Ladies and Gentlemen, Start Your Engines

Of course it's all very well making up your mind whereabouts you want to go but that doesn't solve the complicated logistical problem of how to get 30 or so excited tourers plus all their luggage, instruments and music to where they want to go. After much research, we eventually selected the lovely folk at Thomas Coaches in the Rhondda Valley in Wales. I've used them for a couple of tours with other groups in the past and always found them to be very friendly and helpful, not to mention extremely reasonably priced...in fact, cheaper than all the firms based near the band in Reading! Here's one of their lovely shiny executive coaches - just the job for a small army of people with tubas, drum kits, euphoniums and all manner of other music-related junk!

Once we get to Gent, we've decided to stay at the Hotel Ibis Gent Centrum Opera. This hotel is about a ten minute walk from the centre of the city and should be really convenient for seeing the sights and exploring all that Gent has to offer.

As the name suggests, the hotel is close to the city's Opera House (about 200m away) - Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake will be showing whilst we're there! It is also, however, close to the King Albert Park, a botanical garden created on the site of the city's original railway station and a ten minute walk from the iconic Castle of the Counts, complete with mediaeval moat!