Ribble

Celebrating the centenary of an iconic bus company

author: Roger Davies
hardback 240mm x 285mm, 192 pages
978 0 9565740 4 6

Bus companies have always been part and parcel of the fabric of local life, whether that's with busy, frequent routes in our towns and cities, or country buses wandering down narrow lanes to connect isolated villages to local market towns; or express services along main roads, taking people out for the day, or away on holiday, to see loved ones, to paddle in the sea, or just to widen their horizons.

Ribble was a bus company in the North West of England that did all this, and more. Its home territory was simply enormous, stretching from the Cheshire plains to the Scottish border, and from the coast right into the folds of the Pennine hills. But it had tentacles reaching much further afield: it also ran a network of limited stop buses and express coaches from centres of population into Scotland, Yorkshire and the North East, south to the West Country, and down to the Midlands and London.

The company was established in 1919 and this book, published 100 years later in 2019, is both a celebration of its centenary and a tribute to what some people have called 'the Mighty Ribble'.

It is not just about buses or bus routes or bus people, even though there is a lot about all of those; it's also about the places it served, the georgraphy, history, architecture and character of those place, plus a bit of art and culture along the way, and even the weather, in some cases! It gives a rich, tangible sense of time and place, so come on the journey and find out more…