National Express has offered me a free coach journey to more or less anywhere in the UK if I mention their Bling My Coach competition.
It will be a return ticket, before you get too excited.
Now, I am more than happy to do this for two reasons.
First, I quite like the competition. You have to design a paint job for a National Express coach and if your design wins the public vote you get to take that very coach on a trip with 48 of your friends. Yes, it is a bit of corporate puffery but it has a sense of humour, it's a neat idea and is a very cool prize if you do actually win it.
Second, I thought I could ask you to nominate a place for me to visit. I would then run an online poll so that everyone can vote on a destination and I would promise to travel to the location that comes out top using my free ticket.
Perhaps you'd like me to pay you a visit for tea and cake? Maybe you are keen to send me as far away as possible? You might want to inflict me on the people of Hull. Or Skegness. Or Basildon. Or vice versa.
So, do pop over to the Bling My Coach site if it tickles your fancy and leave a comment here to nominate a place for me to visit. Presumably it has to be somewhere National Express send buses to, or reasonably nearby. I know you will let your imaginations run wild.
Over to you.
You could do worse than Hebden Bridge. It seems to me that the only people who don't want to live here are people who haven't visited yet...
Posted by: Stephen May | August 07, 2009 at 07:03 PM
Sconser
Posted by: Him over there | August 07, 2009 at 11:36 PM
Loch Ness.
Posted by: Marie | August 08, 2009 at 11:14 AM
wow!
Posted by: MelRoXx | August 08, 2009 at 11:33 AM
Go all the way and we'll stand you tea and cake in Inverness (and load you down with a book or two.....) If you can stand it on a coach for that distance there are probably no more challenges in life you need to set yourself...
Posted by: Sharon Blackie | August 08, 2009 at 02:43 PM
Alnwick in Northumberland. Then you can go to Barter Books, which is just the best bookshop ever.
Posted by: Stephanie | August 10, 2009 at 11:02 PM
My friend David Belbin tried to post a comment but it wouldn't work. He was going to say this:
Dunno, I've spent a lot of time in Hebden Bridge in the last 35 years, since my family moved 15 minutes away from there, and it's a good for a visit but not quite in the real world, if you know what I mean, in a friendly way.
Come to Nottingham for a gig and I'll show you the cultural highlights if you like. Band Of Heathens, Slaid Cleaves and Richmond Fontaine are all playing soon! Oh, and Cliff Richard. Though the one I'm most looking forward to is Beyonce...
Posted by: Scott Pack | August 11, 2009 at 01:36 PM
I think you should come to Portsmouth for one of the WriteInvite evenings (first Monday of each month).
Posted by: DJ Kirkby | August 12, 2009 at 06:44 AM
I'll not suggest that you visit me in the Peak District National Park just outside Sheffield, because that would be cruel. Not only to you (we're bloody miles away from anywhere) but also to National Express (it's often difficult to get a Landrover up the mile-long track to my house, let alone a big coach full of publishing types.
It would be funny to see them try to get here, though.
Posted by: Jane Smith | August 12, 2009 at 10:55 PM
Shrewsbury
Posted by: PK Munroe | August 18, 2009 at 08:57 PM