Thursday, June 23, 2011

Mazuma

So for a while we've been doing our own accounts and book keeping and payroll and to be honest it turns out it is a much bigger job then we ever gave it credit for, it's the one thing everyone hates doing and is something which is really really important.

So last month we had a chat with Mazuma who provide a really great service. We stick everything in an envelope each month and they do the rest. That's it, no catch, no massive fees just a really great innovative approach to business. If we want to speak to them we can, if we want to email we can, if we want to text them.. yep you guessed it we can.

So this week we've been getting all the stuff together from last year and putting it in envelopes... and.. yesterday was the big day when we finally posted it.....and that appears to be it, no more hassle, no more worry, no big fees. It'll be less to do it like this than it will with us doing all our own stuff and approaching an accountant each year and it's so easy. Stick the stuff in the envelope and post it, each month. Bingo. They send a report back, whammy, accounts sorted.

It's ace when you find something like that.

Also, it helped that the guy I was in touch with about maybe starting with Mazuma happened to be into riding MTBs , that swung the deal for us, they must be a decent bunch!

Little Hay round up.

So I guess it is about time if not way to late for us to give you a round up on how the Hay festival went for us.

It was a pretty amazing week for everyone involved, we managed to run both bikes from 10am-10pm for pretty much the entire festival. We transported 1000’s of customers up and down the 1/2 mile straight to Hay and back. Which as you can see took its toll on young Ben

We arrived on the morning of our first shift and were quickly ushered to our temporary digs in Fred’s store tent.

Which provided us with some grand facilities, I’m pictured here with our chill out area and luxury relaxing seating provisions…

Joking aside it was brilliant to get the chance to get out of the weather and refuel when we needed it and we are very grateful for the team at Hay for putting up with our antics and providing us with a safe place to leave our belongings.

By the end of a long shift the site of the tent bought an all over feeling of relief to the body and it was also a great time for all of us to see each other.

Ben and Joe were never short of supplies from the catering tent.

Also having a quiet area gave us plenty of time to prep bikes and share stories.


Most of the stories were about the incredible wind up and down the main straight to Hay, each day it blew a different direction and every day it was punishing. But the tales of extraordinary feats came in day after day, of Duggan’s huge non stop mileage counts, of whopping tips from Mike, or failing knees from Ben, or Australian banter from Woody, of mid shift ‘bonk’ from Joe and who’s had which celebrity and what they tipped from just about everyone.



Hay festival was very busy and a great place for people to get to meet the authors and speakers they have followed for many years. Here John Snow vanishes into the busy crowd.

Between us over the week we got to know lots of the top names. We bumped into Jason Bradbury and rushed a suitcase of books from his hotel to a signing, entertained Matt Horne, hauled Brian Moore up the hill into town, had banter and love notes from Arthur Smith, narrowly missed the Arch Bishop of Canterbury and talked about Andy Murray with Germaine Greer. So for us it was an interesting time and a pleasure to be at the festival. We even got to slip into a Cerys Matthews gig.


The unsung heroes Matt and Tom need to be credited, they worked hard in Hereford keeping everything in order and running the business, without them we wouldn’t have been able to work at Hay.

So in summary it was great and we hope to do it again, we estimate we moved the same amount of people by the end of the week that 100 of the regular shuttle buses would have and that everyone of our customers had a great time.

See you there next year!

Friday, June 10, 2011

Duggan makes the Telegraph


One of our fine new riders stonked into the online write up of the Hay festival..
Looking strong Duggan

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Midwhay



Last Saturday morning we bundled the bikes over to Hay on the back of a borrowed trailer in the early hours of the morning and set things up ready to go.

We're mid way into the festival now and so far it has been excellent, we'll give a full update when we're all done. We've got tales of celebrity, had plenty of adventures and we've had a tonne of laughs between us all.

We think we'll hit almost 3000 customers by the end of the week which will be the same as about 100 of the shuttle bus journeys that go into Hay. We've been surprised how well we've settled in and hope this might be the start of a great friendship with the festival.

Right now I've just had a message telling me that Maureen Lipman wants a lift into town to go shopping and did we not realise we had Arthur Smith on the bikes last night!.... All I can think about is trying to stuff enough food into me to keep me going for my 4-10pm shift...