Travelling back in time to our golden bus era M

Y affection for buses lasted through my childhood.

Trams were for everyday travel, but a bus meant something special, like a trip to Blackpool.

In my day, youngsters would peer out of the window from Preston onwards, hoping to be the first on the coach to see the Tower.

Arrival would add to the excitement, with fleets of buses from empty textile towns disgorging families for a week’s holiday and hordes of young local lads waiting to carry your suitcase in soap box carts to the boarding house.

How I envied those boys. Living in Blackpool and already part of seaside industry.

I used both trains and buses in my teens, to get to school, cinema or dance-hall, but once I had my driving licence at 17 and the option of borrowing the family car, the bus became, in my eyes, a second-class method of transport.

Their use has slowly declined over the years.

Today’s preference for cars is partly to blame, say experts, as well as online shopping and cutbacks in funding. Only 59% of public transport journeys are now made by bus.

Even though I don’t use them, I would be sorry to see them slip any further into obscurity.

My wife takes the bus several times a week and, as well as a journey into town, she has the social interaction of chatting with friends and neighbours with whom her transport routine overlaps. Britain has had petrol omnibus for 120 years. In the 1920s, small independent operators would fight rivals for customers by racing each other from one stop to the next along Pennine roads.

Then came regulation in 1930 and major companies took over and bus transport probably reached its peak in the 1950s, before universal car ownership.

For me, bus journeys are only memories.

The last service I used regularly was 50 years ago when I worked in the North East.

It was an exceptionally long journey from Manchester to Durham City with a stop at Leeming Bar for a loo break. I soon switched to the train as being more civilised.

They remain a diminishing but essential part of our transport system and I hope they continue to have a future in our brave new world.

I just won’t be using them.