The wheels of the school bus have gone “round and round” for one Eden woman for 50 years — but although her drive to continue is strong, she has had to call it a day on health grounds.
Ida Wilson, aged 78, has been doing a run from Great Strickland, Little Strickland and Melkinthorpe into the Lowther Endowed School at Hackthorpe for Aspatria-based bus operator Ellenvale.
Among the pupils she has been driving are Phoebe and Tom Capstick, of Melkinthorpe, and Alfie Richardson, of Great Strickland — and she also drove their respective dads — Michael and Paul — to school as well!
“I’ve driven two generations of families to school, but it would have been nice to have gone on and done three,” said Ida.
However, she had to go into hospital in April and have a new hip, so she is now “out of commission”, as she puts it.
“That is me, retired. I will miss the buses. I enjoyed getting out behind the wheel and meeting people. It has been a big part of my life.
“I used to love driving and cleaning them out,” said Ida,
But it all might have been very different without the support of her husband, John, with whom she is set to celebrate a diamond wedding anniversary next month. At first, when Ida started learning to drive a bus, she admitted to feeling scared, but John told her: “Keep going, the more you go, the more you will get used to it”.
“I think it was just the width and the length (of the bus),” but indeed the more she went, the more she did get used to it.
Born at Yew Tree House, Great Strickland, Ida has only moved once, which was to the house next door when she got married to John, of Morland. They met after he had come to work for her father, Dick Taylor, when he was about 16.
Ida’s late father was a builder and they had wagons and JCBs before going into the coach business as Taylors Coaches.
After leaving school she went to work at the Royston cafe, in Penrith’s Sandgate, for a year then came home to work in the family business driving a minibus at the start before graduating to the big 53-seater.
“We used to take the children to school from the villages round about. Children from Clifton Dykes, Melkinthorpe and Great Strickland all went to Hackthorpe (now Lowther Endowed School), while those living at Little Strickland went to Morland School,” said Ida.
They also took secondary school-age children to Penrith from Great Strickland, Morland, Cliburn, Melkinthorpe, Clifton Dykes and Brougham, as well as doing another run from Bampton, Helton, Askham and Yanwath into Penrith.
Ida’s older sister, the late Muriel, was also a bus driver, and it became a real family affair when Ida and John’s two older children, Gordon, of Great Strickland, and Jayne, of Shap, also got involved in the family’s coach business before it closed in July, 2002.
In total, John and Ida have four children, with their younger twins Paul, of Wetheral, and Mark, who lives at Culgaith, along with six grandchildren, and a seventh on the way.
Following the end of Taylors Coaches, Ida worked for K. and B. of Penrith for about 10 years and then drove for Wreays for seven years before taking employment with Ellenvale. As well as doing the school runs, Ida used to drive Penrith young farmers about once a month to the Sunset nightclub at Silloth. “They were a good bunch,” recalls Ida.
She also drove a bus for holidays in Ireland thanks to a link Ida and John have with Irish singing star Daniel O’Donnell.
“I used to go all round different places in England to Daniel’s concerts and he said one night, ‘Why don’t you come to Ireland’ and see what a beautiful place he comes from.
“We decided to go to Killarney when Daniel was playing in Dublin. We then went every year and could fill the bus no problem. Then he started doing his festival at Kincasslagh and we went there for a week every year until that packed in.
“When I went over to Ireland they had never seen a lady driving a big bus before. They were all gobsmacked when they saw me driving. But there are more and more women drivers’ now,” said Ida.
The couple are still in contact with him, but have not seen him for over a year. When John fell off a ladder two years ago in November, Daniel found out and he rang to see how he was.
“He is a nice, down to earth lad is Daniel, he really is,” said Ida.
In June, 2011, Daniel O’Donnell fever hit Kirkby Stephen when Ida and John helped organise a charity concert at the town’s grammar school to raise funds for cancer research for children at Newcastle’s Royal Victoria Infirmary.
Their then five-year-old grand-daughter, Cerys — who has now just turned 18 — had been receiving treatment for leukaemia on the children’s leukaemia ward at the Royal Victoria Infirmary and the couple wanted to repay some of the kindness and support she received at the hospital.
It all happened after John asked him to come and do a concert and Daniel’s reply was “never say never”. “Then out of the blue his manager rang one Friday when John was on his way back from Penrith and said ‘John, Daniel is going to come and sing for you’.
“He didn’t want to be in a big hall or big venue. So we got in at Kirkby Stephen Grammar School. We raised just over £8,000.
“He would not take a penny and Shap Wells Hotel put him up free of charge along with John Storton, who played guitar, accordion and keyboard.
“We had a really good night and the twins had their photograph taken with him and when I was over in Kincasslagh I got him to sign the photo and he said: ‘Can I keep one, because these were my bodyguards that night’,” said Ida.
From going to Daniel’s festival, they got to know a lot of Irish musicians and over the course of 30 years their Irish nights at Shap Wells Hotel have raised over £100,000 for various charities.
