It was the journey of a lifetime for a group of strangers who made some never-forgotten memories as they tried to travel around the world in a Bristol double decker 50 years ago. Five of the remaining crew gathered at Bristol Aerospace this week where they reminisced about the many adventures they shared and how their famous Bristol bus sank in a river in Peru.
The group included John Winter, Mike Conway, Sally Mears, Bernice Poole and David McLaughlin. In 1970, Bernice and her late husband Roger bought the double-decker bus for a round-the-world tour and selling British goods. They advertised and another nine joined the trip.
Each put in £200 and they paid £250 for the 1955 Bristol double-decker bus which had been on routes through Bristol and Bath. It had already clocked up an estimated 770,000 miles before being withdrawn from service in 1969.
