The Golden Age of Coach Travel Timeshift

# Somewhere over the rainbow

# Way up high

# There's a land that I heard of once in a lullaby... #

The joy of it was all the colour,

because all the coaches were coloured.

Because all the companies basically had colours within their names.

Every company had a different livery

and you recognised which coach you were going for by the colour of the coach, basically.

You had the wonderful green coaches of the Southdown company.

You at the dark red of East Kent and the lighter red of Thames Valley.

These were the 1950s.

A unique era of travel between the heyday of the railways

and before mass air flights took off.

When the coach became the people's transport.

Together, they ventured out from sleepy villages and chimney-choked towns into the big wide world.

We had a rainbow that started at the coach station

and the colours spread to all the ends of the Kingdom.

You know, we were a rainbow.

When the coach was king,

jams were of the strawberry, rather than the traffic, variety.

For many passengers, the coach offered the first heady taste of adventure and freedom.

A safe, comfy capsule on wheels,

from which they could glimpse wonders that lay beyond their own backyard.

And, unlike the train, the touring coach could pick you up from wherever you wanted.

You can hire a private coach to go anywhere you like, any time you like.

And we can organise the whole thing for you.

An offer few at the time would have refused.

Especially one particular passenger.

My best memories of coach travel is how everybody got on together, like a big happy family.

Every coach was the same. There might be 40 coaches in a line following you.

If you pulled up, you could hear people in the coach behind singing and having a laugh. It was wonderful.

THEY SING

That's stuck with me all the time. Happy. Everybody was happy.

Nobody was that fussy. Nobody was in a hurry, you know.

And...everybody took the simple things, like...and enjoyed them.

The sweet sound of a good old-fashioned sing-song.

It was the magic ingredient of every successful coach trip,

binding its passengers together in coachly harmony.

I think camaraderie is something...

It's rather a well-kept secret with coach groups.

People would get up and impersonate stars and comedians, with the flat caps and things like that.

Some of the men would get up and stand at the front, have the place in roaring laughter.

Everybody used to be hanging out the seats, looking down, and standing up and cheering and clapping.

# And if you think that's what I look

# I'll tell you why I'm here and... #

George Formby was one of the most popular ones to send up.

# I'm leaning on a lamp-post at the corner of the street

# In case a certain little lady comes by... #

One group used to tell you so many jokes, you'd have to pull up and have a rest,

because you couldn't listen to 'em all!

It didn't take very long for parties to gel.

Everyone became very attached to each other.

They surely did.

In the days before air-conditioning,

even stifling summer heat was all part of the on-board atmosphere.

Some men would be sweating that much, because they still wore suits.

They didn't often take their jackets off in those days.

When they started sweating, they got so hot, they used to take their hankie out of their pocket,

put a knot in each corner and then put it on top of their head,

pull it down over their head and they'd sit there and it would stop the sweat coming down their face.

But then, after about ten minutes, the hankie would get red-hot,

full of sweat and wet, so they'd take it off, into the...

It was lino on the floor in those days.

They'd wring it out and the water would go on the floor!

Then they'd put it back on their head and they'd be like that, gasping.

Whether it was on express journeys or touring trips,

these sweaty encounters were unique to the communal coach experience.

But, rather than putting them off each other, they brought them closer together.

We were all very friendly and it was quite an emotional time when we all said goodbye.

The coach was driving its way into the heart of the nation,

joining up Britain's villages and towns like a giant dot-to-dot,

along well-worn routes carved out by the stagecoaches of the previous century.

Coach travel had its origins in the stagecoach, which travelled along set routes in stages.

By the mid-19th century, the railways had all but driven them from Britain's roads.

But by the turn of the 20th century entrepreneurs were experimenting again.

The coach started off with horse-buses and horse-coaches and seaside rides

on what were called charabancs.

The word is French for "carriage with benches".

And it seemed that creativity was key in this new industry.

Firstly, before they got the posh charabancs, the ones with hoods on,

they used to convert just normal haulage lorries, folding steamers, folding steamer lorries, at weekends.

They used to do removals in the week with a container body on the back.

And on Friday evening, or Saturday morning, they'd take them to the depot and swap the bodies over.

I mean, my grandfather always used to tell this story.

He lived in Woodford Green in Essex and the local pub was obviously

a stopping-off point for charabancs returning to the East End of London.

They would stop of an evening and...

a bit like a Laurel and Hardy film, they would get out of one door,

get back on drunk, and then get out the other door.

Whoever's organising claimed it was the vicar with the church outing.

We used to borrow the church pews from the local church,

bolt down to the floor of this... makeshift...I'd call it hut, really, with curtains.

And people would climb up on ladders and climb in.

This design was called the slipper

because it was shaped like a bedroom slipper.

But you can guarantee the journey was anything but cosy and comfortable.

All these early charabancs were originally on solid rubber tyres,

all the bigger ones, until the mid-1920s,

because pneumatics didn't really come in until then.

You'd go through the town centres, where cobbled streets...

All the men were holding their false teeth in, otherwise if they'd smile half their teeth would fall out.

It was that rickety. Bang, bang.

But not all charas were so makeshift.

Then they got the luxury one, a purpose-built one, which was what my grandparents first went on.

That was real luxury. Proper seats and everything. Long...

They used to call it a toast rack because all the seats were long

and there were ten little doors on the side of the coach.

Everybody got in their own little door and sat on the seat.

The toast rack, with the passengers all lined up inside

like boiled egg soldiers.

Slippers and toast racks - what would they think up next?

Enter the horn.

The driver has a bulb horn here...

HORN HONKS

..so you tell people to get out of the way, but he's got another little trick up his sleeve here.

And that is an exhaust whistle.

And this blows gases from the number four cylinder.

Every time it comes up on the firing stroke it'll whistle.

And passengers had to be equally inventive when it came to keeping dry.

When it rained, people didn't bother about pulling the hood up

if they were going local, they'd put the umbrella up instead,

because they'd chug along about eight mile an hour,

so, instead of messing about, stopping the charabanc, pulling the hood up, just put your umbrella up.

They sat there under a brolly, happy as Larry.

ENGINE STARTS

The best thing for driving in the rain is a potato.

If you cut a potato in half and smear it on the windscreen, you don't get lots of little drops of water.

EXHAUST WHISTLE PEEPS

But this charabanc had the luxury of a windscreen wiper, although it's hand-operated,

you have to lean over the window, and it wipes both sides,

because obviously it gets wet behind as well.

HORN HONKS

In 1911, a group of passengers were due to take a train

from Rochdale to Torquay.

Among them was a young girl whose singing talents would go on

to play a special role during the Second World War.

Her name was Gracie Fields.

But there was a problem.

In June there was a train strike and they couldn't come down.

The chap that was working for 'em, Robert Holt, who came in to the Yelloways,

his friend owned a charabanc in Rochdale.

He said, "Go and tell your friend we'll use a charabanc."

He said, "Don't talk stupid.

"We'll never get down to Torquay. It's miles. It's about 290 miles.

"The charabanc won't get down there. If it does, it'll take a week."

"Oh, no," he said, "We've got to get down there somehow. We'll use a charabanc.

"We'll treat it as an adventure and see what happens."

Anyway, they piled in, and Gracie Fields was amongst them

because her friend was the granddaughter of Edwards and Bryning's little Florence Bryning,

so she came with Florence and it took 'em two full days to get here.

The 13-year-old Gracie duly won a talent competition in Paignton,

which boosted her confidence as a performer.

Confidence was also growing in the coach industry itself.

And it was such a success when they got back

that they started doing fare-paying passengers the year after.

And that's when the first fare-paying passenger service started.

Holt Brothers Yelloway became the pioneers of long-distance travel from the North-west to Torquay.

So Yelloways were on the map.

And by the end of World War One

so were a good many more coach operators.

The First World War made all the difference

because not only did the internal combustion engine get more reliable, had to because of the circumstances,

at the end of the war, there was a huge number of army lorries, army surplus, which were very cheap.

I understand soldiers were given a lump sum. "Thank you very much, off you go."

And a lot of them bought the lorries.

And in those days you had a chassis and then the lorry body was just bolted onto the back.

And the clever ones, Monday to Friday, used them to carry coal, goods or whatever

and then put a different back end on and carried passengers at weekend.

Perhaps more important than the technology

was the fact that the war produced soldiers, or ex-soldiers,

who were skilled in engineering, who could maintain these new motor vehicles, knew how to drive them.

Many of these men were looking for things to do in the new post-war world.

-NEWSREEL:

-In the 1920s and '30s, motoring had really arrived,

and it produced a social revolution,

as people began to take to the road for pleasure outings.

For those who couldn't afford a car of their own, there were the charabancs and the motor coaches.

It was little wonder, then, that when the railways went on strike again, in 1919,

coach companies jumped at the chance to put on extra services.

People still wanted to travel, and so Royal Blue and other coach operators

put on services during that period

and they proved to be popular, sufficiently popular,

that the... some of the services continued.

Services by Southdown from Brighton, for example.

Services from the North of England, er...

basically to London.

Those early coach operators were canny businessmen,

keeping their fares well below the cost of a rail ticket.

And the brand-new passengers

who'd tried out coach travel during the rail strike ended up staying.

And so a whole new business grew up

really as a result of that rail strike, offering the opportunity

to people like Royal Blue to start running long-distance services.

Until 1930, the coach industry was running pretty much as it wanted.

Anyone could set up a business and you didn't need a licence.

Usual problems came as a result of this. There was no regulation.

Safety became an issue. There was no drivers' hours.

Drivers were working long hours for not a lot of money. Almost 24 hours.

The road transport scene was almost unregulated in the 1920s.

There were no or few speed limits.

People didn't have to take driving tests.

And the death figures were horrendous.

Something had to be done.

The words "Traffic Commissioner" appeared.

A Traffic Commissioner, of which there were a number regionally, was God.

In 1928, there were only just over two million vehicles on the road.

Now there are about 34½ million vehicles on the road.

In 1928, there were almost 6,000 deaths on the road.

Now, with 17 times the number of vehicles,

the figures are down to about 2,500.

So, it shows something had to be done. People were being killed,

coaches and buses and lorries were fighting for trade, and really the public needed protection.

After 1930, if you wanted to operate a coach service, you had to have a licence.

And, to match its new regulated image, the industry needed coach stations.

The places where people were picking up coaches, Grosvenor's Gardens and other areas in London,

they couldn't cope with the number of coaches and the traffic was just too much.

And the police in London were getting a bit stroppy with the coach operators,

saying, "You're going to have to do something about this."

There was no, in 1930, big coach stations like Victoria.

Coaches were splattered all around London,

the Embankment was jammed with coaches going off to all parts of England.

And so it was desperate to find somewhere to have as an off-street terminal.

But finding available plots of land in central London was not easy.

London Coastal Coaches saw that there was this site, pounced on it,

and immediately made plans for what became Victoria Coach Station.

The design of the coach station was particularly cutting edge,

with its Art Deco frontage.

In 1932, it welcomed its first inhabitants,

who immediately moved in.

The coaches.

The first coach to actually operate in was a coach which had come up, I believe, from Maidstone.

So we had the coaches, we had the coach station,

all we needed now were the passengers.

And those came in droves, with the passing of a new Government bill.

In 1937, there was the Holiday with Pay Act.

The Government tried to encourage employers to pay workers while on holiday.

So, before 1937, workers could only really afford to take one day off,

so the charabanc was the cheapest and best way to take that holiday.

So only 1½ million people, before 1937, had holidays with pay.

After 1937, that rose to over 11 million people.

So, people could afford to take a few days off,

alongside, perhaps, the annual holiday.

On the back of this, Billy Butlin sets his camp up in Skegness in 1936,

and does a roaring trade.

With Britain's new holidaying population,

the coach now had a ready market of willing passengers.

But World War Two provided another unscheduled stop.

Gradually, the operation of coaches was restricted.

The Green Line services in the London area were stopped. Some of them came back, but most of them were stopped.

And, eventually, I think in 1941, erm...

the Ministry of Transport stopped all but essential coach services.

The war wasn't all bad news for coaches.

The end of hostilities and the social revolution that followed

would help create the conditions for the industry's expansion.

By the early 1950s, with wartime restrictions lifted,

people were bursting to go on holiday.

As the war ends, you see a boom in coach travel in the '50s and '60s.

Not only have you got an annual trip, perhaps with the work or community, still going on,

but you've also got longer excursions for longer durations.

And people in the '50s particularly begin to have more money,

so their excursions go longer and more exotic in that sense.

With so many people desperate to get away,

the atmosphere of Victoria Coach Station was buzzing.

During the summer months of the mid-'50s,

over 20,000 coaches poured in and out of the station every week.

The feeling was, there are all those people wanting to get away.

It was a challenge.

Very often, when it was really crazy, with all the phones ringing,

there was a carnival atmosphere.

You know, there was an absolute carnival atmosphere.

There's a wonderful picture which was a mid-1930s departure scene

and the assembled passengers waiting to get on the coach

that is the most wonderful thing, they are all so well dressed.

Ladies in fox furs,

ladies in dresses, long, long dresses to their ankles.

Very elegant shoes and hats. Every man in the picture is wearing a hat.

Schoolchildren in their best school uniforms.

It's just a magic picture that captures absolutely

the excitement that people were finding in this very, very new industry.

A carnival at the coach station.

So, if you were going on a coach trip, you'd be sure to pick

your best frock for the occasion.

The ladies, strangely enough, used to wear a headscarf with there hair in rollers.

They had their best clothes on, so their hair would be nice when they got to Torquay.

Before they went in the guesthouse or wherever, they got off the coach

and the first thing they did was go to the ladies' room and take their hair out of rollers.

And then they'd get in the taxi or the bus and turn up at the hotel looking right posh, like!

That fascinated me.

Ah, it was...magic days. Absolutely magic days.

For the hundreds of thousands who had ventured

little further than their own town or village before the war,

a journey by coach was impossibly exciting.

And the longer the journey, the better.

We set off from Leeds with passengers, we picked up passengers in Leeds.

We then went through to Wakefield and picked up more.

And then we joined... Of course there were no motorways at that point,

so we joined what was known as the Great North Road.

Today it's the A1.

We joined that and we had a coffee stop in Newark

and again other passengers joined from the east side of Britain.

And then it was on.

We had a full three-course lunch in Buckden in Cambridgeshire,

afternoon tea after we'd been through London and crossed the Thames,

we had an afternoon tea in Elton and then it was on to Folkestone.

The journey took all day, more or less. With the stops.

We arrived in Folkestone at the Hotel Metropole,

very nice hotel on the Leas at Folkestone,

and we were there about 6pm for dinner and overnight.

That was our first day.

Dave Haddock loved coach travel so much, he made the same 17-hour journey every year for 25 years.

I couldn't concentrate at school, I couldn't do me schoolwork proper. I just couldn't wait to get home.

When we finished school on the last day,

I legged it home and I run all the way home as fast as I could.

I had me own case there.

The first thing I wanted to do when I come in the house was pack the case for morning.

"We're going away in the morning!"

As the novelty of coach travel caught on,

it provided the perfect form of transport

for the lingering tradition of wakes weeks,

where whole towns took their holiday all at the same time.

One of the highlights of the year for many people was the annual holiday.

And in industrial towns this was often coinciding with the factory shutdown.

FACTORY HOOTER SOUNDS

During an industrial fortnight, or a Coventry week or Birmingham week,

the whole city would essentially close.

You would walk down an industrial district and not hear any machinery going.

There'd be no transport connected to those factories.

It would be a ghost town, effectively.

There'd been a mass evacuation of people through coach

and through other transport to their holiday destination.

And so everyone had to go on holiday that week

and people described what it was like on the first Saturday of the holiday

with neighbours standing on street corners with their children, suitcases, buckets and spades,

waiting for the local coach to come and pick them up and take them off.

The coach was very, very convenient.

It would turn up at your factory, it would turn up at your Sunday school,

it would turn up at your village hall or wherever,

and pick you up from where your party wanted to be picked up.

You didn't have to get to the local station.

Helpful and accommodating coaches may have been,

but not when it came to dealing with luggage.

They used to put the luggage on the roof in those days.

The driver used to climb up the ladders at the back

and fill the cases up and tie 'em on the roof and put a tarpaulin over.

I thought, "Blimey, that's amazing."

With the luggage secured, it was time to safely stow the human cargo.

People felt very comfortable at the thought that they and their neighbours could be picked up,

they would be able to pay in during the year for the trip,

so they knew they had enough money to cover things.

Then they would all go together and stop on the way for a drink,

have a drink on the coach, and it would be very sociable and safe

and they'd be home safely and it would be a really good time.

It would be part of... looking forward to it, a day out, the children could come, and so on.

The coach journey is a social form of transport,

as opposed to a train, which is more compartmentalised in the sense of carriages.

It's very difficult to get a sing-song going on a train in many ways,

but on a coach it has that very familiar but communal form of outing.

And, whether you were travelling on a leisurely touring coach or a scheduled express service,

you could always be sure that the leader of the gang, the hero of the communal coach revolution,

was the driver.

I'm 82 now.

And I've been driving a bus 61 years.

And driving a car a few years longer than that.

And I've driven in the Army for a few years.

So, altogether, really since I was 16.

And every driver would have a trick or two up his sleeve.

I can remember going to Bournemouth once.

And during the day, while the people were all out on the beach or something,

I got all the keys off the manager

and went round the hotel and changed everybody's nightclothes.

I took the nightclothes off of one floor and put 'em on the other floor,

so when it was bedtime everybody was roaring up and down stairs, looking for their nightclothes!

Things like that. Good fun, really.

You'd get shot if you done that now, wouldn't you?

Driving was almost incidental to what these men did.

For they were also entertainer, guide, protector, mechanic, nursemaid and diplomat.

But, most of all, your beloved leader.

Right, ladies and gentlemen,

-I wish to introduce meself. They call me Leslie.

-How do you do, Leslie?

A lot calls me Cannonball. You'll hear it a lot on this trip.

Everybody calls me Cannonball, so you can please yourself whether it's Leslie or Cannonball.

-Why Cannonball?

-Well, I've been on the firm that long, sir. 30 years.

So...everybody will call me Cannonball, but it doesn't matter. Ignore 'em.

They don't know me name.

On the way down, I shall keep explaining things to you, all the way down.

If you want to know anything at all, don't forget, just ask. That's what I'm here for.

I'm here to give you a good holiday, help you all I can.

I shall suggest things when we get to Newquay.

I shall suggest things when we get to Ilfracombe.

Now then, you've no need whatsoever to go on

any of the trips or the theatres if you don't want, but I shall suggest them.

And when I suggest, it's good.

It's only the best.

When you travel with Cannonball, you're travelling Cannonball's way. LAUGHTER

But he hadn't always been such an integral part of the group.

It was in fact technology that had shaped the relationship between passenger and driver.

In the old vehicles, when the engine was at the front, the driver was in a separate cab alongside the engine.

When the horizontal engines came in underneath the vehicle,

that enabled the area that had been taken up by the engine at the front

to be incorporated into the main passenger compartment of the vehicle

so the driver was then back inside with his passengers.

With the shepherd now seated among his flock, all sorts of mischief could be had.

And quite often on trips, especially...

..trips like that, they would say,

"Cyril, it's hot in here. Can you open the roof?" So, you'd have to stop and open the roof.

You'd be standing there trying to push it back because it was always stiff, and two of these ladies here

would quickly have your trousers down,

which used to cause a great laugh for everybody. If it was in the morning,

it sort of loosened up the day a bit.

And it wasn't always the passengers providing the entertainment.

More often than not it was the driver.

Many years ago I was told the story in the early '60s

of a man who was a one-man band.

And he used to strap a drum to the back of his seat

and he would have drumsticks on his elbow was as he was driving.

He would have a mouth organ strapped round and he would go bang-bang and sing as well.

A lot of them could sing as well.

We used to join in because that made them feel as if they were part of it.

You know. We used to go to Scotland.

When we went to Scotland, we used to take a kilt and that sort of thing.

Lots of people done that.

So you took part in what was going on.

You had to think about the fact that you was going to get a tip at the end of a job so the

more you joined in and they enjoyed themselves, you hoped you would get

treated better.

-See you again.

-Yes.

Thanks. Bye-bye.

-Bye.

-Bye-bye, dear.

Don't get lost!

If you went away for a week, I can't remember but if you got any more

than £5, you were really doing well because £5 was a lot of money.

Wages then were about 30 bob, weren't they?

Yes, it was.

You didn't play on that that much but it was always in

the average coach driver - in the back of your mind - what am I going to get when I get back on Saturday.

Many drivers were incredibly inventive when it came to earning their keep.

One of my favourite stories is regarding Wallace Arnold drivers in Ilfracombe.

A lot of tours to Ilfracombe in the '60s and '70s, which meant that every day of

the week there was a Wallace Arnold driver in Ilfracombe on a free day.

And they came up with the idea of how they could earn some more money - they would get a job.

One leader of the gang went down to the council and got himself a job as a deckchair attendant.

He was only free for one day but there were six men

so every day of the week there was a Wallace Arnold driver in Ilfracombe.

So it was Geoff on Monday, George on Tuesday, Fred on Wednesday and so on.

And once a week, the wage packet came and it was shared out amongst seven of them.

On one occasion, there was three or four drivers in town

and they all met up in the pub one lunchtime for a get-together.

Not only was too much alcohol involved because it was a rest day, they were not driving,

but also there was a freak shower and all the deckchairs were washed off the beach.

And Jeff was sacked.

Along with George and, John and Bill and whatever else.

But the most popular money-spinner of all involved a piece of chalk and a tyre.

On some trips, not all of them, if people were in the mood for

a bit of gambling and liked something different, a bit of excitement on the way.

You would put all the numbers on the tyre and put an arrow here where I've just put this one.

Then everybody would pay their two pence or something in those days

and whatever number stopped, when you stopped

either for the loo or for a cup of tea or

when you get your destination so you would pay out one, two, three,

four, five, six and you would mark it however many people you had on the bus,

maybe you had 20 or 30 or only 10.

And when you stop, whichever number stops at this arrow

collects the winnings and everybody used to get very excited about that.

I can tell you. And they you could do it again on your way home

but everybody would get upset if you rubbed up against the kerb and rubbed all the numbers off on the way.

You had to stop and put some more on. But that is how worked.

You didn't have time to get bored in those days, there was always some action going on in the coach.

There was always something, entertainment was free and it was brilliant.

As the journey got under way, the passengers settled back into

the rhythm of the ride, enveloped in coachly warmth and comfort.

Some might sleep, some might want to enjoy the scenery

and some might pull out their lovingly-prepared refreshments.

There were no drinks in those days - like you couldn't get drinks like these in those days.

So you used to get a milk bottle.

A sterile bottle. You know sterilised milk?

Press the top on.

Fill it with water and press the top back on.

And stand it up in a bag and that is what you drank on the way down in the coach. Tap water.

Used to call it corporation pop, you know!

Everybody had none.

"Anybody want a drink of corporation pop?" Somebody would shout.

"Pass it down."

They'd pass it down the coach.

Then it'd come back.

That was so funny that was.

And you could guarantee that within a couple of hours of setting off...

..they would want to stop again.

One of the issues was that coaches didn't have toilets on board

and, of course drinking, both on board

and along the way, was part of the day out.

And so this created quite a few difficulties for people.

It was much easier for men because in those days, you did not have motorways

so the coach could stop the minute you tapped on the door and told the driver to stop.

Out would go the men and get behind a pile of gravel by the road, it was quite easy for them but the

poor women couldn't do that and it wouldn't have been appropriate anyway.

THEY LAUGH

There was one coach driver, he used to take a tent, a sort of bathing tent.

And a little

portaloo thing like a potty for the ladies.

If anybody was bursting, he would pull up on the road, especially if

there was a traffic jam because people were desperate you know.

So what he would do is he would run out the coach and set this little tent up.

It was like what the GPO used to put over manhole covers.

He used to put his tent out beside the coach and ladies would come out

and they would get a little pot and throw it in the bushes

and then the next one would go in and do the same.

What became really important were halfway houses.

I can remember my own relatives, years after they stopped going out

by coaches from the East End to Southend, pointing out the halfway house along the way to Southend

and it was a great relief for the women to be able to get out and have a pee at those places.

You would have a situation where you probably had 10 or 15 coaches, you could have 400 people there.

Two toilets - one gents, one ladies.

Not two box of - a gents' toilet and a ladies' toilet.

Huge queues. People could not decide whether to go for a drink and then

queue for the toilet or queue for the toilet and then go for a drink.

Half the party was queued at the toilets, frightened to miss the coach when it left.

"Right, we have ten minutes and we're going. Ten minutes."

And there could be a queue, a 20-minute long queue.

So you'd just have to wee where you could, anywhere you could.

On the way to Southend there was a sort of a drift, an old road, disused road that everybody used to

back in there, not everybody but lots of people did and get their beer out at the afternoon...stop.

All these old ladies used to go down this drift road to have a pee.

One or two of the clever ones would get a bottle,

stand it up right in the ground and put a rocket in it, you know

what a rocket is, don't you?

Put the wooden bit in and just before it was going off kick over

so it went down this drift road and lit it all up and there was all these ladies having a pee down this road!

I used to be great fun that did!

They weren't right next to you, they were where those trees are. That used to be good fun.

I only met recently quite an eminent professor of history at Oxford who told me that

when he was a student on a coach, he had actually resorted to peeing in his briefcase in desperation.

Those were fascinating days.

People put up with travel because they didn't expect nothing else, that was all the new, you know.

It was just part of the journey, part of the travelling.

If you wanted to go down on a long journey, you had to put up with

whatever circumstances hit you like, you know.

But it was an old friend who came to the rescue of the desperate coach passenger, the good old British pub.

An important impact that these day trips had was that pubs started to change.

Suddenly you saw for the first time, the classic sign, "coach parties welcome".

And it was a match made in heaven.

If it was a biggish pub, they would open in the morning, you know, for drinks and tea and coffee.

They were popular. You always knew where they where.

They were regular places on regular routes

and you would meet up with a lot of other buses and coaches there.

Everybody would get a chat.

The pub lady would give you a cup of tea in a piece of cake and say see you tonight.

There is a very good account that Robert Trestle uses in his

semi autobiographical novel, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist,

these employers... these employees, sorry,

take their coach into the countryside,

to their destination via six public houses.

To get to the destination, which was a public house.

As coach travel swept through the country,

there was one place which stood out among all the others and became the unlikely hub of the industry.

Stately Cheltenham.

Every coach company in the country used to meet there.

Cheltenham was the home of Black & White Motorways, part of a team

of six coach operators who had come together in 1934 to pool resources.

With its convenient geographical location, it naturally formed a central axis for coach journeys.

People used to change from a Yelloway coach, if they were going to Wales

or they were going to Bournemouth or they were going to London.

They would get as far as Cheltenham from Manchester and change to a different coach.

That was OK doing that.

But if you went into the cafe and you were carrying on down to Torquay,

there could have been about 40 Yelloway coaches in the car-park.

And about another 40 on hire to Yelloways.

The times of the services were such

that they would all arrive into Cheltenham

at set times, ready to all depart at the same time.

Now the principal departure from Cheltenham was the two o'clock departure.

So when you went in the cafe, you're that desperate to get in the queue that when you came back out you...

"Where is my coach?" You did not know where you're bastard coach was.

So hopefully, a lot of people used to look for the driver.

So they used to wait for the driver coming out the restaurant and follow him like the Pied Piper.

"Whoa, here's the driver, we're laughing!"

A lot of people if they missed the driver, they were searching for ages.

And the driver used to have a count on the coach and there would be half a dozen people missing.

With up to 200 coaches on the forecourt

and up to 40 in the same livery, trying to find your own vehicle was like a game of musical coaches.

And then at two o'clock,

all the coaches would leave together and for

about 15 minutes or half-an-hour, the centre of Cheltenham was absolutely log-jammed.

It was a sight and a sound to behold.

It was called a mass exodus and that was when every coach left the depot.

ENGINES ROAR

The noise was unbelievable.

ENGINES ROAR

You could tell what sort of vehicle it was, whether it was an AC, a Crossley, a Gardner engine

or some like that. They all had different noises.

You could stand on the corner or in the coach station, "Here comes in an AC, here comes a Leyland."

And they would come round the corner and it was.

GEARS GRIND

Especially when you're going through shops and the town centres and you could hear the echo.

You know the echo of the engine, the exhaust, vrrrrr, would echo off the buildings.

That sounds nice, our coach sounds gorgeous.

And they used to look out the window and see the reflection of the coach going past and the noise.

"That's us going past!" It was brilliant.

As coach technology accelerated, the passengers were determined to

take their much-loved coach further than ever before.

Even if it meant hoisting it up by crane.

The Continent suddenly became easy to get to.

Coaches had to be winched on board.

There was no roll-on roll-off ferry.

So a coach would get to Dover and it would be chained on to this ferry

and chained off whenever - they went to Ostend, Boulogne, Calais wherever.

And with the coach safely delivered to foreign shores,

the coach capsule adventure could continue with a continental twist.

SHIP HORN BLARES

Our first night on the Continent was Reims, which was very nice.

And we sampled the champagne.

Of course.

And then on to Interlaken for six nights where we stayed at the five-star Victoria Jungfrau.

But five-star hotels, which were not used to dealing with coach tours

had some stuffy rules that Barbara found difficult to swallow.

My driver, Stanley and I, seated ourselves in the main dining room,

when I was told that the managing director would like to see me at the desk.

I went along and he said, "I am sorry but in his hotel, chauffeurs must eat in another dining room."

And I was very put out by this. I was quite indignant and said, "Well, that's ridiculous."

I said we eat together at all the other hotels.

To which I was told, "Yes, but this is the five-star Victoria Jungfrau."

And I said, "Well, if my driver has to eat elsewhere, I must eat with him because we are a team."

And so Stanley and I were moved, actually into a very nice ballroom with a painted ceiling

and there was a little area that was roped off.

And we sat there with the four-piece band.

And the band played on, until four seasons later, the Interlaken Hotel came to its senses.

And at that point, the head waiter came to me and said, "Oh, the managing director

"says that you and your driver may eat with the people."

So we were moved from behind our little roped area just a few yards...

into the main...into this lovely ballroom with our passengers.

And at the end of the season, when the passengers were moved back to this lovely main dining room

at the front of the hotel, we moved with them.

So we broke their laws, we broke their rules!

With coach parties breaking down the old order and cutting new paths through Europe,

the coach responded to the latest demands wherever they came from.

Austria and Switzerland, always very, very popular.

Wonderful scenery, people have heard of the places they're going to.

And every so often, you would get something like...

The Sound Of Music would come along, and you would have this wonderful vista of Salzburg.

And all of a sudden, holidays to Austria would go up.

# The hills are alive

# With the sound of music... #

And in this era of romantic travel, passengers not only fell in love

with their coach, but with each other.

At Grindelwald, where people went on the chairlift - which was a double chairlift -

we had a young couple who'd been pretty lovey-dovey all the tour, they'd come together.

And they went on the chairlift, and when they came down and got

back into the coach, they announced their engagement.

We were all delighted.

And then when I told the following group, I said, "It's a lovely ride, it's peaceful, you go over streams,

"pine trees, you see cattle with cow bells round their necks

"and it's a very lovely ride,"

and I said, "In fact, on the last tour, we had a couple who

"announced their engagement after going up on it."

And one gentleman called from the back - he was with his wife -

but he called out, "Can you get a divorce on it?"

To which she gave him a nudge in the ribs!

Like marriage, the coach offered comfort and security.

Its reassuring and constant presence enabled it to lead its passengers

safely into the more exotic parts of Europe...

and beyond.

Everybody wanted to go to Russia. It was one of our most popular holidays.

It was 15 days, and loved it.

And it went for years and years.

It was the place to go. The Grand Russian Spectacular, we called it.

In St Petersburg, they parked the coach near the hotel

and this shady looking man came up and said,

"Would you like us to guard the coach?" And they said, "What do you mean, guard it?"

"Well, it's a bit rough round here."

And they said, "Well, how much is it?"

And I think he charged the equivalent of 50p, and he sat all night with

his Kalashnikov rifle in front of the coach outside the hotel.

The feeling that you could get in a coach very locally and go to somewhere pretty exotic

with all your luggage and your neighbours on board and then come back again

with them and be dropped back in the same place, such as Bolton, was very attractive to people.

While coach tours were busy invading other countries, back in Britain,

we were advancing on the home front too.

BULLDOZERS ROAR

The sound of bulldozers gave more than a hint that

the way we travelled and the speed we did it at were about to change.

Work began on Britain's first motorway, the Preston Bypass, in 1957.

As motorway mania caught hold, it wasn't long before the whole country

was carved up by this new high-speed road system.

But while motorways allowed coach travel to evolve, they also upset

traditional coaching routes, and casualties fell by the wayside.

It stood as an uneasy warning sign that there was trouble on the road ahead.

I mean, I can remember, you know, travelling down the A1

from the late '50s going on family holidays and every year we went, another town had been bypassed.

So you knocked another half an hour off the journey.

And ultimately, coaches that took ten hours to get to London were doing it in five, and then four.

Now that more people could afford to buy their first car,

the coach was forced to share its passengers and the motorway with shinier, faster vehicles.

Before the motorways opened, hardly any cars could pass you really,

unless you'd got a long, straight road.

Some of the lanes you used to go down and through the town centre

were so narrow, but once you got on the motorway, it was just like a vast...

It was like another world.

It was so different and it was like, woof, you could see these things whizzing past you.

But our coaches were still designed for Britain's pre-motorway A-roads and had a lot of catching up to do

if they were to cope with the new high-speed longer distance journeys.

Midland Red, who were Birmingham-based and very innovative, built their own vehicles, in fact.

In 1959, I think it was, they built a turbocharged coach that could do 90mph, allegedly,

down the bit of motorway between Birmingham and London.

The driver who took me on this proving run was Mr Donald Sinclair,

the General Manager of the Midland Red bus company, which is to operate this new service.

-Gosh, we clocked 82 miles an hour going round those banks!

-Yes.

-And in a bus!

-In a bus, yes.

But are you going to travel at 80 miles an hour on the motorway?

Oh, no, we don't expect to have to do that speed.

We shall probably restrict these to a maximum of about 70 miles an hour.

Even with restrictions, coach speed had doubled and was becoming faster and more frantic.

So coaches can now operate at 50, 60, 70mph for long distances.

Journeys had sped up and I think for the first time, this makes the coach

a serious competitor with the railways

over long distances of 100 or 200 miles,

where there is a parallel railway line.

And not only that, coaches were about to get an additional boost.

In 1963, Minister of Transport Ernest Marples commissioned a report

into the profitability of British railways, written by Dr Richard Beeching.

Dr Beeching, do you personally believe that the Government has

no real alternative but to accept your plan?

I think that these proposals are in the long-term interests of railwaymen.

I think they'll go along with us.

Beeching's remit was to try to make the railways pay, or at least

not lose as much money as they had been doing in the 1950s.

And he took a long hard look at some of the traffic which the railways had traditionally carried,

like large numbers of people to and from seaside resorts for just a few weeks in the year.

And, basically, said the railways should not be in this business.

Today's report will shape the future of the system.

More than 2,000 stations will be closed.

The most dramatic effects are in Scotland.

Remote areas of the Highlands will lose their services.

Wales takes a body blow as well.

Holiday resorts in the West Country share the fate of many market towns - no station, no passenger trains.

In the northeast, little more than the main north-south links will remain...

It was a brutal blow to the railways, but it meant that

many more express coaches were needed for direct routes.

If someone wanted to go from London to South Wales in the '50s, they would go to Cheltenham

and connect with a service from Cheltenham to South Wales.

As soon as we got a motorway, we had through services from Victoria to

Newport and Cardiff, so we suddenly cut out Cheltenham.

And the sad thing is that Cheltenham, which had been

a major hub in the coaching map, was no longer needed.

And the coach station at Cheltenham closed and it just became a point on a timetable.

As Britain's motorway network continued to grow rapidly

throughout the 1960s, so did our holidaying habits.

As we travelled further afield in our own private cars, traditional seaside destinations started to fall

out of fashion and struggled when the holiday-makers went elsewhere.

Blackpool was the northerners' Margate, Margate was the southerners' Blackpool, I suppose you would say.

Huge, huge numbers. Hundreds and hundreds of coaches would go on a Sunday, in particular, for the day.

Gone. That business is completely gone.

I was in Margate a couple of months ago,

talking with a councillor about coach parking, didn't see a coach.

The infrastructure's gone, the entertainment's gone.

Dreamland, I think it was at Margate, derelict.

And it's sad, but it's not kept up with what the public wants to do.

I travelled with Yelloways until I got my first motor car, which was in the late 1970s.

And then we used the car then to come down to Torquay, which was, er, not the same. It wasn't the same.

When you're crammed in a car, you've not got the freedom of a coach.

But nevertheless, everybody started getting cars then, you see.

It's all about... I suppose the magic word - public service.

Technically, a coach was known as a public service vehicle, and it had to have a public service

vehicle licence to operate it, and the driver had to have a public service vehicle licence to drive it.

And they're the key words - public service.

And the successful operators provided the public with a service and flourished, and the others didn't.

The rise of car ownership and cheap air travel meant the coach industry saw a gradual falling off of trade.

And as the political and economic landscape also began to change,

the express coach network was seen as too vulnerable to be left to its own devices.

In 1969,

the coach industry was nationalised.

Three years later, it was brought under one corporate livery, which became National Express.

With the emergence of National Express in the early 1970s, operating over the motorway network,

which by the end of the 1970s was essentially complete - we'd reached the end of an era.

And under National Express, the colourful coaches,

which we knew and loved so well were painted a uniform ghostly white.

Whilst it caused a lot of heartache among traditionalists, I have to say,

if you want a network, then you have to have a standard livery.

# Somewhere over the rainbow

# Way up high... #

So you used to have white.

Royal Blues, you had white, black and white. You had white Midland Reds.

You had white Grey Cars, which was a nonsense, but it was done with

the best intentions - to get an image of a nationwide express coach network.

This idea that,

that the colour white is...

divides up into all the colours of the rainbow, and now, come nationalisation, all the

colours of the rainbow were being pulled back into the colour white. It was almost...

It almost epitomised what had happened to the industry there because at that point,

a lot of that wonderful familiarity, that wonderful family feeling was automatically lost.

I've been out of the industry now for five years and I have to say, looking back, I've seen out the best of it.

With the loss of the colour,

we had lost the personality of the business.

The really, really lovely specialness,

the colour had gone out of it.

The colour...I don't think will come back again, not as it was.

# If happy little bluebirds fly beyond the rainbow

# Why, oh, why can't I? #

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