Friday 17 June saw 10 vintage coaches take part in a journey on former Royal Blue and Associated Motorways routes. Colin Billington tells the tale of the 21st coach run
This year’s Royal Blue and Associated Motorways coach run consisted of a mix of weather conditions for the coach drivers and photographers along the various routes.
Colin Billington, Chairman of the Thames Valley & Great Western Omnibus Trust, which organised the event, explained: “This was our 21st long distance coach run. Each run covers a largely different route, drawn from the route networks operated by Royal Blue, Associated Motorways and other joint services from the pre-motorway era of coach travel. These covered the south of England from Penzance to Margate and as far north as Liverpool. The runs are aimed at recreating as closely as possible express coach travel as it was in the post war era before deregulation and privatisation in the early 1980s.
“This year the run started with 10 coaches on Friday 17 June at Victoria Coach Station, itself in its 90th anniversary year of operation, leaving at 1030hrs after a welcome from Transport for London Commissioner Andy Byford. Starting from Central London we faced the usual Friday mass exodus which put almost an hour on the 1960s timetables! Once beyond the M25 we used the old A40 to Oxford, which had very little traffic and gave great pleasure to passengers and drivers. We passed through the verdant Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire countryside on an original trunk road, on what turned out to be the hottest day of 2022 so far. Once through the Oxford traffic (including a high proportion of buses and cyclists) the coaches wended their way through Banbury to Stratford and then on to overnight accommodation in the Coventry and Solihull areas – a total distance of some 125 miles.
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