A group of friends who took a double-decker bus 40,000 miles around the world have reunited after 50 years.
The 11 men and women were just strangers when they answered an advert to travel across the globe in the iconic vehicle.
They took the bus that was named “Sir George White Special,”—after the aviation pioneer—from Bristol in England to Canada, North America, Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru.
Braving “blistering” desert heat and bone-chilling cold in the prairies, the group spent 22 months aboard their less-than-50 mph bus.
The group traveled thousands of miles and worked along the way, picking fruit, planting lily bulbs, cleaning restaurants, selling British goods, and working as chauffeurs.
They had to navigate tricky routes and mountains and because the bus was too high for U.S. roads, sometimes damaging bridges and overhead wires.
The 11-person team of strangers aged between 19 and 34 took the bus on its journey between 1970 and 1972.
Now, five of them—Mike Conway, Sally Rich, Bernice Poole, David McLaughlin, and John Winter—have reunited in Bristol to mark the trip.
On March 14, 2023, the group of five met up for the first time in 50 years at Aerospace Bristol—arriving on a near-identical bus.
The event was to help launch a new book “Bus to Bust” by group member John Winter, now 79, a former journalist—who tagged along for nearly a year.
Winter, now retired and living in Derbyshire, said the journey was a life-changing experience.
“It was an amazing journey, putting so many people together in such a confined space there were inevitably arguments,” he said. ‘'But it was unlike anything any of us had ever done. I stayed with the group for about a year.”
The bus was like the hero of the story and they had totally torn out the upper floor to fit beds and living space.
‘'It was actually very comfy, though sometimes very hot,” he said.
The idea of the bus first came to Roger Poole, who was a British trade union official and mediator, and his girlfriend and later wife, Bernice.
The pair advertised the idea twice in the local paper, drawing in John who tagged along.
The group set off from Bristol to Montreal, Canada, in March 1970—with help from the bus’s namesake Sir George White.
Sir George, from South Gloucestershire, helped launch the bus with a bottle of West Country cider.
The group all had dedicated roles including a bus chef, four drivers, and several mechanics.
Arriving in Montreal aboard a cargo ship, the group traveled to Toronto and down the United States East Coast, visiting New York and then Texas before heading to Mexico City.
Explaining more about the journey, Winter said it involved a lot of hard work.
“[A]t first we headed straight for Mexico to see the 1970 FIFA world cup, it took 48 days and in the end, England never made it to the finals,” he said. “While leaving Mexico City too we almost got the bus knocked over by fans shaking it—it was quite scary and we kept having to drive the bus back and forth.”
After Mexico, they headed to California for work and then braved winter in the Canadian prairies—at one point rigging up a means of driving the bus from outside of the cab after it froze solid.
For the most part, the police were really good and sometimes escorted the group. However, when in California, they were stopped by a determined policeman who didn’t let them go.
“We had to take the bus off the road, but eventually were given permission to drive on by Ronald Reagan, who was [the] Governor of California at the time,” Winter said. ''We met him briefly which was fun, though only for a moment.”
The group also got a lot of attention from pop stars and local media at that time.
They went to Toronto and down the United States East Coast again, visiting the NASA rocket launch site at Cape Canaveral where some of the group members left and headed home.
The remainder continued—heading back to Mexico, through Central America, and into Peru.
David McLaughlin, the driver and mechanic of the bus, told the BBC: “Central and South America, the roads are entirely different and it was an adventure.
“You were climbing mountains—and double-decker buses are not geared for climbing mountains.”
However, in Peru, the bus, sadly, was destroyed while attempting to cross the River Chira. They came across a low bridge that the double-decker could not get under. Instead, they floated the bus on the river using a special raft but as it drifted across it slid into the water.
Winter, who recounts the tale in his book, “Bus to Bus,” said: “The final stretch of the journey only had five or so members of the group left—and by the time the bus was lost in the River Chira there were just four left—Mike, Sally, Don, and Joan.”
The group attempted to pull the bus out of the water with metal cables but they just ended up destroying it.
Crew member Sally Rich, now Mears, told the BBC: “My heart sank when I saw the bus [go down]. ... I knew it was the end of a journey of a lifetime.”
Don managed to retrieve the number plate and engine plates, which have now been passed on to Dr. Mike Walker, of the Bristol Omnibus Vehicle Collection, for safe-keeping and possible future display.
‘'Everyone came home on a container ship after that in early 1972,” Winter said.
Reflecting on their adventurous journey, Winter said that now people would struggle to do it again.
“These days I can only imagine it would be a very different experience,” he said.
Meanwhile, Bernice said: “It modeled my life. We’ve all learned so much from it.”
