Busaholic
Veteran Member
- Joined
- 7 Jun 2014
- Messages
- 14,671
The idea for this thread came to me from reading the Green Line 797 thread responses.
Has anyone ever been hitchhiking and been picked up by a bus, whether in public service or not? It happened to me once, when I was a callow youth almost fifty years ago, in December 1966.
I had got friendly with someone who came from Liverpool, and we decided to 'hitch' there from London. A mid-morning start at the beginning of the M1 near what is now Brent Cross, joining a few others with the same idea, only got us a ride in the back of a bread van (the real thing, not a minibus!) to somewhere in the vicinity of Luton. We were walking along a country lane, feeling increasingly forlorn, when a bus pulled up alongside us and the driver asked us where we were going. On the reply 'Liverpool' he said something to the effect that he could get us a few miles nearer, and we hopped on. I had enough interest in buses, particularly London ones, to note it was a LT Country Area bus in green livery and was a one-man operated RF from (I think) Luton garage on route three hundred and sixty something (?). No money changed hands and we were duly deposited somewhere.
It wasn't the only bus journey of the trip. Having taken about 24 hours to get to the 'Pool, on the way back on the Sunday evening we caught a North Western (?) bus from Liverpool to Warrington. It was snowing and we managed to find a chip shop open. We got talking to a couple of girls and my friend was able to blag his Liverpool credentials and knowledge of the groups and clubs, like the Blue Angel we'd visited the previous evening. Anyway, things were going fine until I walked this girl home, whereupon her older brother came racing out of the house clutching a meat cleaver and, unathletic though I may have been, Bolt would not have beaten me over the few hundred yards before, fortunately, he lost sight of me. I forget the rest, but we did eventually make it back to London, unscathed. It was the last time I hitchhiked.
Anyone else?
Has anyone ever been hitchhiking and been picked up by a bus, whether in public service or not? It happened to me once, when I was a callow youth almost fifty years ago, in December 1966.
I had got friendly with someone who came from Liverpool, and we decided to 'hitch' there from London. A mid-morning start at the beginning of the M1 near what is now Brent Cross, joining a few others with the same idea, only got us a ride in the back of a bread van (the real thing, not a minibus!) to somewhere in the vicinity of Luton. We were walking along a country lane, feeling increasingly forlorn, when a bus pulled up alongside us and the driver asked us where we were going. On the reply 'Liverpool' he said something to the effect that he could get us a few miles nearer, and we hopped on. I had enough interest in buses, particularly London ones, to note it was a LT Country Area bus in green livery and was a one-man operated RF from (I think) Luton garage on route three hundred and sixty something (?). No money changed hands and we were duly deposited somewhere.
It wasn't the only bus journey of the trip. Having taken about 24 hours to get to the 'Pool, on the way back on the Sunday evening we caught a North Western (?) bus from Liverpool to Warrington. It was snowing and we managed to find a chip shop open. We got talking to a couple of girls and my friend was able to blag his Liverpool credentials and knowledge of the groups and clubs, like the Blue Angel we'd visited the previous evening. Anyway, things were going fine until I walked this girl home, whereupon her older brother came racing out of the house clutching a meat cleaver and, unathletic though I may have been, Bolt would not have beaten me over the few hundred yards before, fortunately, he lost sight of me. I forget the rest, but we did eventually make it back to London, unscathed. It was the last time I hitchhiked.
Anyone else?
