When looking through some old slides, I found this one taken at London Victoria in August 1985. It's a Bova Europa and the significance is that it was new to Bebb Travel, Llantwit Fardre (in South Wales, if you couldn't guess). Back in October 1984 I had travelled to Austria on this vehicle on a private hire trip. It wasn't the most suitable vehicle for this as it hadn't had the necessary modifications to allow it to cross Germany at 100 kmh (62mph in our language) and so was reduced to 90kmh (56 mph). There's an awful lot of German autobahn to travel across to get to Salzburg and 56mph makes it even longer.
So where does the West Midlands connection come in? Soon after we returned, the coach went back to the dealer (nothing to do with us - traditionally Bebb didn't keep its coaches for very long) and ended up with Central Coaches of Walsall. It is seen here on a National Express summer Saturday relief.
Central Coaches became part of West Midlands Travel which is now part of the National Express Group. After some years without a coaching unit, Travel West Midlands began to operate National Express services out of Birmingham. Operation of these services passed to Veolia in June 2007 - and Veolia are operating them through their Bebb Travel subsidiary. Of course, this Bova has long gone, but the irony of it struck me when I saw this slide and the memories came back.
Not the most obvious connection - but that's the way my warped mind works.
