Bus book is a classic delight: Author features buses which served Sutherland communities half a century ago
Classic buses which used to run in Sutherland more than half a century ago – keeping open vital links between scattered rural communities – feature in a new book on historic motors.
John Sinclair, a leading authority on classic buses, has revived the popular Wheels Around series of books in a slightly different format.
The series was originally produced by the late Robert Grieves, whom Mr Sinclair describes as “arguably Scotland’s finest transport historian”.
Mr Sinclair’s volume is called Wheels around the Highlands and Hebrides and is bound to delight classic bus enthusiasts.
It contains more than 50 superb bus photos, with explanatory text to match, from Inverness-shire to Sutherland and Caithness, Ross-shire to Lochaber, Skye and Lewis.
Among those are pictures of a Dornoch bound Guy bus at Helmsdale; a Sutherland Transport bus at Laxford, and another parked at Sangomore, Durness, as well as buses from the same company loading up at Lairg, all in the 1960s.
The 1965 picture at Sangomore shows the late Michael Mather, who took over as driver from his father Jimmy, and his uncle Tom, driving sheep past the bus.
Mr Sinclair, a retired consultant surgeon, estimates he has taken around 250,000 images of classic buses in his lifetime and he has not stopped yet.
Although he was born in England and educated in Edinburgh, Mr Sinclair’s banker father was a native of Strathnairn, south west of Inverness near Culloden Battlefield
He has travelled almost every corner of Scotland, taking photos, mostly on colour slides. As a boy he spent many holidays with relatives at Ardersier and loves the Highlands, while many of his forebears rest in the ancient cemetery at Gollanfield.
His published, as with its Wheels Around series predecessors, by Ayrshire based Stenlake Publishing Limited. Price is £11.95.
