Here is one I made earlier

My wife Susan and I are planning to move from Lenton in Nottingham after thirty-five years to a smaller house in Beeston or Chilwell once we have sold our house. It's still early days, but we are well into a massive clearout of things and in one long unopened box I found a copy of the Mansfield Museum Visitor No.2 from 1976 which included a map by me.

It has not copied as well as I had hoped, but it just about readable.  I drew the map by hand, then the A4 sheet was put into a typewriter and the information typed in. Back in the mid-seventies we lived in Mansfield and the world of buses was very different then. For one thing, bus companies were, almost exclusively, in public ownership, with such names as Mansfield & District, Midland General, as well as Trent and Barton. Both separate companies before merging post-privatisation.

Some of the museums and galleries shown have gone (the Museum of Costume and the Midland Group Gallery, both in Nottingham, to name two). Others have come along since and, at some point, I intend to turn Historybybus into a website which lists all routes to heritage related locations which begin and end in Nottinghamshire.

The point of sharing this with you is to show that this not a new idea. In another box I must have at least one copy of a leaflet promoting the now defunct County Council 'Sherwood Forester' summer weekend network of services which once linked the county's heritage sites.

The idea of promoting buses as a means of exploring history is far from new and I have seen guides from the 1930s. In the seventies we did own a car, but I still preferred to visit places by bus so that I could enjoy the journey and actually see far more than I could from a car.

Another point about the map above is that it was compiled without the help of a computer. I had to find out all the information by going to all the main towns shown.

The map was accompanied by text and I include an edited extract below:

Between Bolsover and Clowne, the No.3 travels along an escarpment which looks down into the valley below and reveals a panorama of industry, with the Peaks clearly visible in the distance and, on the return journey, Bolsover Castle is dramatically revealed as the bus rounds a bend.

Travelling to and from Newark by bus (from Mansfield) offers the chance to view the River Trent and Southwell Minster in ways otherwise impossible.

The X53 offers a glimpse of Scarsdale Hall which reveals this ruin in all its splendour and it is just possible to imagine the Hall as the place it must have been in the past.

And I end with a reference to the then 63 bus, now the branded Pronto service between Nottingham and Chesterfield: How many passengers on the 63 to Chesterfield notice the roof of Hardwick Hall? Occasionally, it is bathed in sunlight and hovers on the horizon, above the trees, as the bus climbs the hill between Pleasley and Glapwell. Then it was a double-decker bus route. I also suspect the trees will have grown taller in the near-forty years since I wrote those words.

Looking back I may have missed my vocation, but back in the seventies buses were going out of fashion and we all wanted cars. Even my own use of public transport declined as buses became less frequent and more expensive, but the good news is buses are coming back into fashion and with travel cards and passes more and more of us are using buses again.

Next week I plan to write about a visit to Bestwood on Saturday, so watch this space.