Angus Travel has been around for 22 years, but it might not have been if it weren’t for founder Avril Read’s customer-first approach. Peter Jackson visited the Ipswich-based operator
“I’d been working for a company in Ipswich, and in 1997 they ceased trading,” began Avril Read, Founder of Angus Travel. “So, I started my own business. When I was with the accountant and solicitor, they asked what I was going to call it. I answered Angus, after my dog.” That’s how Ipswich, Suffolk-based Angus Travel was born.
It was perhaps an unconventional start to life for the company, but it was a sign of things to come; Angus is an unconventional company, and is all the better for it.
Tucked away on Needham Market’s Station Yard is its travel shop, which is located – rather appropriately – next to a dog grooming business. Displayed in the front window is a selection of Angus’ day excursions and holidays, which seemed to be attracting a fair bit of attention from passers-by during my time there.
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As touched on at the start, Angus was formed following the closure of an operator at which Avril was an employee. “While I was working there,” she continued, “I went to Scotland to sort out some coach holidays for that company, and when I came back everybody said I should start up on my own. So I did.
“I got myself a Portakabin and started from nothing in January 1997. I hadn’t even got a telephone to begin with, so I had the GPO come and put a phone in. Soon after, I bought my first coach – a Plaxton Paramount 3500-bodied Volvo B10M – using my husband’s pension. He’d just retired from the police force, so fortunately came away with a good pension.”
Laying the foundations
With the business up and running, Avril set about spreading the word and looking for work. “To start off with, I did a college contract to try and get Angus established,” she said. “However, I also took on a lot of the holidays that the company I’d worked for previously was planning to run (before it ceased trading). The solicitors and my accountant were a little worried, but I said that I would honour bookings made through that company and run them myself.”
Taking on all of the holiday work straight away might have been a little stressful – to put it mildly – but it soon paid off. “The customers had lost their deposit of course, as they’d paid it to the chap I worked for, but honouring their bookings did stand me in good stead for the future,” Avril said. “Many of those customers booked with me again for their next holiday.”
This loyalty most certainly hasn’t gone unnoticed; Avril is extremely grateful to her passengers for their support, just as they are for the holidays and day trips she and her team organise. “I couldn’t have carried on running Angus if my passengers weren’t loyal,” she said. “We’ve got a lot of loyal passengers.”
It’s also most certainly not a coincidence, but the result of just over two decades of hard work and a commitment to going the extra mile for her customers. “I wouldn’t send anybody to a hotel that I wouldn’t want to stay in myself,” Avril said. “We look after our customers – if they’ve got a problem, they know they can ring me and it’ll get sorted.”
Avril pointed to a wooden plaque on the wall, proudly displaying the slogan ‘Angus – the only way to travel.’ “The customer who made that spent hours in his shed carving that out… it means a lot,” she said.
“My accountant gets cross with me, because he reckons I value things like that more than money! But money’s not everything, and things like that really matter to me. What you see is what you get and what you get is what you see with us. I treat everybody the same.”
Chaos on the continent
Today, Avril has a two-pronged approach to running Angus. “I have two limited companies: one is Angus Coaches, and the other is Angus Travel,” she explained. “The holiday company, Angus Travel, hires the vehicles from Angus Coaches essentially. You don’t want to put all your eggs in one basket, do you?”
Explaining the range of work Angus does, she continued: “We do a range of tours, which are covered in our brochure, along with holidays, private hire and day excursions – but we don’t do any school contracts.”
The firm used to venture onto the continent on a regular basis for both day trips and holidays, although operations are now solely UK-based. “We went to Austria last year – that was the only continental holiday we did last year – and we went to Belgium one day,” Avril recalled.
“I used to do Belgium day trips once a month, but I’ve had issues in the past with illegal immigrants – I unknowingly brought some in, which was quite frightening. The first time it happened, I’d been to Belgium for the day, and arrived back at the yard and turned the engine off. I pulled my car up alongside to transfer my own personal belongings back from the side locker of the coach, and as I did this person just fell on the floor. I thought at first it was someone trying to steal diesel, so I shouted at him… and then another one dropped down. They’d both been lying on the engine cover underneath the coach.
“I rang the police, and they started walking off around the industrial estate where our vehicles are based. I followed them on foot. How I did I don’t know; I suppose the adrenaline was flowing.
“Eventually the police turned up, then dogs turned up to sniff for any more people. It was a real fiasco… they told me I could be fined £2,500 per person I brought in, which fortunately they didn’t do because I reported it.
“After that happened, I said I’d never go on my own again. So, two years later, I went back with another driver, and I was convinced I had one onboard. When we pulled up at Cité Europe, there were about 15 people trying to get on the coaches there. “They were hiding behind the hedge, and all you could see was the top of their heads – I was convinced that one must have got on the coach at some point.
“When I came through customs, I asked the French policemen whether they had a dog to try and sniff them out. They hadn’t, but they looked themselves and couldn’t see anything.
“Then, pulling back into the yard, we heard a knocking on the coach. We found him, and he was covered in dirt and grime – he’d been on the engine cover as well. He was really dehydrated; he’d got on there at about 1100hrs, and we found him at 2000hrs. We’d taken him into Belgium, because we’d stopped at Cité Europe before travelling to Adinkerke. If he’d fallen off and my rear wheels had run him over… imagine. That combined with having to pay the Belgian VAT and so on means I don’t go abroad anymore.”
These incidents aside, Avril still reckons that the market for European tours and excursions is shrinking: “The age group I tend to carry are getting older anyway; there aren’t many younger people coming into the industry. Younger people are flying, because it’s so cheap nowadays – but flying is very much an ‘a to b’ experience. It’s lovely going to Austria, Switzerland, Norway and so on by coach because you see so much. We used to stay overnight in Germany – so didn’t do any overnight travel – which was really nice.”
Settled on Setras
Angus operates a three-vehicle fleet, including two Setras (a 2004 S315 GT-HD and a 2006 S415 GT-HD) as well as a 2009 Mercedes-Benz Tourismo, all of them 49-seaters. “I don’t want any more,” said Avril. “I’d prefer another Setra, but of course they’re no longer sold in the UK.”
For now, Avril has no plans to replace any of the vehicles either: “They’re not brand-new, but I’ve found that older coaches are often more comfortable than newer ones anyway – and they’re finished better,” she said.
“Plus, most passengers wouldn’t be able to tell the age of a coach. As long as the vehicles are clean and tidy, they’ll be good enough – they’ve all got toilets, fridges and tea machines onboard.”
That led us on to the topic of Low Emission Zones (LEZs). “I’ve worked it out, and it’s going to be cheaper for me to pay the extra charge than to buy a brand-new coach – you’ve got to look at the financial side of it,” Avril said.
“I have had some coaches retrofitted in the past – back when we made the step up to Euro IV – but we’re not in London every day so it doesn’t make sense for us to do that either.”
Looking back at past vehicles from the Angus fleet, Avril recalled purchasing her first Van Hool coach: “After my first coach – the Volvo Plaxton Paramount 3500 – I upgraded to a Van Hool Alizee-bodied Volvo B10M. I never thought I’d be able to afford a Van Hool… I cried as I brought it back down the A12 because I was so excited that I’d got it!”
So, why make the switch from Volvo to Setra? Avril explained: “Every so often I upgraded vehicles, and ended up buying a Caetano-bodied Volvo from EvoBus. On the way home after collecting it, I pressed the button to close the door and all the electrics were up the shoot. I collected it on a Saturday, and that Monday I was meant to be taking it to Scotland! I’d been to Felixstowe to do my first pick up and then headed to Crown Street in Ipswich – the main pickup point – and after using the ferry lift to lower the coach next to the curb it wouldn’t go back up. So, we had to take it back to the yard, with passengers onboard, and pick up the Volvo Plaxton Paramount.
“We drove that to Cambridge services, where EvoBus came down in a Setra 250. It had a four over four gearbox (four low-range and four high-range gears), which I’d never used before. I took that to Scotland, and they then collected my Caetano. That was how I got introduced to Setras.
“At one point, I had four Setra 250s in the fleet – I wish I’d still got them. The newer Setra 415s aren’t built as well as the 250s. After those, I bought a Setra 315 and two DAFs, although unfortunately there weren’t as many people nearby who could maintain the DAFs.”
Angus currently uses a mechanic on the outskirts of Suffolk who takes care of the fleet, as the company doesn’t have its own workshop.
As for the people behind the wheel, Avril employs two full-time drivers and uses a number of part-timers. “One of our drivers retired last April aged 65, but after being at home for a month he decided he wanted to come back part-time,” she said.
The company’s longest-serving driver has been with Angus for 12-and-a-half years. “I try and keep each of the full-time drivers with the same coach, so that they’ve got their own coach effectively – and they take pride in it.
“Our drivers are the ambassadors for the company. If they go to a hotel reception and aren’t able to get an issue put right – and the hotel know this as well – they can ring me too.”
Avril has also been driving the coaches herself since 1998 – something she still enjoys doing. “A year after I set up, I decided I couldn’t employ people to do something that I could do myself,” she recalled. “So, I learnt to drive the coach.”
Grandad of Angus reception worker, Lyndsey, showed Avril the ropes and got her through the PCV licence tests – she didn’t have any professional lessons. “I’m a girl in a boy’s world I suppose, although not as much as I was when I started 22 years ago.”
Operators’ struggles with finding new drivers have been well-publicised in recent years, both on the pages of CBW and elsewhere. Currently, though, Angus hasn’t had any issues retaining drivers or employing new ones. “I don’t often have to employ new drivers, because – not to sound big-headed – they tend to stay working for me for a long while,” Avril said.
“When I do have to interview someone, I’ll tell them ‘you’ve never worked for a company quite like this.’ They look at me as if I’m growing horns! But, as Lyndsey will tell you, they’re more like family than they are employees.”
Winning formula
As in most aspects of the business, a traditional, tried-and-tested approach is taken with Angus Travel’s marketing – one which still attracts an impressive number of passengers. “We advertise locally – in the local papers and on the East Anglian Daily Times website – and we have our own website,” said Avril.
“People often come in with their advert in their hand – a lot of our customers don’t have computers. A lot of it is word of mouth, though. We had some people in here the other day who’d been recommended us by a friend – we’re fortunate that we do have a good clientele.”
Avril sees no reason to change this approach: “We’ve been quite busy,” she continued. “We had an open day last September when our 2019 brochure was launched, and our Outer Hebrides holiday came out at £795 when I put it together. I was unsure whether it was going to sell; it’s not expensive for what it is, but it is a more expensive coach holiday.
“But we sold 32 places for it on that single day, and it’s now fully booked up, so we’ve put an extra coach on. Our Isle of Wight holiday is full, and we’ve had to add another coach to our Isle of Man holiday too because it’s full. Our holidays are doing really well.
“We’re quite happy jogging along the way we are – it’s not going to get any bigger. It’s a hobby really, I should be retired! I know I’m not going to be a millionaire, but I enjoy what I do. Only when I stop enjoying it will I pack up.
“I get enjoyment out of getting up and coming to work, and I drive quite a lot as well which I enjoy. I don’t take a holiday out of choice, because I enjoy work.
“I’ve started planning next year’s programme, and there are a few new holidays in the pipeline. Obviously, prices have gone up, because hotel prices have shot up quite a lot.”
Angus has held a number of special events in the past for customers, most of which have been a real success. “We had a big 21st birthday party last year, and took three coach loads of customers to a hotel down in Torquay to celebrate,” said Lyndsey.
Avril elaborated: “We asked our regular customers if they wanted to go, and we sold out – we ended up having to turn people away.
“When Lyndsey’s grandad turned 90 five years ago, we took three coachloads to the Isle of Wight for his birthday too. Everybody asked what they could get him as a present, and he’d said before he wanted to go to Malta.
“So everybody gave me £5 – without him knowing – and we took him to Malta for a few days. He then came back and told customers how wonderful Malta was, so of course then I ran a holiday there and took 49 people!
“It’s important to build up a good rapport with customers and have a laugh. If I pick a guide up in Orkney or Shetland or something, I say about my customers ‘all my children are well-behaved, they walk in pairs and hold hands!’ The customers love joking around like that.”
As my time at Angus drew to a close, an elderly couple – Angus regulars – popped into the shop to book another holiday (and to chat to Avril). “We started going with Angus about 10 years ago and we won’t go with anybody else,” the gentleman told me.
“During that time, we’ve met so many people who’ve become good friends. Most trips you go on, you see people you’ve met before – as well as meeting new people.”
“I have matched people together,” Avril added. “People have met and got married after meeting on one of our trips!”
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