FULL marks to your correspondent 'Our Man on the Omnibus' for his choice of routes (April 22).

At North Duffield he reported boarding a rickety, prehistoric, antediluvian relic from the past in the form of an ex-Preston Corporation double decker owned by Thornes Independent Limited, a local rural bus company operating the market day service from Holme Upon Spalding Moor to Selby.

Your correspondent estimates the old decker will soon be celebrating its ruby anniversary. If he waits another 20 years his guesstimate might then be correct.

But, thinks our local man from the Countryside Agency, what happened to the new state-of-the-art single deck bus featuring low-floor, easy-access wide entrance, and disabled-friendly features, to which our department stumped up half the cost, as reported on in the Evening Press last April?

Answer - for one, maybe two weeks of the year, the bus is taken out of service, prepared and submitted for its annual MOT test. You know, one of those necessary irritations you have to have for the safety of passengers and other road users.

Unfortunately, unlike the large multinationals, Thornes doesn't have a pool of 4,000 other low-floor buses to draw on, so for one week out of 52, (the one unfortunately chosen by Our Man on the Omnibus) old Flossie gets a reprieve from the vandals.

Philip Thornes,

Managing director,

Thornes Independent Limited,

Bubwith, Selby.

Updated: 08:36 Saturday, April 27, 2002