The first part of BOB HIND’s latest marathon bus journey takes him from the UK’s northernmost point to Cumnock
Day 1 ‘An old man crosses the country just using local buses’.
This was the strap-line advertising the 2019 movie ‘The Last Bus’. The film is one of the few ever made about local buses. Its principal character, Tom, is 91 years old. The film follows Tom retracing the journey he made by bus from Land’s End to John O’Groats, with his young wife, in the early 1950s. 70 years on, the recently widowed Tom is returning to Land’s End by the same route, using his concessionary bus pass. Ironically, he is not challenged until Gloucester for attempting to travel In England with a Scottish pass.
It is over 10 years since I embarked on my round Great Britain trip and made the journey from north to south, albeit along the east and south coast of the island, so I thought it might be interesting to use Tom’s journey to see how it can be done in 2023.
Unfortunately, the movie was filmed entirely in Scotland, with the help of vintage buses from local museums, so it is almost impossible to identify all the towns he visited along the way. However, there is one scene that shows his route and…
