Any More Fares, Please?

So, there we were, by younger brother, Paul and I, sat in a sauna gently cooking ourselves after a swim. I'd not long bought the TR and bro' says, just like you do, "why don't we buy ourselves a nice little vintage coach to take to shows?"
So we did. A 1950 Bedford OB with a Duple Vista body. All the mechanics had been restored, but the interior needed a retrim. That could wait.  We took the train up to Lancaster from Southampton to collect it and drove back in one day at a steady 40 mph.  It was a long day...

Here it is - a couple of years later, parked up in the village of Southwick not far from where we live and the place where "Operation Overlord" on D-Day was masterminded.


This is the vehicle that everyone went to school on, or they've seen it in a film. They are fun and rewarding to drive, if rather tiring. There's no synchromesh on the gears, so you need to learn very quickly how to double declutch because it makes a horrible noise if you get it wrong!  We did a couple of shows and Paul, who runs a large minibus business came up with this idea of using it as part of a new business - tv, film work and wedding hire.  It would help to pay the bills.  So, I went off to get a PSV licence and we started looking fro premises.
If we were going to run it as a business, we'd need another vehicle and soon afterwards, found this one for sale...

It's pretty obviously on a wedding job.  By this time, we'd set the business up, got an operator's licence and were taking wedding bookings left, right and centre. We called the business "Valley Rambler" because the OB had the words "Valley Rambler" painted on it and people made a connection with the name.  It was all a complete load of fiction, but hey-ho!
So, the second vehicle was a 1956 Bedford SB with a Duple Vega body and a rare "Butterfly" grille. Originally petrol engined by the time we bought it, it had been long converted to diesel and the big 6 cylinder Bedford 300 diesel sat under a bit of hardboard about 18 inches from the driver's left ear. You did get used to the noise eventually.

One of the first jobs we did with the SB was for the Kent Tourist Board. This entailed picking up a group of journos at Victoria Coach Station and driving them all around various attractions in Kent.  We managed to "blagg" our way into the coach station and be put onto stand 1. You can see me in my best "bus driver's uniform", complete with flat hat, looking for all the world like Stan Butler.  
"GET THAT BUS OUT!"

And here we are, parked up at the Hop Farm.


Business was doing well, we were getting more than enough bookings for weddings to keep us occupied and we decided to buy another coach.  I'd always liked the "Royal Blue" coaches that used to be seen in the north of the county. No chance of getting one of them, but a similar type, owned by "Red & White" came up for sale. It's a Bristol MW6G from 1958 and was my favourite of the 3 classic vehicles. This was a real monster to drive with the curious Bristol gearbox. A very unforgiving crash box with an overdrive 5th gear for cruising at a flat out 50 mph, but if you came to a halt in 5th, you were stuck as it was impossible to get back through the gears.  That really kept you on your toes. And here it is:

We're parked up at RAF Colerne, having completed the Bournemouth to Bath Commercial Vehicle Run.
We got some film and tv work as well. The OB was featured in "Dealing with Dickinson", a six part reality show on the BBC, in a Meridien Production "The Summer of 44" and in a cameo on BBC2's Business Lunch show, with Paul being interviewed live. The SB was used for a week by GMTV for their breakfast program, travelling all over the country from Newcastle to Sussex via East Anglia and in the Channel 4 program "Wakey, Wakey Campers" and the MW appeared also in "Wakey, Wakey Campers".
And several hundred weddings over a period of 3 years.


One that I didn't own outright, but had a share in was this 1964 Leyland Atlantean Bus. People talk about going to school on a bus like that - but I used to go to school a couple of days a week on this actual vehicle. Because it was such a regular, the number stuck in my head.