TOUR LIST 2017

With the last guest having checked-out of BELLEVUE HOTEL for the summer, it’s been a time for administration and maintenance work recently, with our trusty Mercedes van successfully passing yet another HGV test. The MOT certificate shows the van has covered 292,000 miles since we bought it new, in 2003.

This made us wonder just how far we have actually driven in Bash Street’s 26 years on the road – not counting air miles, of course.

Our first transport was a beautiful (to us) old Bedford coach that took us on several tours of France and the UK, covering 25,000 miles. Then came our first Mercedes van. Second-hand, and with many miles already on the clock, it soldiered on and on for a further 180,000 miles. This makes a total of 497,000 miles since we started Bash Street in 1991.

Which is why our forthcoming trip to perform our silent-movie show, CLIFFHANGER! at the Izmir Festival in Turkey, will be a bit of a landmark. The 4,000-mile round trip will take us over the half-million mile mark (all the way to the moon and back) and that’s a lot of hours in a van. In fact, at an average of 50 mph, that’s 10,000 hours – nearly one year and two months… It’s all part of the fun of being a street theatre performer!

On our return from Izmir, November will bring a short tour, in Cornwall and Cumbria, of our rural touring, indoor show,THE LION TAMER. This will, once again, feature our 16-year-old son Lochlann on piano, and also introduce another member of the extended Bash Street family, Willum Tiley, who was just three months old when his dad, Russell Hurd, first started performing with the company.

Then it’s down to work again revising BELLEVUE HOTEL for 2018 and beyond. With preliminary shows in Tynemouth, Battle, Harwich, Barton upon Humber, Gloucester, Wolverhampton and Market Harborough this summer, we have had lots of good feedback for this new show which will be touring next summer, once again alongside CLIFFHANGER! – revived, revised and now in its 16^th year!