Viking: York City Tour

Once the open-top double-decker was very much a feature of the seaside holiday where a few lucky old stalwarts with their roofs missing slowly trundled along the promenade during the short Summer Season and then were tucked away out of the wet and cold in the corner of the garage perhaps covered in dust sheets. But by the mid-Nineties in many of our inland towns and cities with a historical interest they seemed to mushroom in various liveries as entrepreneurs tried to muscle in on the tourist cash. Some of these open-toppers were even brand new but as at the seaside most were otherwise time-expired buses. Former United Counties No.811 of 1974 had travelled far from home having forsaken it's roof and green livery and the humdrum towns of Biggleswade and Kettering which had been it's home for the Viking settlement of York further north.