The word "minibus" is a correct and usable term in written English.
It can be used to describe a type of public transportation, usually a vehicle that carries between 8-16 passengers. For example: "The school operates a minibus on days when field trips are scheduled."
I travel sometimes for work, taking groups out of London by minibus, heading off via the trunk roads.
June to September Book it: Edge of Wales Walk (01758 760652; edgeofwaleswalk.co.uk) has a six-day, 47-mile walk, as above, from £56 per night (£30 per child), including B&B, minibus transport, maps and GPS.
Spending days cooped up in an overheated minibus with a random assortment of strangers ticking off the sights ought to be a recipe for disaster, and yet some of my happiest travel experiences have been group holidays.
"There were seventeen of us who came down in that first minibus, the first trip that we came down," he said.
That the city is serious about making good on these intentions is bolstered by the Helsinki Regional Transport Authority's rollout last year of a strikingly innovative minibus service called Kutsuplus.
There's the totally un-Googleable Seventeen who, weirdly, have 14 members, and Apeace, who had 21 members until June this year, when they sensibly downsized to 15 – coincidentally, the exact number of people you can fit in a minibus.
On our final day, the minibus driver Salvadore laid a red rose on each of our seats, and one girl declared, "Honestly, he's the man of my dreams!" I had anticipated a Roman Holiday-style adventure, but even though there was no real romance, the possibility had existed, and we'd made friends, and fallen head over heels for Rome.
They name themselves LGSM (Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners) and, unable to get their early donations accepted by the miners' union, set off in an old minibus to a remote village in Wales to hand over the money in person.
One lift I once took led to a two-week yacht cruise around the west coast of Scotland, and my longest ever single trip was from southern Portugal to central France in a Volkswagen minibus with five German nurses, which took three days.
Throughout the last stretch of the journey, in a minibus driving along winding roads through the misty Welsh landscape, I am in full prodigal-son mode, returning to the land of my fathers, or at least my mother's fathers.
The Automobile Association urged members not to sign up for the so-called e-tags, which provide for toll discounts but also allow bank accounts to be charged every time a car passes under one of the gantries.The government offered a one-off 5.8 billion rand to subsidise the tolls for private users and exempt minibus taxis entirely.
