Heritage coaching.
I'm just a bit too young to remember them in service, so a rally trip in a beautifully restored late 70s Plaxton Panorama coach with table seating was an absolute blast. It was obviously either a Bedford or Leyland, I just remember it was loud, but somehow dignified. Elegant power.
It was only a short run, just a circle to the station two miles away, but the sun being out and the roads quiet so it could stretch its legs made it really easy to imagine what the heyday of European coaching holidays must have been like.
Snow Rider.
My shortest bus trip ever. Arrived in Leeds by train in the middle of a blizzard at teatime in January. Boarded a Yorkshire Rider decker, probably a Park Royal Atlantean I guess. He heaved off, the wheels turned for the first twenty or so yards, the bus slid sideways for the next twenty, the driver seemingly having locked his brakes.
The bus glides over the already compacted snow and gently kisses the kerb, coming to a standstill. Driver switches the engine off and starts packing up his gear. We all silently accept we are now snow people, and quietly disembark, looking at each other as if this is the last time we will ever see another human again. I have no idea why I still love Yorkshire Rider, given they nearly killed me.
The Literary Self Preservation Society
My expectation that the green branded single decker Wright bodied Volvo? Bronte bus in West Yorkshire would be a pleasant run along a river valley in picturesque West Yorkshire. I had a perfect view from the first row of elevated rear seats.
I had somehow missed the fact that it actually crosses over from one valley to the next, and what ensued as it sumitted was the closest I will ever come to experiencing the final scenes of The Italian Job. The drops alone made it feel very scary, but the lack of safety barriers, high speed of the driver and the entirely unsuitable lightweight flimsy build of the bus, made it all the more frightening.
Space bus
It's funny what sticks with you. I've ridden bendy buses, Routemasters, Malta buses, Ailsas, and God knows what else. But in the category of unusual types, it's surprising to realise I was most taken by the experience of riding in an airside bus. Those things are huge. Cavernous.
In the heat of some Spanish runway, it should have been unbearable, but it was cool and calming, and surprisingly roomy despite the full load. It was so unusual, so seemingly unroadworthy in the conventional sense, you can't help but wonder if you're on another planet.
Stagecoach Miracle?
Bucking recent trends, Stagecoach recently took over a route near me, and seems keen to impress and win custom. I had occasion to use it last month, and was unphased to see a nice clean Enviro400 MMC heave gently to. I bound upstairs, and felt immediately strange.
It took a few moments to diagnose my ailment. I had as a matter of habit already taken in the age of the vehicle, noting it to be five years old. And yet looking around inside, this bus was spotless. I'm not talking clean, this bus was inexplicably, for all the world, in showroom condition. Not like new, but as new. It made no sense.
It still doesn't. I can't shake the feeling this must be down to some unusual circumstance. A reg change, an insurance job, a very early refurb. And yet, to be fair, it could equally be the result of dedicated cleaning and engineering work.
Whatever the reason, it's soo long since I got my new bus fix, and having grown tired of the trend for faux leather seats, this classic beach ball moquette beauty was a real treat. Even though she vexed me so.
A pale imitation
I was lucky enough to be a student in the Routemaster swan song. Although re-engined and tweaked, there was enough original charm to please this simple boy raised on rear engined boxes.
A return to London many years later saw me of course specifically seek out runs on the Heritage Routemasters, for nostalgic reasons. Boy, what a disappointment. I must gave got a later refurb or something, but it was all kinds of wrong.
It was so bad, I ended up cutting it short once I'd done the bits of the routes I'd somehow never seen in three years. Which was regrettably, both outer termini.
Double-decker of death
Whether it's an age thing or something about the Enviro400 or the fact it was my first run on it on express dual carriageway routes, this relatively recent experience has given me pause about my usual seat, which is top deck up front, naturally. I was strangely terrified, preoccupied the bus would topple over given the speed. It's the same every time, even on an MMC, but thankfully only at top speed, a rare thing indeed in my area. An entirely irrational fear, I tell myself, trying to ignore the fact reports of buses tipping over seem to be on the rise.
An unmistakable sound
And trip on Region Transport was an extraordinary thing to my childhood self, even though I was regularly exposed to other operators. Immaculate and wonderfully uniform buses. Never late. Always useful. Always full of interesting people. So many destinations. The exotic middle door. The comforting red vinyl bench seats.
And yet standing above all those to sear most permanently in my brain? The sound of the (I assume proprietary) Exact Change Fare Box chomping its way through another batch of deposited coins. There were two sounds, the first drop, a quick sharp sound, then the second drop, a more involved mechanical clunking. Between the two the driver apparently counts the coins in a plastic window, never having to dirty his mitts (and so according to legend, avoid metal poisoning). Ingenious!
Inexplicably, the sounds were loud and crisp enough to echo down the saloon and even be audible upstairs. The sound of movement. Order. Modernity. I was of course too young to appreciate what an absolute annoyance it was to most people's daily lives. The literal sound of state oppression.
It was almost cruel that some years later I spied several examples in the Scottish Bus Museum Edinburgh shed, but alas am no nearer to hearing that sound again.
The Scout Troop Bus
An elderly RH sourced from God knows where, in red with white relief band and the Scout logo in purple. It was a type I was entirely unfamiliar with, having an engine that sounded like nothing else I had heard, and strange start/stop control rituals I'd also never seen on a bus. In hindsight I think the whole mid engined experience was a new one on me. Even my Dad's truck, a Volvo FL tractor unit, sounded and drove like a car compared to this wonderful beast.
I never questioned how or why our permanently windswept Robinson Crusoe of a Troop Leader even knew how to drive a bus let alone if he had a license. He just jumped in, went through the rituals, and vroom, off we went, belching blue smoke. No seat belts, lovely comfy brown leather bench seats, chrome rails and wooden slatted floor. Definitely an ex PSV, probably first generation NBC, my Scout years being the era of the Olympian.
Add all that to the fact it's only passengers were a bunch of riotous boys who were off on yet another (usually entirely undeserved) field trip to laser quest or the leisure center or even the yearly camp in some far off place, and I swear, every journey was an absolute riot.
And as far as I remember, the blooming thing never conked out or refused to start once. Amazing. Although I do think it only managed at most three years in service. Impressive given it was most likely life expired when we got it. In hindsight, our Troop Leader has to have been one of the SAS Originals, for sure.
A crying shame that these days the entire experience is illegal in about a hundred different ways. No wonder kids today are naught but feral monsters.
Bizarrely, much later a local operator had an RH, by then a very odd thing anywhere in PSV circles. I just equally bizarrely never took the opportunity to ride on it. Only years later did I bag one at a rally, and it sounded and even looked the same. Pure nostalgia.
