Long, long Saturday trail
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• Tomintoul, the highest village in the Highlands, is only 64 miles from Aberdeen, but the 500 people in the area can get to the city by public transport on only one day of the week — Saturday.
They have to go by bus to Milltown, 19 miles away, and there change to another bus service which takes them to Keith, where they join the Inverness-Aberdeen train. In all it is a three-hour journey and the timing of the return trip means 12 hours away from home.
The Tomintoul-Dufftown bus also runs on Tuesdays and Thursdays forenoons, but if passengers from the uplands of Banffshire use it they arrive in Dufftown to find there are no connections to anywhere. After a 90-minute halt, the bus goes back to Tomintoul.
Mr William Low, owner of the bus, has applied to the Traffic Commissioners for permission to run a direct service to Keith three times a week. "This Would be a great boon to the people of Tomintoul, Glenlivet and Glen Rinnes", he said.
Banff County Council, which subsidizes Mr Low's bus service is also supporting the application.
Rev. R. Mann, Tomintoul, said: "Our troubles began after the railway station at Dulltown closed. We have been pressing for some time for a better bus service. Bus-changing can be hard on old people, especially with the blizzards we can get in winter in this part of the world."
Bus-lane grants
• Mr John Peyton hopes to be able to meet all local authority requests for grants towards the installation of bus lanes, where such expenditure could be justified.
Stating this in the Commons, Mr Peyton conceded that bus lanes inevitably restricted the use of the roads by other traffic, but he pointed out that they were introduced only where such restriction was considered acceptable.