FROM tots stepping aboard for the first time to young lovers getting amorous on the back seat – a museum is taking Oxfordshire on a bus ride down memory lane.

Fifty years have passed since a group of enthusiasts pooled their money to buy a vintage bus that would eventually lead to the establishment of the Oxford Bus Museum.

One of the ways the volunteer-led centre in Long Hanborough is marking the occasion is by encouraging people to get in touch with their nostalgic sides and submit their memories of bus travel in the swinging 60s.

Jonathan Radley, one of the museum’s directors, said people’s experiences would help bring the vintage vehicles displayed at the museum to life.

He said: “I remember being sat on the bus as a child and putting my finger in the beehive hairdo of the woman sat in front of me until my mother had to tell me to leave it alone.

“I can also remember sitting and watching the bus driver starting up the bus and seeing all the lights get switched on.

“Before everyone drove a car people would base much of their lives around buses. The vehicles themselves are lovely but for many people it’s those memories that are important.”

The Oxford Bus Museum will hold a vintage transport festival on July 30. During the event, the gathered memories will be put up on the walls of the museum’s café so that people can reminisce about days gone by in the world of public transport.

It will celebrate 50 years since a group of bus preservation enthusiasts purchased a 1949 AEC Regal III.

After acquiring the Regal, the group continued to build their fleet of buses before eventually opening the museum.

As well as allowing the county’s older residents to reflect on the old days of public transport, the museum’s memories initiative aims to inspire young people to get enthused about the world of buses.

Mr Radley, who has been at the museum for about four years, said: “Educating and inspiring the next generation of Oxfordshire residents to have an interest in our transport heritage is a core objective of our museum.

“To do that we need to capture people’s memories of what public transport across the country used to be like for a user of the service or for a bus worker.”

Some of the memories may be steamier than Mr Radley’s own beehive-prodding recollections.

He said: “We do get loads of husbands and wives who will see one of the buses and say: ‘Do you remember when we used to get in the back of one of those and cuddle?’”

For the festival the museum is inviting owners of vintage vehicles to bring them to Oxford Parkway station near Water Eaton. There will be frequent vintage buses from the station to the museum and on to Witney.

To submit memories of buses in the 1960s or to find out about the festival visit oxfordshiremuseums.org