STDE (Dunkerque, France) 540 - 31 Oct 1995

Tuesday 31 October 1995 – STDE, Dunkerque, France 540, a Renault PR100, seen in the bus station at Place de la Gare in Dunkerque loading for Malo les Bains on service 3. The main railway station is behind the white van in the left background.

STDE (Société des Transports de Dunkerque et Extensions), operates the bus network under contract to SMTP (Syndicat Mixte des Transports Publics da la Communauté urbaine de Dunkerque), a consortium of local municipalities in the Dunkerque area. Due to group mergers etc the ownership of STDE has been with Connex, Veolia and now Transdev.

A rather misty morning. This impromptu call at Dunkerque was as a result of me being diverted off the motorway due to an accident in the fog. In the interests of self-preservation I got out of the mayhem finding myself in an industrial estate unable to see more than a few metres all around. After a while I cautiously drove to a suburb (Coudekerque) where I parked the car and had a bus ride into Dunkerque town centre! Despite taking quite a number of trips to Flanders I had rarely looked around the port towns so it was an unexpected sojourn.