media interest as they are by us. Their line of questioning is sometimes quite odd. They want to know if we will still be friends after 12 days. We doubt they would ask men that. They say: "aren't you a bit crazy?" So we say yes! They are very ignorant about buses and immediately take photographs when we produce a timetable. One said "wont it be boring on the motorways"!