The city centre backwater
I think I've got the print of this somewhere, but I'm blowed if I can find it. Consequently I am unable to be sure of the date, but I would estimate 1979 or 1980. When were those little wavy hand things (bottom right of windscreen, next to the licence discs) in vogue? My favourite stick-on windscreen novelty has always been that row of four bullet holes, much in evidence around 1963/4 following the release of the first couple of James Bond films.
We are in Anchor Road, Bristol, and the coach is undoubtedly making for rutted, warehouse-overshadowed, Buddleia-encircled Canon's Marsh coach park: I know this because the next frame on the negative strip shows the vehicle parked there. Canon's Marsh was always worth a nose-around and, on summer Saturdays, could be relied upon to produce a high yield of interesting independent stuff, largely from South Wales and the West Country. Here we see the former Eastern National no. 1616, a Bristol RELH6G, new in March 1964 but by this time in the fleet of Axe Vale Coaches (A L Bailey) of Biddisham, Somerset, and aquired from Black Prince of Morley, Leeds, in January 1978. Axe Vale had an interesting fleet and I kept meaning to go down and ask if I could go around their yard. In those days, before I had a car, it was awkward to get to, and there was always the risk of a refusal, so I never got round to it. I drove past a few times on buses ...but how? The 369 Burnham-on-Sea service finished soon after I started working from Marlborough Street Depot. I never worked on it and, thereafter, no service passed that way. Probably I was doing a bit of private, unofficial, off-route running on the X96 (Sundays only) from Exeter. Having first made sure no one wanted to alight at Avonmouth you "could" leave the M5 at either East Brent or St George's; this was a relief if you'd been allocated a Leyland National, kitted-out with dual-purpose seating but still limited to its service bus 56mph.
Since this became the main approach to Bristol's city centre from the Weston/Clevedon/Portishead direction, it has been greatly spruced up. "You goin' down the toilets?" I was once asked by a youth who fell in alongside me as I was walking along the pavement for, at one time, Anchor Road's public lavatory, close by the Cathedral School, was a well-known "cottage" used by homosexualists. Actually I had been making for those facilities, but I replied in the negative, suddenly persuaded that I might be better off using the amenities at the nearby Central Library. Then there were the bogs at the museum, the bottom of Woodland Road, the Trenchard Street car park, Colston Avenue, various department stores, Quakers Friars, the Bus Station, St James Barton... The underground toilets at Old Market and the north end of Bristol Bridge had gone, but in those days you were never hard up for somewhere to pee.
The city centre backwater
I think I've got the print of this somewhere, but I'm blowed if I can find it. Consequently I am unable to be sure of the date, but I would estimate 1979 or 1980. When were those little wavy hand things (bottom right of windscreen, next to the licence discs) in vogue? My favourite stick-on windscreen novelty has always been that row of four bullet holes, much in evidence around 1963/4 following the release of the first couple of James Bond films.
We are in Anchor Road, Bristol, and the coach is undoubtedly making for rutted, warehouse-overshadowed, Buddleia-encircled Canon's Marsh coach park: I know this because the next frame on the negative strip shows the vehicle parked there. Canon's Marsh was always worth a nose-around and, on summer Saturdays, could be relied upon to produce a high yield of interesting independent stuff, largely from South Wales and the West Country. Here we see the former Eastern National no. 1616, a Bristol RELH6G, new in March 1964 but by this time in the fleet of Axe Vale Coaches (A L Bailey) of Biddisham, Somerset, and aquired from Black Prince of Morley, Leeds, in January 1978. Axe Vale had an interesting fleet and I kept meaning to go down and ask if I could go around their yard. In those days, before I had a car, it was awkward to get to, and there was always the risk of a refusal, so I never got round to it. I drove past a few times on buses ...but how? The 369 Burnham-on-Sea service finished soon after I started working from Marlborough Street Depot. I never worked on it and, thereafter, no service passed that way. Probably I was doing a bit of private, unofficial, off-route running on the X96 (Sundays only) from Exeter. Having first made sure no one wanted to alight at Avonmouth you "could" leave the M5 at either East Brent or St George's; this was a relief if you'd been allocated a Leyland National, kitted-out with dual-purpose seating but still limited to its service bus 56mph.
Since this became the main approach to Bristol's city centre from the Weston/Clevedon/Portishead direction, it has been greatly spruced up. "You goin' down the toilets?" I was once asked by a youth who fell in alongside me as I was walking along the pavement for, at one time, Anchor Road's public lavatory, close by the Cathedral School, was a well-known "cottage" used by homosexualists. Actually I had been making for those facilities, but I replied in the negative, suddenly persuaded that I might be better off using the amenities at the nearby Central Library. Then there were the bogs at the museum, the bottom of Woodland Road, the Trenchard Street car park, Colston Avenue, various department stores, Quakers Friars, the Bus Station, St James Barton... The underground toilets at Old Market and the north end of Bristol Bridge had gone, but in those days you were never hard up for somewhere to pee.