In 1979, a former Sealink passenger ferry called the "Duke of Lancaster" was beached in North Wales with the intention of turning it into a floating leisure and retail complex. The project never seemed to get of the ground and as such the ship has been  on the banks of the River Dee.

Even just a brief investigation into the ship provides you with a fascinating insight. Make no bones about it, until it was converted into a car ferry, this was one of the finest vessels afloat at the time. The first class quarters in the late fifties and early sixties were the best around, silver service restaurants, state rooms and luxurious cabins. Everything about the ships interior was of a very, very high standard. In fact, the facilities and the accommodation on board Lancaster were so good she was frequently taken out of her usual ferry service and used as a cruise liner with frequent annual cruises around Scotland, Scandinavia and the Mediterranean.  If you are interested in providing information for this site then please contact us.

The internet is a powerful thing, it's brings together people from different countries, walks of life and in some instances of different opinions.  It was the internet that brought together two complete strangers in the summer of 2007. Those strangers, although not initially evident, had a shared passion, the former passenger and car ferry, The Duke of Lancaster. In the summer of 1979, the ship, formally belonging to British Rail suddenly appeared in a very small tidal dock on the North Wales Coast at Llanerch-y-Mor.  The Duke of Lancaster was to be converted into a floating leisure complex, incorporating night clubs, bars, restaurants, cinemas, gaming arcades, a market, hotel rooms and also a small cinema. The venture never really seemed to gain a foothold and after only a few years trading, the ship was finally closed in the mid 1980's. Since then the ship has been a huge behemoth, seemingly totally out of place in her new home and through years of fighting against the elements she finally started to show her age.  Their interest in the ship was for completely different reasons. Their chance meeting came about on a BBC North Wales discussion site about the ship. For John Veal, the owner of a number of fruit and vegetable shops in Humberside, it was because he knew the history of the ship and its heritage, primarily because his Uncle, Jack Irwin was the very first master of the vessel when it first went into service in 1957. Over the years John spent a great deal of time researching the ship, gaining a plethora of valuable information. For Paul Williams, an IT Technician from North Wales, the interest was purely emotional. Paul worked as a life guard for the then Delyn Borough council for three consecutive years in his mid teens and spent the summer of 1984 in the aft wheel house of the ship. It was in the aft wheel house on August Bank Holiday 1984 that his St. Christopher chain broke. It wasn't until he arrived home that evening that he found out the chain broke at the same time his brother was killed in a motorcycle accident. Their initial stances on the publically available website were completely different and many funny exchanges took place over the following months, these have been documented later in the series. Paul's stance as a local in the area was that the ship was an eyesore and should be scrapped. John's however was that the ship should be saved due to its maritime importance, sharing as it did the same ship builders as The Titanic, Harland and Wolfe in Belfast.

Three ships of this class were built by different yards, The Duke of Lancaster, The Duke of Argyll and The Duke of Rothesay. They were the last in a long and distinguished line of passenger only railway ferries. However, The Duke of Lancaster stood out, not only because of a shared heritage with a some of the most famous ships in history but also because she could be converted into a luxurious ocean going liner with very little effort, and as such she was fitted out differently with many additional fixtures over her sister ships. After two months of jovial banter between the two on the BBC Web site, Paul asked for his real web address to be shared with John. In the very first email Paul sent to John, he made his private view of the ship apparent to him, that he too felt the ship deserved to be recognized for what it is, and if possible for it to be turned into a viable venture. This led to the setting up of an appreciation society to gauge public opinion on the ship. From the information received over a period of 12 months, everyone who took the time to write into the web site wholeheartedly believed the same as them. Numerous attempts were made to make contact with the owners of the ship by e-mail, letter and even visits to the ship.

The closest the pair got was a snatched conversation with the daughter of the ship's owner. She directed them to the information on the ship at The Funship Market. This information opened up a completely new line of enquiry as it included allegations of corruption right to the very heart of the local authority Delyn Borough Council.From that day Paul and John shared the same thought, that the story of The Funship was one of the most intriguing business ventures that they had heard, fraught with difficulties, adventures and the potential corruption deep within the local council. Over the course of the following 12 months John and Paul were determined to gather as much information as possible on the ship, but it was always second or third hand news, nothing more than quips and anecdotes, what they really needed was the help of the owners of the ship John Rowley and Pat Scott. From the conversations with Mr. Rowleys daughter, the pair knew that Mr. Rowley spent a great deal of time away from the ship so a meeting was likely to be difficult to arrange. They also knew that The Ship was an all consuming passion of Mr. Rowley and he had done everything in his power over 30 years to keep the ship safe. However, John continued to email Mr. Rowley stating his interest in the ship and his willingness to provide assistance in telling the story of the ship.  John Veal's determination paid off and after many, many years of silence, Mr. Rowley contracted the two in early 2009. Now after many, many hours sifting through Johns memoirs, trips to local archives, collating data and collecting pictures the story is ready to be told.

Before telling the story, it's necessary to look away from the ship itself and understand the people who first had the vision to start a venture. Those people are Pat Scott and John Rowley. Both are very much peoples, people, both are from humble backgrounds and both have remained committed to the ship for over thirty years. Pat comes from a large family, having two brothers and two sisters and was predominately brought up by her mother Katy Baker. Katy was the main breadwinner of the family, working a fruit stall in Liverpool's famous St. John Market. Her efforts made her become regarded as a stalwart and a shining example of her trade, she even had the honor being introduced to the Queen. Pat soon followed in her mother's footsteps, working many of the markets in North Wales and the North West of England.  She became very well known and regarded at markets at Wrexham, Connah's Quay and Kirby, but the list didn't stop there. Through hard work, early mornings and working through all weathers, Pat built up a strong reputation for providing people with value for money. John also comes from a large family having one brother and three sisters, but that's where the comparisons between their respective upbringings end. John is the son of a Nottinghamshire coal miner, born in the village of Carlton-in-Lindrick near Worksop on the border with Yorkshire. Having passed his 11+ and entering into King Edward VI Grammer School at Retford, John's talent for football was recognized by one of the premier English clubs of the day, Wolverhampton Wanders. John signed with Wolves as a professional footballer in the 1962-63 season, at which time was a team graced with some star players of the day like Alan Hinton and former England Captain Ron Flowers.  

Football in the 1960's wasn't as it was today with £100,000+ per week contracts, celebrity wives and footballers more often than not making the front pages rather than the back. The Premier League and the serious money provided to the English game from Sky Television were still thirty years away. Unfortunately John suffered a serious injury, followed by a failed knee operation in his first professional year which to his mind left him too slow to compete at the highest level. Disheartened by his shortened football career, John stayed in the Wolverhampton area taking on a number of wide and varied jobs from Lab Technician to Navvie Ganger. However his passion for football meant he continued to play in the bucket banger leagues. It's at this point where John followed a similar path to Pat, becoming a well know street trader in Wolverhampton selling garments, especially sheepskin mits during the winter months. John and Pats paths first crossed at a Sunday Market on the car park of Bernies Car Auctions at Queensferry in North Wales. John was immediately taken by Pat's trading skills, believing them to stand out a mile and it was during these early meetings that they discussed the possibility of going into business together. At that time, public trading in the UK was severely limited by the 1950's Shops Act which in the 1970's seemed very archaic and every market trader of the era was looking for ways to cash in on the public demand for Sunday opening. Sunday was after all the only day of the week that many families had to spend time together, it was also a time of great financial hardships for many families who were increasingly looking for the types of bargains that Sunday Markets provided. As such a number of niche ventures were started in order to circumvent or find loopholes in the 1950's Shops Act.  So John studied the 1950's act and came across a very simple but never the less ingenious way to by-pass the act and found an instance where the Sunday Trading Laws didn't apply.

The words leapt off the page "The foregoing provisions of this part of the act shall not apply to any seagoing ship". The idea for The Funship was born.

The Story can now be told in Johns own words

Late 70's Britain was becoming a dire place live, the country was in crisis, unemployment was reaching record levels, shortened working weeks were the norm at most UK factories and redundancies an everyday occurrence in the rest. Pretty much like Britain today! This was particularly the case on the North Wales coast which had seen the scaling back of Courtaulds in Greenfield and Flint and also the decline of one of the area's largest manufacturing sites, British Steel in Shotton. The 1970's were also still governed by the archaic 1950's Shops Act. This act prohibited the Sunday Trading that most working families now take for granted. Many of the shops around that time were unable to trade and if they were it was to very restrictive opening hours. However, the public were crying out for two things in the cash strapped 70's, the opportunity to go out as a family unit on a Sunday which was often the only day the entire family could be together and also the chance of a bargain. To facilitate these needs markets started springing up on Sunday's all over the country, in many cases on old disused airstrips left over from the aero industry and also old RAF bases which hadn't yet been converted for civilian use. The public flocked to the markets in the early years and in the helicon days every major town and city in the country had a Sunday Market, many of them trading without licences. One of the early pioneers of the Sunday Market was Nigel Maby of Spook Erection, he entered folklore with his market in Warwick, which, under the terms of the old 1950's Shop act was eventually closed down by the local authorities. Undaunted by the closure, Nigel simply moved his operation to Scotland, where strangely enough, Sunday Trading Laws did not apply. There were one or two exceptions to the Sunday Trading Laws, including allowing the provision to tourists at sea side resorts. Every market trader of the era were looking for ways to attempt to cash in on the public demand for Sunday opening and as such a number of niche ventures were started in order to circumvent or find loopholes in the 1950's Shops Act. I studied the 1950's act and came across a very simple but never the less ingenious way to by-pass the act and an area where the Sunday Trading Laws didn't apply by using a ship as a trading platform. Being a simple village boy from Nottingham, I didn't think it unfeasible to buy a ship, dock it somewhere and use it was a platform for trading, not only on a Sunday, but during the week as well. I did the simple math's and it was soon evident to me that the potential earnings from a venture of this nature would far, far exceed the costs of ships I could find being pensioned off. I also very quickly became aware of a number of potential ships which would adequately suit the purpose. Knowing that appropriate vessels were available at the right price, I genuinely believed that finding a dock would be the easy part. I was soon to be proved wrong.  After investigating sites in London, Goole and Liverpool, I found that for one reason or another, the viability of the sites was limited and proved to be non-starters.

Preston looked an early possibility and I entered into a series of negotiations to place a ship in the old docks in the town. The local authority originally warmed to the idea of the creation of jobs and revenue in their area, however, their fear of a union backlash if the venture employed non-union labour proved to be too much and they withdrew from the negotiations. Finding a site close to a major conurbation was proving to be very, very difficult and I was beginning to feel it was likely to be impossible. I had almost given up hope of finding a suitable place for a ship, when I had a chance meeting with Jack Connell, a fisherman and market trader from Rhyl on the North Wales Coast. Jack pointed me a little further down the North Wales Coast, just down from the busy little port of Mostyn, to an old derelict fishing dock at Llanerch-y-Mor. All we needed to do now was find a ship to put there.

We instructed a London Based shipbroker called Seascope to help find a suitable ship and soon came up with a number of possibilities. The Clan Lines had a triple deck cargo ship called The Clan McInnes which was schedule for retirement. Whilst the ship required a considerable about of re-engineering to suit the required purpose it was never the less considered. The knowledge of project was gathering pace, particularly within the shipping industry. Many industry 'experts' considered it impossible to get a ship worthy of the project into the small dock at Llanerch-y-Mor. Perhaps for the benefit of people who are unfamiliar with the area, it's worthwhile to explain that Llanerch-y-Mor lies on the North Wales side of the River Dee. The River Dee it totally tidal, that means the river completely empties twice a day leaving only sand banks.The Port Of Mostyn has an ever present battle with the shifting sands and has throughout its history had to dredge the channels of the river just to keep operational. The people with the vision remained optimistic, particularly me and in many ways found the dissent within the industry as an incentive to prove the experts wrong. The draft of the ship however was a big, big issue. As previously stated the tidal nature of the River Dee means the channels and sandbanks are constantly shifting and changing. To discover the draft available at the port a very simple but extremely clever method was adopted. A pole was placed in the dock at low tide. When the tide slowly came in, a mark was made on the pole at the exact point when the surrounding sandbanks became covered with water. The tide then came in fully and a second mark was made at high water. Once the tide had receded again, the distance between the two marks was taken, giving the approximate minimum draft the ship would need to be in order to get it into the dock. The height of the tide was referenced to what was expected in the tide timetable for Mostyn and it was estimated that on the highest tide of the year, we had 15 foot of draft to play with.  Once this was known to Seascape continued their search and quickly reported back that the The Duke Of Lancaster was available out of Barrow-in-Furness on a "as is where lies" basis. At that time we had no idea of the heritage of the ship. All we knew was she was a formerly a British Rail Cruise ship that had been converted to a car ferry a number of years ago by converting of the passenger accommodation decks into a car deck.

She really was only a car ferry, as she could only handle two heavy goods vehicles on any crossing as the height on the car desk was limited. This limitation meant that the ship was slowly losing its usefulness and the introduction of ships with much larger heavy goods capacities in the mid to late seventies meant that British Rail didn't really have a need for her anymore and she was pensioned off. Although we had no previous knowledge The Duke we viewed it immediately and I was delighted with what we'd found.Not only was she still in very, very good condition she was already kitted out with bars, restaurants, fully fitted cabins, lounge areas, a small cinema and a car deck ideal for use as the "Petticoat Lane" style market we had hoped for. This was beyond our wildest expectations at the time.

Our bank was informed that the ideal ship had been found and they put the appropriate funding in place based on the promise of planning permission from Delyn Borough Council. I got the feeling at the time that a common pattern was starting to immerge on the project, as one problem was faced down and overcome, it wasn't long before another unexpected one came into view. We had a ship but it was over 100 nautical miles away from where it needed to be and it was our responsibility to move it. Enquiries were made to find a Captain to bring The Duke to its final home in North Wales and Captain Ian Metcalfe of the Carmet Tug Company in Bromborough was considered by all to be the only man for the job. He was considered to be a bit of the maverick, but never the less a master of his trade. His services were soon secured and he assisted in ensuring the appropriate seaworthiness certificates were obtained and the insurance secured. We also needed to deal with an unexpected piece of bureaucracy, the title The Duke of Lancaster belongs to the Queen so before the ship left Barrow it had to be reregistered to sail under another name. I had to attend Customs house, I'm not sure if it was in Lancaster or Preston and sign as the new Captain of the ship. The name we chose was The Duke of Llanerch-y-Mor. In fact, at one stage the new name was scribed onto the side of the ship in big black letters. British Rail had also insisted that we remove their livery, which was Sealink Green complete with the old British Rail logo emblazoned on the side, before we set sail. I got together a team of men and traveled up to paint her. In those days we had an endless supply of volunteers wanting to help out on the project. Billy Bilsbarrow, Pat's brother-in-law, spent a couple of weeks or more managing the painting project, and it was no easy task. Again, it's worth pointing some regional information and say how bloody difficult a place Barrow-in-Furness is to get to, particularly in 1979. You had to travel up the M6 to the southern edge of the Lake District and follow a very long and winding 'A' road until you think you are about to fall into the Sea. It's also not a very hospitable place either, constantly battered by the elements. We utilized the life boats, lowering them down the hull and painting with huge sheep skin rollers on broom handles and poles. It took over two hundred gallons of paint to complete the entire ship, which was purchased as and when needed. The paint was provided at a much discounted price by Johnston's paints, something we very much appreciated. Everything was ready for the journey to Llanerch-y-Mor but yet again another problem loomed, there wasn't a crew!

We were delighted with the ship and as The Duke of Lancaster is a steam turbine vessel which was very much in full working order when we purchased her and we also knew that as she had only just come out of service so we knew she was sea-worthy. But to bring the ship around under her own steam would mean the boilers would have to be fully stoked. Fueling the ship wasn't an issue because her deep tanks still contained a great deal of fuel oil.  Where we did have a problem was if we chose to bring the ship around under her own steam we needed a more specialist crew but more importantly it would have meant applying for a completely different set of certificates which may have been more difficult to secure. More crucially than both of those issues, if the ship had come in under her own steam, her stern would have dropped as the propellers push her through the water, as such there was a very significant risk that she would ground on her way in. As such it was considered easier to just pull her by tug from Barrow, so the deep tanks on the ship were ballasted and trimmed to give her the minimum and most even draft possible to get her over the sand banks. The ship would rely on her onboard generators for power, of which there were three in the engine room but a standby generator was never the less placed on an upper deck. In transit it would be necessary for all the navigation lights, radars, radios, winches and interior power to be available. The Ships engineer on the journey was provided by Sealink and he had previously served on the ship and had an excellent working knowledge of her. The rest of the motley crew under the command of Captain Metcalfe for that journey was made up mostly of market traders and their families.One young lad, a student from Wolverhampton who worked the markets for pocket money hadn't even seen the sea before in his life when he arrived at Barrow. So even so early on in his life, this was something of an adventure of a life time for him. At the end of the first week of August 1979, with the assistance of two tugs from Bangor, Captain Metcalfe eased The Duke of Lancaster out of what should have been her final resting place. By the early evening the ship had made steady progress and had crossed Morecombe Bay before finally reaching Liverpool Bay. Up until then, it had been a completely uneventful journey and perhaps the tide of bad luck and problems had finally turned for the project but Mother Nature intervened and what Captain Metcalfe described as the mother of all storms blew up out of nowhere. The tugs were soon in difficultly holding such a dead weight in place in very fierce seas and high winds. The weather was so bad that the ropes holding The Duke to the tugs were continually breaking under the strain. The deck hands had to work through some very challenging times and as some were only just acquainting themselves with the sea, many were fighting sea-sickness as well as the elements.

1979 was a totally different world in terms of free and easy communications, the mobile phone revolution wasn't to start in earnest for another 10 years, so contact with the ship was arduous and very intermittent. The Harbormaster at The Port Of Mostyn was Captain Nightingale. He tried to remain in constant contact with the ship via ship to shore radio but because of the fierce weather conditions, he often had use both Liverpool and Hoylake Coastguard stations to act relay stations to the ship. The plight of The Duke started to attract the attention of the local news crews and seeing aerial shots of the ship in difficultly added to the stress the whole operation was already placing on myself and my partners. All in all The Duke spent almost two days and two nights being held in place in the Estuary whilst the storms kicked up. After an arduous second night, we woke to see The Duke, still attached to the tugs and still very much afloat.

The fact that the ship didn't cut loose completely and end up beached somewhere on the North Wales Coast is a testament to both the skill of the professional seaman involved but also, more surprisingly, the make shift crew. However, as normal the project was about to suffer yet another setback. As The Duke came within site of Mostyn, the insurers got cold feet. Even though the weather had eased making an approach to the dock feasible, they notified me that the insurance had been cancelled, effective immediately. The ship was only two miles away from Llanerch-y-Mor in the River Dee Estuary and the previous night the insurers were insisting that The Duke be returned to Barrow immediately. How on earth could the insurance company make such a decision? What compounded the issue further was the insurance company had been paid in full before the ship had left Barrow-In-Furness. The view of Captain Metcalfe was totally different, the dangers of taking The Duke back to Barrow, in his opinion, outstripped the risks of completing the voyage as planned. After careful deliberation between the myself and my partners, it was decided that it was better to risk the final stages of the journey that day than to give up on the instructions of a staid, suited and booted insurance man. Captain Nightingale's assistant was Terry Furnival, who had a sea angling boat which we could use to relay the message back and forth to Captain Metcalfe on The Duke. The Ship did make it into Llanerch-y-Mor that day, but not without further issues and anxiety. The ship was brought The Mostyn Deep, one of the main channels on the approach to The Port of Mostyn, once there it was to wait until the top of the tide was reached and then the dash for the dock was on.

Both Captain Nightingale and his assistant Terry were available to us that day. Captain Nightingale was on the shore, handling the eventual berthing of The Ship and ensuring that everything was set for her arrival. Terry took a much more challenging role, using his fishing boat as the line boat and he frequently came to the aid of the tugs whilst they were on the final leg of the journey. As The Duke was approaching the dock, the line to the lead tug snapped, obviously fatigued from the stresses of the journey the previous day. It seemed to me that everything that could possibly go wrong on that voyage did. The standby tug ran another line to the ship but valuable time lost. The top of the tide only lasts for one hour before the tide starts to go back out, every second literally did count.  It is also worth noting that The River Dee has one off the fastest running tides in the UK, once the tide starts going out, boy does it go out. By the time The Duke reached the dock the tide had just turned and as such the dock was losing water. A rope was run from the forward winches to the dock and The Duke slowly pulled herself into position, but the Captain could see that progress was painfully slow, and in his opinion too slow. He gave the order for the lead tug to give The Duke a push from the aft. The tug very gently butted up to The Duke close to the car deck doors and pushed. Mercifully it was just enough to get her into place.  The Duke was quickly tied to the many mooring points installed on the dock and it seemed that as the final ropes were secured, all the water from the dock drained away with the tide.

The Duke was finally in its new final resting place and with good reason we threw a party on board The Duke for the Captain and the makeshift crew. Just before midnight the tide started to rise again and soon was at its fullest. It was at that time the enormity of we had achieved that day struck me. Suddenly the reality dawned on me that we had a very large and cumbersome ship, in a very small, makeshift and tight tidal dock, fully exposed to the elements and tides. It was a real wake up call.  The ropes would need constant checking and adjustment to account for the twice daily tides and the winds.

As soon as the ship arrived, we were inundated with interested parties wanting to trade from the ship and work was soon started to ensure the car deck was fit to house a market. I was sure that the market would provide the biggest draw to the ship given my experience in that field in other areas of the country and I knew it had the potential to become extremely popular. Enquiries were flooding in for all the concessions as well, such as the bars and the restaurants. It was finally looking like our faith in the project was fully justified and that we had a viable business proposition on our hands. However, as per usual on this project, issues constantly cropped up and the biggest concern at the time was the safety of the ship itself. Ships which frequently dock in tidal waters are of a specific design to ensure that the back of the ships don't break when the tide goes out. Unfortunately, ferries, and in particular ferries converted from cruise ships which were designed and built in the late 1950's aren't of such a design! Likewise, the ferocity of the tides in the River Dee and the exposed position of the ship itself meant it was continually taking a battering from the elements. There was massive, and totally justified concern, that the ship could be seriously damaged in such a position and we were becoming increasingly concerned that the ship would damage herself on the rocks. We decided that the best way to alleviate the problem was to pump several hundred tons of sand around the ship and we had intended to bring this in using the cob road. Having paid British Rail a large sum of money for the ship they had promised their support during the negotiations however that support dwindled to the point of open hostility and they blocked the cob road between The Duke and the bridge over the railway some half a mile away towards Mostyn.  As the road access was blocked by British Rail we needed to think fast. Where else could we get hundreds of tons of sand and how could we have them delivered to the site? We looked towards the river. At low tide there was a sand bank no more than 100 yards away which must off contained millions of tons of sand so we had to find a way to pump the sand across and under the ship. Yet again Captain Metcalfe was called upon and asked if he know of a vessel which we could moor in the channel and pump sand the 100 yards or so across the ship. Luckily for us he knew of an old Weaver boat called The Laundola which was about to be scrapped and also an old concrete barge located in the Menai Straits. We purchased The Laundola for scrap and the barge for next to nothing and had them both brought around to The Ship. Firstly, the barge was placed to the stern of the ship and was scuttled, this gave the ship a great deal of protection against the winds and tides. Secondly we built a rig onto the side of The Laundola to which we strapped a sand pump which was powered from a generator located on deck. We immediately had a make shift dredger capable of lifting sand from the river bed and pumping it around the ship. It has been well documented by many, many web sites that The Duke is encased in concrete, this is most definitely not the case.

We finally had all the parts of the jigsaw available to us, all we had to do was put them in the right places. We thought we had finally broken everything down into their composite parts, put them back together and all we had to do was finish things off around the edges. We had decided to push to open for the summer holiday season in 1980, but the council had other ideas. The council stopped being difficult and started being down right obstructive. The first move they made to delay us was to insist on our signing a Section 52 Agreement which would likely impose impossible conditions. The saga of the planning permission at the site rolled into early 1980. Bearing in mind if the insurers had got their way, we wouldn't have got this far. We continued to treat the council with respect and I insisted that everything we did was by the book thinking that if we treated the council fairly then they would bestow the same on us. The first hurdle this time was to get the bar licences in place in order for us to apply to the brewery for the money they had promised us. We applied to the local magistrates for bar licences but the council objected to the application. The magistrates, however, were unbiased in the way they dealt with the application and rejected the councils objections. We now at the very least had the ability to open a bar! Not only that we had the appropriate licences to open The Dolphin Bar and Restaurant and a wine bar licence for The Pirate Bar, right in the bow of the ship. Before granting the licences, the magistrates had been to the ship to inspect her. They paid particular attention to the fire escapes and safety arrangements, which after careful inspection they felt were more than adequate. Given that the magistrates had given us the appropriate licences to trade as a bar, we were sure that it wouldn't be long now before the council finally gave us the full planning permission. Obviously someone forget to tell the council the plot because they, and the fire officer had other ideas. The fire officer had asked for another three fire escapes to be installed, two were straight forward but the third had to be attached to the car doors at the rear of the ship, which were obviously a considerably distance from the dock. At the time of us moving the ship to the docks, there was an engineering company directly opposite the ship. We contacted them and they urgently erected a platform behind the car deck doors and placed hand rails around two sides for safety. All we had to do now was bridge the gaps between the new platform and The Laundola which was by now docked towards the stern and from The Laundola to the dock. I had known for some time about some aluminum gang planks at a scrap merchants in Buckley called Spencers but I had already discounted them as being unsuitable for use on the ship. I returned to the yard and measured them and I couldn't believe that they were a perfect fit. The engineers worked on finishing the hand rails and we waited for the walk ways to arrive.They finally arrived on the morning we were due to open. For whatever reason, the Chief Fire Officer couldn't attend that day to ensure that we had complied with the Magistrates Order so he sent two guys in his place. T

hey could not have been more different in attitude. They were immediately impressed by the sight of an army of market trader's handball a one ton gangplank across onto The Laundola and into place, they rolled up their sleeves and helped. This one gesture felt we might finally begin to win the support of the local inspectors. Within minutes, the walkway from the shore, across to The Laundola and then onto the platform by the car deck doors was completed. Yet again we had got our monies worth out of The Laundola and yet again she saved the day.

Even with the restrictions placed on the venture by the local council we had little choice but to open without full planning consent being received. A massive amount of work had been completed on the ship and we were down to our last penny.  We still thought, however, that we had a backed a winner. The Funship opened in 1980 and we offered a wide range of services and amenities. The car deck was earmarked for the market. However, in the centre of the car deck are the boiler and engine rooms, together with steps leading to the upper decks. The engine rooms were still pretty much in pristine condition so this gave us the benefit of being able to provide guided tours to the visitors. I know many a father or grandfather who would have rather gone done in to the bowels of the ship to look at machinery rather than be dragged around a Sunday market. The car deck could hold over 100 cars but it was only capable of holding one heavy goods vehicle per journey because of the restricted headroom. However, it gave us enough space for 100 normal size market stalls. We also built the bingo hall and a market café in this space too. We couldn't have asked for more as this was the main purpose of the ship from the beginning, to house a market. However the versatility and the potential of the ship was immense.  The intention was to use the cabins below the car deck as out 'boatel'. These were all still in very good condition and we could have easily rented them out. The level directly about the car deck had large open plan areas which could also house more market stalls. The lounges were very light and airy and provided a nice relaxed area. We also had the Sea View cafeteria on this level which provided basic, well cooked food for a fair and reasonable price. Also on this level, towards the middle was The Dolphin Bar and Restaurant. This was a part of the ship which really showed the ships heritage. Silver service cutlery and crisp, clean white linen tablecloths were the order of the day, wonderful backdrop for our renowned Sunday Lunches. As you can imagine the view from the port side of the ship looking down the river were incredible and you had a really high vantage point.

Finally on this level,  The Pirate bar, right at the front of the ship and still kitted out as it was when the ship left service, however, we did have to change the layout of the bar and how the beer was delivered to the pumps. Moving up a level and we had even more space available as this is where the seating lounges were during its ferry days. Here we housed the Nuptune Coffee Lounge, a pool hall which was towards the back of the ship, a snack bar, a picnic area and the children's cinema. We provided child care facilities for parents wanting to look around the markets without the hindrance of bored children, this was way ahead of its time thirty years ago. The next level again we had a state of the art arcade. We had all the latest machines, fruit machines and penny fountains. This was a very popular part of the ship. I can assure you we had all the best machine released in the early part of the 1980's. Also, on this deck we had a section set aside explaining the history of the ship, we had a mock up of the ship and surrounding area and a pictorial history of the area. Also, towards the back of this deck was the aft wheelhouse. At this time we were trying our best to accommodate the council, and in 1984 I even allowed them to use the aft wheel house during the summer months. This was to be a central radio station for the council beach guards working along the North Wales coast. Finally, at the very top was the forward wheel house and radio room which were opened to the public and the officers quarters which we used to house all the staff. It is a little known fact that The Funship was not only our business but it was also our home. We lived aboard for many years and the term The Funship was really born out our not letting the bastards grind us down, meaning Delyn Borough Council.  And we succeeded as our other business ventures are a testimony too.  

There were some lighter moments that helped lift the mood. During the time we were living on The Ship, I had registered my driving licence to The Ship and the front page now said Mr. John Rowley, The Duke Of Lancaster, Llanerch-y-Mor, Mostyn, North Wales. I had just bought a car from a supplier, Paul Separates, in Balls Pond Road, London, it was a Jaguar XJS which although was slightly old, was in excellent condition and really looked the part but more importantly was extremely comfortable on those long early morning drives for stock. Also, very, very rare for it's day, it also had a Vodafone Car phone installed. All that for only £2,000, I thought it was a bargain. During one dash with the cash to get stock we were pulled over by the police. The Police had done a check on the car and had been told the car didn't have a valid car tax. When the police stopped us and explained why we had been stopped, Pat immediately dialed the office on the car phone and our bookkeeper, Josie explained the tax disc had arrived in the post but she hadn't had chance to stop us before we left. The policeman could see Pat using the phone and as he approached the car, I wound down the window to explain. The Policeman, very staunch and fastidious, was more interested in seeing my driving licence which I always carried with me. He read the front page of the licence and his demeanor changed immediately.  He handed me back the licence, took one step back away from the car and saluted me. He quickly wished us a safe journey and waved us goodbye. I didn't need telling twice and I quickly drove away trying my best to keep a straight face.

"What was all that about" said Pat, "I don't know but I think he must of thought I was The Duke of Lancaster", I replied.

Prior to the setting up and subsequent success of Solitaire we relied on the kindness, efforts and financial support of many people who have been great friends over the years. 1980 to 1985 was a period of survival. We had already spent every penny of our savings, and an awful lot of the Bank's money prior to the ship even opening in 1980. The initial outlay had all but drained our reserves. However, the biggest financial draw came with the countless court cases and legal battles we were fighting with the local council. The legal battles added another dimension to our battle to get a business up and working. The financial toil was such that we didn't have the money to invest in the greatest asset we had at our disposal, The Ship itself. If the council would have provided the support they assured us was there in the beginning then The Funship Complex would be a thriving business today, there is no question of that. In fact it was so popular, The Tourist Board figures for North Wales, based on the number of visitors, had The Funship in the top three throughout the time the ship was open. Now we were up against some pretty tough competition such as The Great Orme and the more famous castles. The early turnover of the business, coupled with the number of people we were getting through the doors, meant we knew we had a viable business idea. However, we were literally penniless. Not only did we receive help and financial support from many quarters, not just friends and family but the ship also attracted a number of characters to work there, which in turn attracted people to visit. We will never forget Badger, who had recently had his Cowboy Circus washed out at The Aintree Festival. He was a man of many hats, arcade technician, fire-eater and believe it or not Crocodile Keeper! We also took in people to help support them, Feo we took into our care in a deal with the local magistrates to help keep him out of trouble and keep him out of jail! He was a tireless worker and he eventually married a girl who worked on the ship. Looks like our influence help him. There was also Pat's son Trevor, who for a time ran the fruit stall at the market with some of his friends, they all contributed to the early days immensely. Unfortunately, Trevor was killed in a car crash in 1991 obviously leaving Pat devastated, the loss of a child is something no mother will ever get over completely. Her tireless work and efforts towards the business went a long way to help cloud the heartbreak and she always seemed to keep on going but in our heart of hearts we know she still misses him deeply. We really supported the area and provided a great number of jobs to the region, a region that had been decimated by the recession. But times were hard for us and we had to come up with more and more ingenious ways to make money just to survive. The river itself provided a constant source of both food and revenue. We would frequently row across to the sand banks and collect cockles. River Dee cockles are famous the world over and at one time was the largest source of cockles in the country, surpassing both Morcombe and South Wales. Further down the coast in Greenfield, refrigerated lorries would take the cockles all over Europe.  Our operation was on a slightly smaller scale and was more about sustenance as Pat would make this incredible Cockle Soup. Another source of revenue was Red Mullet, which is a wonderful eating fish and considered a real delicacy by restaurateurs, but notoriously difficult to catch, but again we came up with an ingenious solution. Mullet love feeding in the fresher waters, so they can frequently be found in many estuaries where fresh water tributaries lead into the sea. Badger, would wait for high water and for the mullet to arrive. He would fire his shotgun into the water which had the effect of stunning the fish. These stunned fish would then slowly rise to the surface of the water. Badger would then dive into the water to collect them and we would then ship this off fresh to local markets. We were in dire straits, but we were always very careful to hide this from the banks by making sure they always got their repayments. However our battle with the council continued but what we didn't know it at the time was that The Coed Market was to become an integral part of our struggle with the council

Not many people will know, not only was The Duke of Lancaster our dream business, but it was also our extended family home during the late seventies and through the eighties.  It also remained the home of a number of other people too, well past 1990 in fact. Looking back at how hard it was then makes me take a step back and think, how did we do that? It genuinely defies believe. For long periods of time we had no electricity at all and many a time we would find ourselves getting back to the ship at the dead of night and have to literally feel our way through the ship to our living quarters. There is cold and there is cold, but The Duke is a huge steel box, with very little, if indeed any lagging or insulation. Couple this to the fact that she spends half of each day mostly submerged in the cold, icey waters of the Dee, it doesn't take much imagination to realize how cold it was. Times were beginning to get hard, and money was really, really tight. We hadn't reached the stage of closing The Ship to the public and we were still living on board when we started trading in Liverpool under the Solitaire name. We were very much living hand to mouth using a very small pot of stock money to trade. Bill Arrow was a remarkable help for us, he became our ad-hoc chauffeur, getting up in time for us to leave Mostyn at 5:00 in the morning to drive to London to buy stock. The shop was started using only a few thousand pounds which we had borrowed for stock and everything was done on a shoestring budget. We would always buy our stocks direct from the factories, often not knowing what we would find when we arrived. I still had many of my contacts from when I worked in Wolverhampton and they became increasingly handy in the early days. It was then back in the van to drive half the length of the country to 'the fridge' as we had come to call her, often not arriving back until 2:00am the day after we'd set off. We'd snatch some sleep, fighting against the cold and the elements, before taking the stock over to the shop in Liverpool to unload, very often repeating the process the following day. The shop in Liverpool wasn't what you'd expect with the boutiques of Bold and Bond Street in spitting distance. The Shop was makeshift to say the least and when you realize the origins you'll appreciate why. The shop itself was completely empty and the building in desperate need of repair, in fact it was later identified by the council as needing development, but again that's another story. We piled a full wagon load of wooden pallets and placed in the centre of the full length of the store. We then ripped up old cardboard cartons and placed them inside out on top to hide the pallets as best we could. Finally we covered the whole length with sheepskin mittens. I fully appreciate this isn't the most conventional way to open a prestigious city centre store but we were desperate to build up the turnover. The more money we could generate the more stock we had to trade with. Time was critical in turning the money we'd made back into stock as soon as we could. I remember one evening, we closed the shop early, around 4:00pm so I could catch the London Train. I remember grabbing the takings, all cash, running from the shop and up the hill to Lime Street Station. I caught the early evening train to London. A sheepskin supplier, Harvey Miller, from Wadeson Street in the East End had agreed to stay open later and serve us with more mittens. He packaged them all up in these huge boxes and had taken them across London to meet us at Euston. The deal was very quickly done and we had time for a quick cuppa before getting back on the Mail Train, the last train of the day, back to Liverpool. I remember distinctly that we looked like the man from the "Big Fry" advert on the telly, carrying huge boxes onto the train with us. By the way, it really is worth looking up the Big Fry advert on google to understand where I'm coming from! But the night didn't end with a nice gentle tootle back to Bootle, no we had to take the mittens around to Pat's Mothers and picked up our van at around 2:30 am. We had scheduled to meet another supplier the following morning in Glastonbury at 6:00am so we had to get a move on or else we would have missed the chance. We got straight into the van and drove like demons down the motorway, picked up the second load and drove back up the motorway to Liverpool. We arrived back in Liverpool, consolidated all the stock, put it out in the shop and managed to open the doors at 10:30 with brand new gleaming stock. We considered that to be all in a days' work, that's the way it was. We carried on that frenetic pace for many, many years and Company House records show that the business peaked with a turnover or around 5 or 6 million pounds a year. Why did we do it? To expose what we consider to be a corrupt North Wales council and our refusal to give into them but looking back now, I really can't believe we did it. Our refusal to give in would eventually lead to the High Courts.

A City Centre Shop can only be very loosely applied to the operation we found ourselves running. We were desperate for trading space but in those days the city centre was still the domain of the high street chains paying huge rents and passing those high running costs onto the eager punters. We were not in that league and neither did we want to be. Having said that, in many of the major cities in the UK at that time,  just on the fringes of what is considered city centre were areas which had fallen into disrepair  or even dereliction. No where suffered with this more than Liverpool. We found a property, not too far from the city centre, close to the trains and also a bus terminal. There was a combination of different buildings all brought together under one name, Solitaire, and these collective premises held a number of different small businesses. The premises had a very narrow shop on Church Street, which ran through two other premises which had frontage onto a different street, 8 and 10 Williamson Street. The advantage with 8 and 10 Williamson Street is that they were interconnected at various levels allowing people to move freely and also gain access to different streets. The premises housed many different businesses, Herbert The Hairdresser, a very flamboyant character ran a very busy little operation there. Also, there was a café operating across the whole of the first floors of both 8 and 10 Williamson Street. The Kenny Campbell Sports Shop took up the basement and ground floors of 10. However, not all of the spaces were taken as many had left but we were desperate for trading space at the time. We found the man reputed to be the owners of the properties, a man called David Miller and arranged to meet him and his wife at their home in the very affluent suburb of Liverpool, called Woolton. David was another one of lives characters, he had fallen into serious ill health and was almost paralyzed after a constant battle with multiple sclerosis. Even though David had obviously suffered and endured many physical scars from his various ailments he seemed very jovial and still very astute. He talked endlessly about old times and how, in particular, he had set up and operated a clothing chain in the UK specializing in leather garments. The negotiations on the Church Street property went well, we agreed terms on one half of the narrow shop and everyone seemed happy with the arrangement. We paid a very small rent which we paid weekly, suiting us very well. We now had trading space in Liverpool with access to Church Street and also through the other premises into Williamson Street. We have subsequently been told the shop used to be an entrance for a cinema although this has never been validated. We were soon drawing the customers into the shop and people were eager to buy from us, hence the strenuous life-style we had to adopt to maintain trade. Our shop also had a knock on effect with the other businesses in the block. As our shop became busier and busier, the café upstairs started to do a roaring trade as well.

We were starting to enjoy a very lucrative business, even though, as I've described, the pace of supporting was very, very difficult but with great risk comes great rewards and we needed to expand as we didn't have sufficient floor spaces to fulfill the demand. With the assistance of Woolea Sheepskins, one of our major suppliers based in Glastonbury, Somerset, we were in a position to make an offer on more space in the block. Again, we went to see Mr. Miller, who had been a model landlord for quite a while and we negotiated taking over the whole ground floor of 8 Williamson Street. Business continued to boom and we enjoyed the new arrangement for quite some time, slowly building up the business but still keeping the same values and work ethic we had employed in the beginning. We thought we had turned a corner and all the hard work was going to pay off, how wrong could we be?

As Solitaire we built up an excellent business in Liverpool selling sheepskin products. It wasn't difficult to gain a foothold when you think that we were selling genuine sheepskin gloves and mittens for £2 or £3 a pair when the other big stores locally were selling similar quality items as luxury products for £15 per pair. We had the mitten trade sewn up so to speak! No one could compete with us, we had all the right contacts in place, the right product and a buoyant market. We bough mittens from all over the country, Ipswich, Glastonbury Bungay and even abroad from Malta of all places. However, the sheepskin mittens aren't must buy summer essentials so we realized we had to diversify to take the seasonality out of the business. We chose General Fashion, the centre for which was still very much London. In those days there were literally hundreds of small factories in the capital churning out garments for all the high street chains and specialist outlets, many of which ran by Greek and Turkish nationals. This was long before we understood the politics of Greece and Turkey and in particular the effect of those politics on the island of Cyprus. Through working with some of the Turkish factory owners, we were soon dealing direct with suppliers in Turkey and in particular Istanbul. We travelled to Turkey, well before the days of scheduled flights and package holidays but we were shown around the country and welcomed with open arms by the Government officials who wanted us to invest tourist trade. However, we already had a tourist project very close to our hearts in North Wales and the reason for building up the Solitaire brand was for us to fit the local council and re-invest in our own project. We never stopped running, we had a mission, to ensure The Funship lived up to the potential we all still believed it had. We starved ourselves of holidays, choosing to spend our time abroad on scouting trips for the business and soon we were invited to visit a brand new factory at Eskisehir, right in the centre of Turkey. The people who had arranged the visit had sorted out a helicopter to take us. This filled me with dread, not the best of flyers anyway, the thought of being taken by persons unknown in lord knows what flying contraption available so I lost my nerve and declined the offer.

Not to be deterred by my rebuttal the factory owner suggested we be taken by train instead. This still worried us but we agreed, expecting to make the long overnight journey and hard wooden seats in a claustrophobic cabin. How wrong we were. We arrived to the station late with Jesmyn, a friend and Turkish factory owner in London, who was travelling with us. We were sure the train had left but to our surprise we were greeted by a gentleman in a very colourful uniform who ushered us to the rear of a train just about to leave for Ankara. We didn't have any tickets but we were told to just jump onto the rear coach as the train was about to leave, before boarding we asked where we should sit, anywhere, came the reply, the whole coach is yours. We stepped onto the train and could not believe what was laid out before us. The coach was absolutely fabulous as it belonged to the Turkish Prime Minister and it had been chartered especially for our journey. At one end the coach had four separate bedrooms, each with hot and cold running waters, showers and very ornate furnishings rich in colour. At the other end was a fully functioning office with all the gadgets of the day available to us, fax machines and phones. The centre of the coach was taken up with the galley and an open dining area with bar and staffed by both a chef and a bar tender. Immediately upon boarding the train, the bar tender gave us all a glass of Turkish wine, which whilst I'm not a big drinker, was very well received. I couldn't believe the opulent surroundings we found ourselves in.  The décor was like nothing I had ever experienced, with mirrored ceilings and plush fabrics and finishes, I had to kick myself into realizing it was a train.

Not bad for a village lad.

After a wonderful evening journey through Turkey and when we awoke the following morning we were in a railway siding a few miles from the factory and after a wonderful breakfast it was time for the factory visit. What awaited us was humbling, even though it was a Sunday and the factory was closed, all 500 members of staff were outside the factory forming a welcoming party and there was a huge advertising hoarding declaring "WELCOME SOLITAIRE" in bright red flowers and a white flower background. We were absolutely stunned, these people had given up their only day off during the week to welcome us to their factory. This was a far cry to the reception we got in North Wales yet that was the area we really wanted to invest in. This was the first of many such welcoming committees we encountered over the years and they stand in testament of how poorly we were treated by Flintshire County Council.

Wherever we went, who ever we traded with, and no matter what company we worked alongside, Solitaire always, religiously attended the market at The Funship.  Likewise, wherever we went, who ever we traded with, and no matter what company we worked alongside, Solitaire was always welcomed with open arms with the exception of Flintshire County Council. What was it with the local council, why could they not see the potential of what we were trying to achieve? We never ever lost hope that one day better times for The Duke of Lancaster would come and soon there would be a realization from the local authorities of exactly how committed we were to the venture. We continued to look for new and exciting suppliers to keep the trade alive. We travelled to Hong Kong and briefly did business there, yet again with full co-operation from the local authorities and businesses but costly logistical problems forced us to stop. Airfreight is charged by volume not weight so this made the transport costs very expensive and the shipping lead times were also a problem to us. Very few people actually understood the lengths we were going to in bringing quality garments to the area at bargain prices but our customers were always very grateful and happy to continue supporting us both via the market and the shop space in Liverpool. Through our many contacts we were invited to Morocco and shown around by a senior government official, Mr Elker Dudi. We visited factories, in Rabat and Casablanca , with a view to doing business with them. We were wined and dined at the Dar A Salam golf club for dinner one evening even though the whole complex was closed for the private use of the King of Morocco and his entire entourage. Like I've said, wherever we had been, we have always been very well treated with the exception of Flintshire County Council.

By 1992, following the execution of Ceausescu we were in Romania. We were expanding our business options constantly but we still held firm with our belief in The Ship. We had fought, and won, a series of high court battles with Flintshire Council by this time and we were eager to start trading from the ship again. In fact, during 1992 we did re-open briefly just to test the water.

We settled in Romania in 1993, and I lived there for 2 ½ years building up a factory in Bucharest under the Katy Baker label. Following years of communist rule, the country was in decay, road transport was difficult, the infrastructure shot after years of neglect and the whole country was effectively bankrupt. However, this scenario, provided a great deal of opportunities for a streetwise businessman with experience of foreign companies, the place was idea to set up production. It was, however, one of the bleakest places I have ever been. I had gone from some of the hottest places on the planet to somewhere where the extremities of the climate were huge, 40 degree summers gave way to minus 30 degree winters. During this time I once nearly died of hyperthermia, I had given up my blankets to a guy called Andras, who in the years previous had controlled some of our production in Limassol. Following the collapse of his business he moved to Romania and was working just across the border bridge. I managed to second him to the factory and help me run it, in any event he still owed me a favor and this seemed like a good way for him to pay me back. Instead of blankets, I used an old anorak until we got extra supplies in, I would of loved a couple of the old ships blankets. Should of kept some instead of selling them as dog blankets on the streets of Wolverhampton! I returned in 1995 for yet another battle with the council in our war to save The Funship. It was now getting as serious as it could get, we were destined for the High Court.

We traded all over the world to keep the business alive, even Syria for a while, which caused a number of logistical issues, none more so than one memorable journey home. Damascus airport was hardly JFK and the flight schedule seemed to be that flights came and left as and when available. You paid your money and you took your choice. One particular day I had waited at the airport all day for something to take us out. We were told a plane was available and we boarded a bus to take us right across Damascus Airfield which is massive. When I got to the plane I was struggling to take it all in, I had never seen a plane like this in my life and it didn't look the best, on the floor by the front wheel of the plane was a large pool of what I thought was water. I had a really uneasy feeling about this thing but I really wanted to get out of the stifling heat. I watched as people started to climb on board the plane using the front stairs, suddenly, as people boarded the plane the nose of the plane dropped a few inches. I thought the heat was playing tricks with my mind so decided to just take another couple of minutes before I boarded. A minute or so later the plane dropped yet again, this time to such a degree that as passengers got to the top of the gangplank, they were actually stepping down onto the plane! I continued to look the plane over and realized it was covered in patches where makeshift repairs had been made to the fuselage and then I made the stark realization that the water on the runway was in fact hydraulic oil, probably from the front suspension, leaking out. I asked a fellow traveler if he knew what sort of plane it was, "it's a Russian Tupolev" he replied. Now my shot nerves were completely gone. The Syrians we struggling to get spare parts to run their sewing machines so how did they get spare parts for their planes? It is with great trepidation that I finally plucked up the courage to board the plane. As we were sitting there in absolutely blistering heat, shouts came up from the back of the aircraft that the seatbelts were missing or wrong. Some had the left belt but not the right, some had two lefts, some non at all. The whole plane was shambolic. The cabin crew had to move the belts around to get people totally sorted. I started to work out the escape procedures and my heart missed a beat when I realized the escape hatch, which was designed to be remove and thrown out in case of an emergency was held in place using an old fashioned sash cord you used to get in old window frames!

Just when I thought it couldn't possibly get any worse, I spotted an open topped jeep hurtling towards us across the dusty landing strip. The jeep approaches with speed and stops just short of hitting the steps. A really fat man, with a huge cigar and dirty green t-shirt gets off and walks towards the plane, giving it the old one-two as he does.  The man walks up the steps, acknowledges the cabin crew with a nonchalant wave of the hand and heads to the cockpit, still puffing away on his big stogie.

It was the pilot.

By this stage I am so stiff with fright I think rigor-mortis has set in. The engines fire up, the crew closes the doors and the pilot points the plane down the runway. He hits full throttle and the engines are screaming. The plane rumbles on, the heat becomes unbearable but the plane doesn't want to leave terra-firma. We are now rumbling away down the runway like a Russian battle tank in all its terrifying glory. The perimeter fence looms large in the not so distance, I can see the guard post with a sentry, fully armed, monitoring our approach, and still the plane doesn't want to lift up. Just when we were about to hurtle through the fence, the front of the plane lifts just at the last minute and we are over. This is it, I thought, just a slight pull on the control column now and this thing is going to reach for the skies. How wrong could I be, the escape hatch close to me seemed to be rattling out a demented SOS in Morse code as the plane never seemed to reach more than 1,000 feet. We seemed to hedge hop all the way to Larnaca with the plane moaning and groaning all the way there. The plane eventually landed and we all vowed never to travel that way again. Although we did trade with the Syrians, it only lasted about six months due to the problems with logistics proved too much of a burden, which is a real shame as they were wonderful people to do business with, couldn't do enough to help and their hospitality amongst the warmest I've come across.

Yet again Flintshire's commercial development team should be ashamed of themselves and sit back and take notice of how it should be done when trying to attract and maintain new sustainable business opportunities to the area