Fifty years after a group of young men from Essex completed their circumnavigation of the globe aboard a newly retired Eastern National double-decker, JOHN G. LIDSTONE meets up with some of them and the painstakingly restored Bristol K5G to tell their story and that of this most enduring public conveyance
The Swinging Sixties were called that for good reason. Postwar prosperity and change meant young people had more money in the 1960s, were freed from compulsory military service and had ever more adventurous aims and ideas.
The Elm Hotel public house in the Essex town of Leigh-on-Sea was the meeting point for a group of local lads who, having made some overseas forays by smaller vehicles, wondered if they could make a longer overland trek in something larger.
Ron Sverdloff had the idea of approaching Eastern National to buy a double-decker. Winter 1966/67 was seeing the company’s last Bristol K-types pass to dealer Syd Twell at Ingham after their replacement by new Bristol Lodekka FLFs with semi-automatic gearboxes.
Ken Wilkinson inspected three redundant K5Gs on ‘death row’ at Maldon. He chose 2255 (ONO 59) almost at random, as he had no prior knowledge of buses, nor what to look for when buying one. …
