Brown Bus To Beddgelert

A Memory of Caernarfon.

Castle Square in the 1930s was the terminal point for a bus service to Beddgelert run by the Brown Bus Service. Memory has it that the bus ran every two hours or so and had a garage (now a mountain-climbing gear retailers) on the right hand side of the main road entering Beddgelert.

The bus shown, a brown and cream Daimler of early 1920s vintage, was ramshackle and dilapidated by the late 1930s, a 'local lad' of the time says that he could crack walnuts in the gap which opened up between the interior panels when the bus ran over a bump in the road.

There was a 'civilised understanding' between the brown bus's owners and O R Williams's Whiteway Buses and their co-ordinated service ensured a minimum frequency of at least an hourly bus from Waunfawr and Caernarfon. Of course, there was the alternative means of travel into town by the narrow gauge railway, but that ran indirectly and involved a change of train at Dinas Junction, which made it an expensive alternative to the buses. A local banker and his wife always used the train into Caernarfon as they 'had a position in society' to maintain. Hmmm ...