Richard Bannister

My travels this weekend were originally planned around the new wood coaster at Europa Park, and I'd made appropriate bookings for that towards the end of last year. Then, a few weeks ago, I went through a number of enthusiast web sites looking for nearby fairs with interesting coasters, and came across Crash Test, a brand new spinning mouse which was supposed to make its debut at a fair in Deventer. Then I looked some more, and found four additional travelling credits that I'd be able to hit in the same journey. The fact that doing this would add around a thousand kilometres of driving to one day was irrelevant. Crash Test was subsequently pulled from the fair due to construction delays, but I decided to stick with my revised plan anyway. I'm writing this trip report from the dubious comfort of an airline seat on an airline without onboard internet access, and as such I'm not able to check the nearest commercial airport to Enschede in the Netherlands. What I can say with reasonable certainty is that it probably isn't Frankfurt in Germany!

Volkspark Enschede is a large public park that hosts a fair for a few weeks around easter. The money raised from the event then covers the maintenance of the grounds for the rest of the year. Making its debut at the event was a brand new Wacky Worm, here named Dragon (Moonen) (#1741). The smaller version of the Reverchon mouse, Magic Mouse (Buwalda) (#1742) was also present and doing solid business. It was good to see Mission Space again, but I decided it wasn't warm enough to ride!

I'd considered dropping Deventer out of my day, due to there being no new credits for me, but it was only a fifteen minute diversion so I decided to stop and stretch my legs. London City Coaster could do with some new paint and a serious clean, though on the positive side the ride quality hasn't suffered from its grubby appearance. I caught a quick lap on Bugs & Bees before making my exit.

It was a few hours later when I drove into Kortrijk, an architecturally interesting city in Belgium that I doubt I'd ever have made it to were there not a fair in town. The rides here were spread out over several city streets, to the point that I could easily have missed something if I'd not planned ahead. Parking my car at the train station, I walked through the railway tunnel directly to Roller Coaster (Bufkens), the largest coaster of the day, and a relocation for me; I'd ridden it under its previous ownership a few years ago at Tilburg.

My next stop was ten minutes walk away, where Elliott (Van Bodet) (#1743) was hiding amidst a large collection of flat rides. Having ridden one of these rides just last week this wasn't much of a surprise to me, though it was somewhat amusing to see a satellite dish mounted in the middle of the coaster. The final credit of the day thus became Wild Mouse (Bufkens) (#1744), a full size Reverchon model with extra theming, including a mirror at the top of the ride. This was somewhat augmented by the reflections of a large office building next door to the coaster, although I've probably ridden enough of these mice now that I'm unlikely to be startled by the appearance of another car approaching me!